Key items in the collection

The Broom Collection comprises 32 books, 37 pamphlets and 22 serial titles. They mostly relate to the West Indies, Central America and Latin America, and include Spanish and Portuguese language titles as well as English language works. They deal with race and class relations, migration, urbanisation and other aspects of contemporary society in the Caribbean and Latin America. Examples of the publications are:

• America Latina (1962–65)
• Burn, W.L., Emancipation and apprenticeship in the British West Indies (1937)
• DeCamp, David, The field of creole language studies (1968)
• Freyre, Gilberto, The masters and the slaves (1956)
• Gamio, Manuel, Mexican immigration to the United States (1930)
• Taylor, P.S., An American–Mexican frontier Nueces Country, Texas (1934)

About Leonard Broom

Leonard Broom (1911-2009) was born in Boston and is a graduate of Boston University and Duke University. He joined the staff of the University of California at Los Angeles in 1941 and from 1953 to 1959 he was Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. He was Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas in 1959–71 and Professor of Sociology at the Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University in 1971–76. Following his retirement, he returned to California.

Broom was the author or co-author of many books and articles on a diversity of subjects. The books include:

Removal and return (1949)

The Socio-economic effects of the war on Japanese Americans (1949)

Sociology: a text with adapted readings (5th ed. 1972)

Transformation of the Negro American (1965)

A blanket a year (1973)

Opportunity and attainment in Australia (1976)

The inheritance of inequality (1980).