Collection contains materials related to Booher's research on Sheldon Robert Harte. This includes correspondence from alumni containing recollections of Harte during his time at Duke University, Booher's research notes and materials, Harte's Duke transcript, and the written works Harte published in The Archive.
Sheldon Robert Harte was born in 1915 in New York. He attended Duke University from 1933 to 1937. During his time at Duke, Harte joined the Colombian Literary Society and submitted essays, short stories, and plays to the student literary magazine, The Archive. In 1936, he co-founded the Duke University chapter of the American Student Union. He returned to New York City in 1937 and later joined the Socialist Workers Party. In 1940, Harte was hired as a bodyguard and secretary for Leon Trotsky who was living in exile in Mexico City, Mexico, and he adopted the pseudonym, Bob Shields. A pro-Stalinist group raided the Trotsky compound and attempted to assassinate Trotsky on the night of May 23, 1940. Harte, who was the guard on duty that night, was reported to be missing after the night's events, and several weeks later, he was discovered to have been killed. Trotsky commissioned a memorial in honor of Sheldon Robert Harte at the compound. His first and middle names are transposed on the memorial identifying him as Robert Sheldon Harte.
Bridget Booher received both a bachelor's degree in comparative literature in 1982 and a master's degree in liberal studies in 1992 from Duke. From 2006 to 2014, Booher served as a writer and editor for Duke Magazine. In 1990, she researched Sheldon Robert Harte for a history course. She used her findings to write a paper titled "Death of a Romantic Revolutionary: Sheldon Robert Harte, Duke '37." Booher became director of Women's Impact Network in 2014. She also wrote Women at Duke Illustrated which was published in 2014.
