Florence Ranuzzi Papers

The collection consists of material relating to Florence Ranuzzi's personal activities, including her early life in the motion picture industry, and business papers concerning Poor Richard's Bookshop. The collection includes 249 letters and manuscript materials, 3 boxes of ephemera and small publications, and 6 scrapbooks.

The correspondence represents not only the day to day business concerns of a conservative bookstore- book orders, receipts, information requests- but also the contemporary political climate. As a conservative bookstore Poor Richard's carried a wide variety of books with a similarly conservative perspective on topics such as communism, freemasonry, conspiracy theories, the hippie phenomenon, etc. This correspondence reflects the interest and opinions of Poor Richard's patrons, and at times their detractors.

Materials in the collection record clashes between liberals and conservatives, and conflicts among various conservatives such as the dispute between the Ranuzzi's and Senator Lee Metcalf. This argument stemmed from Metcalf's claim that bumper stickers bearing the U.S. flag, produced and sold by Poor Richard's Bookshop, desecrated the flag and allowed the Ranuzzi's to profit from this desecration.

As a whole, this collection documents the activities of a woman who, over the course of her lifetime, was an active and outspoken participant in a number of social, political and cultural settings.