The Greg Calvert Papers consist of photographs, family documents, personal journals, correspondence, drawings, a manuscript copy of Calvert's book Democracy from the Heart, and unpublished material such as manuscripts, essays, and poetry. The materials are arranged in seven series: Calvert Family Papers, Unpublished Manuscripts, Personal Journals, Correspondence, Unpublished Essays, Unpublished Poems, and Democracy from the Heart Manuscript.
The personal journals include Calvert's writings at various points in time and locales in his life. The manuscripts, essays, and poems consist of typewritten, xeroxed, and handwritten copies. Correspondence includes letters, postcards, and some photographs to and from various friends throughout Calvert's life.
The essays included in the "Various essays and writings" folder are marked as the following on the included inventory: "Neocapitalism and the New Left," "Is Freedom Academic?," "The Ruling Class and the Elections," "The Other Side," "The End of the Run," Gay Freedom Week speech, "The Ordering of Days," "The Violence We Do to Ourselves," "Gimme Shelter," "United States Violence in the World of the 1980s," "Communitarian Democracy," A Model Democratic Community," "The Political Animal and Environmental Ethics," "The Challenge of Democratic Idealism," untitled essays on Carl Davidson, Paul Goodman, and human growth.
The cassette tapes consist of recorded notes and drafts for "The Hotel of the Two Worlds," interviews for the "After the War" oral history and manuscript, an interview with Greg's father, Clyde Calvert, and other various topics.
Gregory NeVala Calvert was born on April 16, 1937 in Washington State. He grew up on his grandparents' farm before attending Oregon State University on a Weyerhauser scholarship. After graduating with a history degree, Calvert pursued a graduate degree in European history at Cornell University. Calvert accepted an instructor position at Iowa State University upon his return to the United States in 1963 after traveling to Paris.
In 1965, while working in Ames, Iowa, Calvert started a local chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) with colleagues. He left the local chapter in 1966 and was elected National Secretary for the 1966-67 year. Believing in non-violent methods of protest, Calvert left the SDS in 1969 when the organization split into the Progressie Labor Party and Weatherman factions.
Calvert lived in Austin, Texas in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was involved in leftist projects such as The Armadillo Press and The Rag. He completed a PhD in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz in the 1970s, continuing his lifelong interest in Buddhism. Calvert and his partner Ken Carpenter, who were together from 1977 until Calvert's death in 2005, founded a Spanish language school in Granada, Nicaragua called Casa Xalteva in 1995. Greg Calvert died in 2005 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
