Correspondence, memoranda, diaries, speeches and writings, subject files, family papers, appointment books and calendars, and other papers relating primarily to Forman's activities as executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.) and president of the Unemployment and Poverty Action Committee. Documents his work as founder and president of the Unemployed Poverty Action Council, Legal Defense, Education, and Research Fund; and journalist and founder of the Black America News Service. Also documents his involvement with civil rights organizations including the Black Economic Development Conference, Black Panther Party, Black Workers Congress, Congress of Racial Equality, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Mississippi Freedom Labor Union, Mississippi Freedom Project (also known as Freedom Summer), Mississippi Freedom Schools, and the National Black Economic Development Conference, Detroit, Mich., 1969, and its Black Manifesto.

Subjects include Africa; black power; civil rights; civil rights movement in the U.S. primarily in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi; economic and working conditions of African Americans; human rights; March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963; foreign relations chiefly with Africa, Central America, China, the Middle East, and South Africa; labor issues; national and District of Columbia political affairs including Forman's unsuccessful campaigns to be the first Democratic senator of the District of Columbia; reparations; school integration; segregation; and voter registration. Includes material pertaining to Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), Stokely Carmichael, Frantz Fanon, P. Anna Johnson, and Sammy Younge.

The writings file includes drafts Forman's books, The Making of Black Revolutionaries; a Personal Account (1972); Sammy Younge, Jr.: the First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement (1968); his unpublished novel, The Thin White Line; and his thesis published as Self-determination & the African-American People (1981). Also includes Forman's newspapers and periodicals, Capitol Hill Express, Tempo and the Times, and the short-lived Washington Times, as well as the Liberation News Service.

Correspondents include Harry Belafonte, Fay Bellamy, Anne Braden, Stokely Carmichael, Bill Clinton, Ivanhoe Donaldson, St. Clair Drake, Tom Hayden, Faye Holt, Len Holt, P. Anna Johnson, Charles McDew, Alan McSurely, Josie Meeks, Constancia Romilly, Kathie Sarachild, Monroe Sharpe, Donald P. Stone, Flora Stone, Robert Penn Warren, Dorothy Zellner, and James A. Zellner.