J. Paul Taylor World War II Posters, 1939-1945

During World War II the United States government used propaganda posters to promote the war effort and to build unity with the American people. According to Terrence H. Witkowski in the Journal of Advertising, the United States produced the most wartime propaganda posters of any nation fighting in World War II. Propaganda posters were routinely published by many government agencies during the war, including the U.S. Government Printing Office and the Office of War Information. Some of the topics of the posters in the collection cover U.S. war production, responsibilities of the citizenry during wartime, national security, and the purchasing of war and savings bonds. The posters were collected by J. Paul Taylor during his service as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy during the war. In addition to propaganda posters, the J. Paul Taylor World War II Poster collection also includes one newsmap. Newsmaps were published beginning in 1942 by the U.S. Army Information Branch and continued to be published weekly throughout the war. They were posted in every U.S. military installation across the globe and relayed what the Allied forces were doing. Like the propaganda posters, the newsmaps were published to boost morale, convey information, and to inspire the military. 

 J. Paul Taylor was born in Chamberino, New Mexico in 1920 and graduated from the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now NMSU) in 1942. He went on to become an educator and administrator for the Las Cruces schools, a state representative for Doña Ana County, and an advocate for social justice and the arts.  For more information please see the collection finding aid.

The digitization of the J. Paul Taylor WWII propaganda posters was made possible by the NMSU COVID19 Performance Fund granted to the NMSU Library by the U.S. Department of Education, Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) in December 2021. One of the goals of this project was to engage NMSU students in learning about the versatility of digital collections through students' active participation in the collections’ development. Based on their hands-on experience in digitizing and curating archival materials, students had an opportunity to understand the importance of access to reliable sources, see the potential for analyzing real data and reflect on the preservation efforts of their own cultural legacy. This collection was digitized and described by Julian Hernandez, an NMSU student majoring in Computer Science.