Oral histories

Abstract Documentation program. The Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Archives Project Records include correspondence, speeches, legal documents, photographs, press releases, reports, articles, interview transcripts, audio and video tapes, legislative records, logbooks, notes, documentary footage, and memorabilia. The bulk of the records comprise audiovisual materials from two documentaries: "Who Will Protect the Family," Victoria Costello's PBS documentary based on the 1982 North Carolina...

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Journalist; Radio director. Papers include radio scripts; correspondence about broadcasts; research files; and writings. Wide-ranging subject content of broadcasts, plus interviews with prominent women, such as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Abstract Social worker and professor. The bulk of the papers were created by Hollis, but include the papers of her longtime companion, Rosemary Reynolds. The papers provide information about broad changes in the social work profession and document some of the new trends in the field, particularly from the 1970s onward. Material includes correspondence, student papers, case records, writings and speeches, published articles, audio tapes, recordings, video tapes, agency records and photographs....

Abstract Frances Crowe was a major figure in peace and social justice activism in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. Her papers document decades of social justice activism in the Valley, including through local chapters of the American Friends' Service Committee, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Women Against the War, War Resisters' League, and Amnesty International. Materials in this collection include her writings, notes, photographs, posters, memorabilia, and...

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Oral history transcript of Regina Berger Lederer, a soprano soloist with the Vienna Opera who fled Vienna in 1939, after the Nazi invasion. She resumed her singing career in New York City and later worked for a knitting firm. Includes biographical notes, obituary, eulogies, and photocopies of photographs.

Abstract A research project undertaken in the early 1980s by Annie Cheatham and Mary Clare Powell. They interviewed North American women about their efforts to create alternative structures for family life, arts, education, work, and politics. The results were published in the book, This Way Daybreak Comes: Women's Values and the Future (1986). Project records contain research material, writings, speeches, correspondence, slides, and photographs. Of particular...

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The Gena Corea collection documents the work of Corea, a co-founder of FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering) and author writing on the international politics of reproductive technologies. The collection also documents her work with men who have committed violence against women.

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Artist; Author. Material relating to her books: Daughters from Afar: Profiles of Israeli Women (1958) and Israeli Women Speak Out (1979), including correspondence, proposals, research materials, draft manuscripts, photographs; and interviews made for Israeli Women Speak Out.

Abstract Journalist; feminist; political activist; co-founder, Ms magazine; co-founder, Women's Action Alliance; co-founder, Ms Foundation for Women; and co-founder, National Women's Political Caucus. In addition to providing a complete picture of the life of an important feminist leader, the Gloria Steinem Papers document women at the grassroots level of the feminist movement, whose letters to Steinem demonstrate her role as a symbol of the changes they were experiencing...

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Howard Parad is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and served as Dean of the Smith College School for Social Work from 1956 to 1971. The collection contains materials pertaining to Parad's career as a practioner and teacher of clinical social work, including correspondence, syllabi, lecture notes and speeches, essays drafts and published articles, research data, and subject files.

Abstract Medical missionary and physician. The papers document her life as a student at Smith College and her work as a medical missionary in China and Liberia. China material describes medical work; Chinese culture and daily life; the Lindberghs' visit in 1931; the Japanese invasion; the Communist invasion; and a trip to the Holy Land. Material includes correspondence; diaries; medical school records and internships; writings; oral history notes; and memorabilia document her college years and...

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Italian immigrants; Garment workers. Nine oral history interviews of Italian immigrants (primarily women) who worked in the U.S. garment industry from 1880 to 1950. Transcriptions and audio recordings.

Abstract Biographer and Historian. This small collection primarily contains research materials for Van Voris's books. Included are audio tapes and transcripts of oral history interviews conducted with Mildred Adams Kenyon, Mary Gray Peck Koehler, Mildred Scott Olmstead, Alice Loomis Clayton, and Louisa K. Fast, some with related correspondence and other materials, such as photographs of suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt. Also included is Van Voris's typed, unpublished manuscript "Quiet Victory: The...

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Jane Whitbread was an editor and writer. The collection consists solely of material related to the research and writing of her book, After Super Mom: Working Mothers Talk About Their World. It contains questionnaires, responses and analyses of responses, correspondence, taped interviews, transcripts of interviews, and notes Whitbread kept in three travel notebooks.

Abstract Actress. Papers include scripts, newspaper clippings, notes, publicity, correspondence, audiotapes, interviews, scrapbooks, and photographs. These materials, enhanced by White's eloquent self-reflections in interviews generated by her work on stage, document the career of a versatile performer. While the collection primarily documents White's professional career and the challenges she faced as an African American actress, her husband Alfredo Viazzi and her prominent parents, Walter and...

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The Joan Banks Dunlop collection documents the life and work of Dunlop, an activist and leader in women's rights and reproductive health. Especially well documented is the work Dunlop did with International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) and A Women's Lens on Global Issues.

Abstract Joan E. Biren, known as JEB, is a filmmaker, photographer, and lesbian activist who has been professionally known for documenting lesbian lives and communities since the 1970s. She became particularly well known in the 1980s for her slideshow and historical lecture affectionately known as The Dyke Show, with which she toured extensively. This collection includes JEB’s personal and professional records, and is rich in documentation of her photography and...

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Researcher; Author; Reproductive health specialist. Papers contain extensive research and printed material, primarily from Dryfoos's work at the Alan Guttmacher Institute in the 1960s and 1970s. They include her working files on such subjects as family planning and abortion as well as numerous articles, reports, and speeches authored by Dryfoos.

Abstract Opera singer and teacher. Raskin made her professional debut on both the stage and television, specializing in Schubert, Mozart, Lieder and Yiddish songs. The bulk of the Raskin papers focus on her professional life, and include publicity, reviews, programs, and taped recordings of performances. Personal materials include correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks and diaries, primarily from her years as a student at Smith College. Notable correspondents include Beverly Sills, Eugene Ormandy,...

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Kady was a writer, activist, feminist, artisan, and jeweler. Her papers contain a small amount of biographical information, drawings by Kady, articles, clippings, memorial invitations to "KadyFest", eulogy, her book Panhandling Papers (1989), and an oral history.

Abstract Researcher, Editorial assistant, Archivist. The Katharine Brand Papers include biographical information; diaries from childhood and her Smith College years; published and unpublished writings; correspondence, and photographs. The bulk of the papers range date from the 1920s through the 1960s and focus on Brand's work with Ray Stannard Baker and in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, though there is also significant documentation of her personal life, especially her...

Abstract Kathryn Kish Sklar is a pioneer of women's history. Her first book, Catharine Beecher: A Study in Domesticity,(1973) was followed by a dozen more books of which she was either the author or editor, along with numerous articles and chapters in books. She and her husabnd, Tom Dublin, were also pioneers in the Digital Humanities. In 1997, under the auspices of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender, which they founded at SUNY Binghamton, Sklar...

Scope and Contents

The Kathryn Marshall papers consist of 20 tapes and 19 transcripts of oral histories she conducted with women who served in Vietnam for her book In the Combat Zone (published 1987 by Little Brown).

Abstract YWCA worker. The Lilian Sharpley Papers are primarily related to her research on the history of the YWCA's work with business and professional women. Types of materials include research files, photographs, and writings. Her research on the history of the business and professional work includes an unfinished typescript history, correspondence, notes on conversations with Business and Professional program participants, copies of pertinent documents from the YWCA records, and an audiotaped oral...

Abstract Linda Janet Holmes is a women's health researcher, writer, independent scholar, and activist. She is a research scientist for the New Jersey Department of Public Health, has served as executive director of the New Jersey Office of Minority and Multicultural Affairs, and a board member of the National Black Women's Health Project. This collection contains sixty oral history interviews (audio recordings) with African-American midwives who practiced in the southern United States, primarily...

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The collection contains the professional papers of Linda Stout, a peace activist in the latter part of the 20th century, including speeches, writings, and the records of the Piedmont Peace Project.

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The collection includes fifty-one oral histories of scholars of U.S. women's history. The interviews document the emergence and development of women's history as a discipline from 1960 to 2000, as well as the interviewees' professional and personal lives, their choices, and their intellectual commitments.

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Birth control advocate. Margaret Hays Baum, an oral history: conversations with Dorothy Wardell, January to April 1982, on the 50th anniversary of Planned Parenthood of Rochester and Monroe County, Inc. Transcript published by Planned Parenthood of Rochester and Monroe County (Rochester, N.Y., 1982).

Abstract Birth control advocate and nurse. Sanger, a sex reform activist, fought for women's rights to use contraceptives and founded both the national and international Planned Parenthood Federations. Papers include correspondence, writings, organizational and conference materials documenting her leadership of the American and international birth control movements. Also included are records of activities and events related to Sanger's personal life, tributes, travels, art work, family materials,...

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Marianne Robinson's letters, photographs, poetry, correspondence, and even invoices are fantastic primary sources for topics of the labor and women's movement, folk music, single motherhood, and activism. Her correspondence with Woody Guthrie might be of special interest.