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Biography/History:
Tracy Sugarman, son of David and Golda Sophian Sugarman, was born on November 14, 1921, in Syracuse, New York. Sugarman graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and pursued a career as a graphic artist. Tracy Sugarman married June Feldman on September 24, 1943. The Sugarmans had two children: Richard Steven and Laurie Ellen.
Four months after his marriage, Sugarman was deployed to Europe to serve as an ensign in the United States Navy during World War II. Sugarman rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant junior grade and a smallboat officer during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Before he left, Sugarman’s wife June gave him a package of art supplies and asked him to draw as well as write to her. He documented his service through the illustrations and letters that he sent back home to Connecticut. Sugarman was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1945.
After the war ended, Sugarman returned to America and studied art with Reuben Tam and David Stone Martin. His art career began in New York City as a freelance illustrator, with works appearing in magazines including Fortune, Esquire, McCall’s, and the Saturday Evening Post. He was also an illustrator for publishing houses such as Simon & Schuster and Doubleday & Company. Sugarman covered a divergent array of topics such as labor strikes; prison life on Riker’s Island; NASA launches; rehearsals of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the Harlem, New York-based Alvin Ailey Dance Theater; and volunteers working with Appalachian coal miner families. In addition, Sugarman created record album covers for Waldorf Music Hall Records and Grand Award Records, who employed him from 1950 to 1959.
In 1962, Sugarman was working for Fortune magazine as an on-site reporter. While on assignment, Sugarman viewed the poverty and oppression of African Americans in Mississippi. That assignment led Sugarman and his family to support the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. Sugarman was an observer and participant sent to Mississippi as an informal reporter for CBS in the Freedom Summer Project of 1964. During that assignment, Sugarman met and befriended activist Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville, Sunflower County, Mississippi. Sugarman drove Hamer to churches in rural areas were she encouraged ministers and parishoners to register to vote in Indianola, the Sunflower County seat. Hamer would stay with the Sugarman family on her trips to the Northeast. Sugarman compiled his personal experiences into the 1966 book, Stranger at the Gates: a Summer in Mississippi. The book was written and illustrated by Sugarman and the foreword was written by Hamer.
Tracy Sugarman continued to illustrate for books, magazines, and newspapers. He also wrote and produced documentary films for CBS, including the 1980 documentary entitled, “Never Turn Back: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer.” In 1994, illustrations that Sugarman created during his military service were included at the Naval Memorial exhibition of the Veterans History Project in Washington, D.C. to honor the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. Sugarman contributed more than 400 letters, seventy drawings, sketches, and oil paintings that he mailed home during his service. The letters and illustrations were published in 2000 under the title My War: A Love Story in Letters and Drawings from World War II.
Many of Sugarman’s works have become part of permanent national collections at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. Drawings of a 1957 Garment District strike were included in exhibitions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. The New York Public Library also exhibited his drawings and watercolors of the 1966 trial of the three men accused of murdering Malcolm X.
June Sugarman, wife of Tracy Sugarman, died October 5, 1998. In 2007, Tracy Sugarman published Drawing Conclusions: an Artist Discovers His America,a compilation of his writings and drawings. As of 2008, Tracy Sugarman resided in Westport, Connecticut.
Scope and Content:
The Tracy Sugarman log books are diaries Sugarman kept during his experiences as a volunteer during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Sugarman chronicles the entire summer and his return to Mississippi in 1965 in long narrative form. The logs also explore the aftermath of the Freedom Summer experiment one year later with reflective interviews of native Southerners, both black and white. The notes in the logbooks formed the basis of Sugarman’s book, A Stranger at the Gates: a Summer in Mississippi, which was published in 1966.
Series Identification:
Folders 1-4
Folders 5-8
Box List: