Pepper, Frances Garber, Class of 1962

In this oral history, Francie Pepper describes shattering her high school teacher’s expectations by not only going to Smith but succeeding as well. She discusses coming from a long line of strong women, participating in sports while at Smith, studying abroad in Madrid, going to secretarial school and using her Spanish to get top jobs, raising money for the YWCA, and working on social issues like birth control, domestic violence, and trafficking.

Helen Alling Davis had a long career in the YWCA, serving in many capacitites and traveling to establish the organization in Asia. This collection includes a transcript of Around the World in Nine Months: Letters from Helen Alling Davis, which documents Davis's trip in 1920-1921, traveling through China, Japan and Korea. She spent much of her time in the Philippines where she was working to establish the YWCA there.