This collection contains manuscripts, correspondence, newspaper clippings, digital photographs, publications, audio recordings, transcripts and indexes related to Joe Riggs’s teaching career, oral history projects, and personal life. A small portion of the original material has been digitized or photocopied and returned to the donor.

Included in the collection are interviews and transcripts conducted by Riggs on a variety of subjects including aviation, entertainment, government, war and agricultural engineering. The field of optometry is particularly well-represented, with audio recordings of interviews and research about people who were influential in the political and technical aspects of the field. Correspondence related to the publication of the Riggs and Osborn book "Mr. Mac”: William P. MacCracken, Jr. on Aviation, Law, Optometry is included in this collection (see also Related Materials).

Riggs’s research for "Mr. Mac” laid the foundation for subsequent oral history projects on vision care. Interviews conducted in the 1970s with Irvin Max Borish, Glenn Fry, Arthur Bennett, Fergus Campbell, Michel Millidot, A.M. Skeffington and Michael Heiberger are included in this collection along with the corresponding transcripts (see Historical Note).

Another project conducted by Riggs in the 1970s, with the assistance of his wife Virginia, Lois Monahan and Slippery Rock University library staff members, focused on drama critic Kaspar “Kap” Monahan (see Related Materials). The research team conducted interviews with Monahan, his wife Lois, and many of Monahan’s friends and colleagues. This collection includes Riggs’s oral history interviews and transcripts with “Kap” and Lois, as well as photographs of Monahan with numerous Hollywood actors and actresses of the mid-20th century. While the majority of the material related to this project is held by the University of Pittsburgh, selected items are included in this collection (see Related Material).

Riggs was also a consultant and interviewer for the TV documentary The Once and Always Mr. Crump. (See Historical Note). Transcripts of interviews for the documentary with governors, congressmen, judges, political leaders, civil rights leaders and others affected by Crump’s political influence, are included in this collection (see Related Material: Everett R. Cook Oral History Collection, Memphis Public Library).

Also included in this collection are “oral memoirs” with three influential veterans who served in both World Wars: Tennessee Governor Gordon Browning, Admiral Harold M. Martin, and Brigadier General Everett R. Cook.

A transcript of Riggs and Jean Myers interviewing Shelby Foote, the historian and novelist, is included in this collection as well.

For additional information about Riggs’s oral history projects, see: Series 3, Box 6, folder 1.