Tiyo Attallah Salah-El, 1997.

The Papers of Tiyo Attallah Salah-El document his experience in the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania from 1977 to the present, providing information on his education, teaching, and activism. The collection includes letters, postings from the prison administration, inter-prison memos, legal documents detailing his civil action against the Delaware County Prison, clippings, fliers, articles, sheet music, manuscripts of Salah-El's autobiography and musical compositions, and photographs of his family and friends.

The bulk of the collection consists of Salah-El's correspondence with an impressive array of figures from author and historian Howard Zinn to Hollywood talent agent Paul Alan Smith and from university faculty Hal Pepinsky and Mechthild Nagel to prison activists Elizabeth Dede and Lois Ahrens. Letters address Salah-El's major concerns, namely prison abolition, education, and music. Materials that document his work with the prison abolish movement include the founding documents of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons (CAP) and the group's newsletter, Broken Chains, as well as numerous articles both by Salah-El and others reflecting research in the field.