Inventory of the Papers of Park Elliott Dietz for the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography

This collection of 16 boxes (6.7 linear feet), contains material dating as far back as 1973, and as recently as 1988, but most of it was produced during the AGCP's tenure in 1985-86, and includes commission memoranda, correspondence, transcripts of testimony, reports prepared for the commission, and various drafts of portions of the final report written by the commissioners themselves. Approximately three-quarters of these papers came to the library unfoldered.

In processing, a distinction has been made between official AGCP materials and Dietz's personal files, most of which related to the commission's work as well. This distinction was at times hard to maintain, but in general the papers in containers 1-10 are either material distributed to all commissioners as part of the AGCP's official business, or correspondence between the commissioners and with outsiders relating to the commission's work. The submissions and testimony from the various public hearings are particularly voluminous, as are the reports concerning the role played by organized crime in the distribution of pornography.

The first four folders in container 11 relate to the reaction generated by the report and the commission's deliberations, primarily from those opposed. The rest of container 11 and the remainder of the collection comprises material collected by Dietz, but not necessarily sent to all commissioners or even related to the commission's work. These include correspondence of Dietz and his wife Laura, particularly after the AGCP report had been released, and materials relating to the ongoing campaign against pornography in which Laura Dietz appears to have taken a special interest. The last two folders in container 15 and all of container 16 hold clippings, some specifically relating to the commission or its report, and some more generally related to pornography.