The bulk of the collection is a first draft of Holland Roberts' memoirs centering on his time at the California Labor School. Most material is handwritten or typed with handwritten revisions. There are 28 folders representing material for approximately 23 chapters. The memoirs start with his career as an associate professor at Stanford and continue to the closing of the School. There are post-California Labor School chapter fragments on academic freedom and the HUAC hearing in San Francisco in 1960. A "Tentative Table of Contents" guided the organization of these folders.

Researchers will gain insight into the thinking and motivation of a radical academic in a period of intense repression. They will find information on Holland Roberts' career at Stanford and the reason for his leaving that institution and becoming a full-time staff member at the California Labor School. His writing is replete with rhetoric of the left-wing movement of this period.

Holland Roberts tells of prominent and interesting teachers, students and supporters the California Labor School attracted. There are pieces on Anton Refrigier (muralist), Bill Freeman (student) and William Crocker (banker). The spirited social and cultural life is described in Chapters titled "The School as a Social Learning Center," "Personalities Around the School," and "1948: The School at its Peak."

An inside view of political oppression is told in "Escaping Subpoena Servers: Dave Goes Through the Skylight." Along with a humorous view of Dave's attempt to avoid a server, Roberts tells of the dangerous implications of receiving a subpoena from a touring investigating committee. Challenging the basic assumptions of government attacks is his chapter, "Were We Dominated by the Communist Party?" Other chapters describe the action which led to the closing of the school.

Series III: "The California Labor School" has similar arrangement as the California Labor School Collection (1988/034) and can be researched as a supplement to that collection. Correspondence contained in several different folders is by Dr. Roberts as well as David Jenkins. Of interest is the folder titled "Veterans Program, Correspondence," which gives insight into the reason for this program being discontinued after barely two years. There are six folders with class outlines on US History and other classes Roberts taught. One folder is a criticism of his outline by a colleague. These outlines provide a classroom view of the instruction which students received. A last folder has class outlines from the Jefferson School of Social Science in New York which Holland Roberts collected.