This subseries focuses on engagements outside of Illinois. The CCC took its first multi-state tour in Spring 1965. In the 1985-1986 interviews of Christopher Moore, he described the motivation to tour as follows: “I had been wanting to get the choir out on the road for several days. Now, my interest in this was not to show them off… [but that] three or four or five concerts laid end to end might be worth a half a year’s work at what was then our normal pace.”

The CCC often did multiple tours a year, aligning with school spring breaks in March and April, and international tours in the summer. They sometimes had two simultaneous tours termed Tour I and Tour II. In the 1985-1986 interviews, Moore also recollected the challenge of traveling with a multiracial group in the 1960s and 1970s, stating “We also had to carefully instruct our kids that we needed to exercise a little care on the home trip on which we cut a more southerly route because that was a time in which many accommodations were not prepared to deal with integrated groups.” This is further documented in the choir diaries from the 1973 tour to Tennessee, where singers write about experiences with racial discrimination.

Materials include planning files, correspondence, rosters of singers and hosts, itineraries, programs, some fundraising materials, particularly for international tours such as Montreal Expo ’67 and Europe in 1970. Also includes booking inquiries and non-bookings for unrealized and cancelled tours. Only the states visited have been listed unless the city listed was the only destination of tour, such as Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1969.

See also Publicity series for additional tour programs and Photographs series for tour photographs.