Women on the Rise Telling HerStory records
Scope and Contents
The records include correspondence, emails, conference materials, press releases, meeting agendas and minutes. The programs are fairly well-documented, including leadership and advocacy programs for women, anti-shackling campaigns, and community education. In addition there are audio and video recordings and documents related to the "Birthing Behind Bars" project, collecting the stories and experiences of women who have experienced pregnancy while behind bars.
Major topics include reproductive justice, prison reform, incarcerated mothers and their children, legal advocacy for women, African American women and the U.S. prison-industrial complex, and women's community activism.
Dates of Materials
- Creation: 1975 - 2018
Creator
- Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH) (Organization)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for use with following restrictions on access:
Researchers must sign Access Agreement form to protect the privacy of individuals named in records.
Digital files in accession 2016-S-0006--digital files containing membership documents with personal identifying information (emails, addresses, etc.) are closed.
Conditions Governing Use
To the extent that she owns copyright, Tina Reynolds has retained copyright in her works donated to Smith College. Copyright in other items in this collection may be held by their respective creators. For reproductions of materials that are governed by fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. For those few instances beyond fair use, or which may regard materials in the collection not created by Reynolds, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold materials' copyrights and obtaining approval from them. Researchers do not need anything further from Smith College Special Collections to move forward with their use.
Biographical / Historical
According to their Web site, "WORTH (Women On the Rise Telling HerStory) is an advocacy/consultant group comprised of currently and formerly incarcerated women, who have the expertise and understanding to engage, navigate and challenge policy and perceptions concerning incarcerated women." Co-founder and current chair, Tina Reynolds was in prison when she gave birth to her seventh child in 1994. Shackled for her labor and delivery, Reynolds used that most humiliating experience to inspire her work for formerly and currently incarcerated women after her release in 1995. WORTH, founded in 2004 and based in New York City, is made up of three components: 1) the Core Leadership group which oversees the day-to-day running of the organization; 2) The Sister Circle which provides training and support, both personally and professionally, for WORTH members; and 3) the Speakers' Bureau which represents WORTH at conferences, schools, religious institutions, prisons and other public venues. In 2009, WORTH achieved one of their first reform goals when New York became the sixth state to ban the shackling of women prisoners before, during or after birth. For more information, see the WORTH website.
Extent
9.772 linear feet (12 containers)
.673 Gigabytes (96 digital files)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
Prison reform organization. The records include correspondence, financial materials, emails, conference materials, press releases, meeting agendas and minutes. Programs are fairly well-documented, including leadership and advocacy programs for women, anti-shackling campaigns, and community education. Major topics include reproductive justice, prison reform, incarcerated mothers and their children, legal advocacy for women, African American women and the U.S. prison-industrial complex, and women's community activism. [NOTE: Not all contents lists for this collection are online. Contact the Sophia Smith Collection if you would like one sent to you.]
Arrangement
This collection has been added to over time in multiple "accessions." An accession is a group of materials received from the same source at approximately the same time.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
This collection contains materials received from the donor in digital form that are not currently available online. Please consult with Special Collections staff to request access to this digital content.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The WORTH Records were donated to the SSC by Tina Reynolds and other members of the organization starting in 2012.
Processing Information
Accessioned by Kathleen Banks Nutter, 2012.
The contents of some audio CDs and one data CD have been copied to networked storage for preservation and accessd.
Processing Information
Between September 2022 and February 2023, Smith College Special Collections renumbered many boxes to eliminate duplicate numbers within collections in order to improve researcher experience. A full crosswalk of old to new numbers is available.
Source
- Reynolds, Tina (Person)
Subject
- Peace Development Fund (Organization)
- Prison Birth Project (Organization)
- Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH) (Organization)
- Reynolds, Tina (Person)
Genre / Form
- Contracts
- DVD-Video discs
- Electronic mail
- Essays
- Grant proposals
- Legislative records
- Mailing lists
- Membership applications
- Minutes
- Organization files
- Pamphlets
- articles
- clippings
- correspondence
- reports
Geographic
Topical
- African American women -- Political activity
- African American women -- Political activity
- African American women -- Social conditions
- Awards
- Black women
- Children of prisoners -- Effect of imprisonment on -- United States
- Children of women prisoners
- Children of women prisoners
- Criminal justice reform
- Electronic records
- Female offenders -- Legal status, laws, etc -- United States
- Leadership in women -- United States
- Legal assistance to women
- Newspapers
- Poor women -- United States
- Poor women -- United States
- Prison reformers
- Prison-industrial complex -- United States
- Prisoners -- Deinstitutionalization -- United States
- Prisoners -- Legal status, laws, etc -- United States
- Prisons
- Reproductive and sexual health
- Storytelling -- Political aspects -- United States
- Women -- Health and hygiene
- Women -- Health and hygiene
- Women -- Legal status, laws, etc -- United States
- Women -- Services for -- New York (state)
- Women in community organization
- Women of color -- United States
- Women prisoners
- Women prisoners
- Women prisoners -- Abuse of
- Women prisoners -- Family relationships -- United States
- Title
- Finding aid to the Women on the Rise Telling HerStory records
- Status
- Legacy Finding Aid (Updated)
- Author
- Madison White
- Date
- 2019
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
- 2017-07-26T17:48:22-04:00: This record was migrated from InMagic DB Textworks to ArchivesSpace.
- 2019-08-28: Added new accession
- 2020-05-19: Description added for digital content.
Repository Details
Part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Repository
