Under the auspices of the Schlesinger Library, the Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African-American women between 1976 and 1981. The project sought a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society in the first half of the twentieth century. Many interviewees had professional careers in such fields as education, government, the arts, business, medicine, law, and social work. Others combined care for their families with volunteer work at the local, regional, or national level. Access to the audio and transcripts of the interviews are available via the Research Guide for the Black Women Oral History Project. See also the Biographical Files for the Black Women Oral History Project that provides additional research information that was collected on the backgrounds and histories of interviewees.

Marilyn Alexander was a civil rights activist and the coordinator for the state groups of the Women's Committee for Equal Justice (WCEJ). Originally formed in 1949 by the Civil Rights Congress as the "National Committee to Free the Ingram Family," the WCEJ organized a campaign around the Rosa Lee Ingram legal case. In 1948, Rosa Lee Ingram, an African American sharecropper, and two of her sons were sentenced to death for murder after a one-day trial in Ellaville, Georgia. In 1954, Alexander and an interracial delegation of 75 women went to Georgia to raise awareness for the Rosa Lee Ingram case as an unlawful conviction.

Cecilia (Cessie) Alfonso, nationally recognized expert in forensic social work and domestic violence, is the founder and president of Alfonso Consultants, which provides psychosocial assessments to clients of civil and criminal attorneys throughout the United States and abroad. Since 1986 she has consulted on over 700 capital cases, often testifying as an expert in the penalty phase of those cases. A first-generation Caribbean American, Alfonso has conducted mitigation investigations in Cuba, Columbia, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico, and regularly leads trainings on domestic violence, cultural competency, among other topics. A member of the Combahee River Collective, she is an activist who marched against the Vietnam war, for civil rights, and women, lesbian, and gay rights. In 2008 she was recognized by Governor Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey as a leading mitigation specialist who significantly contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in the state. In 2017 she was part of the Truth Commission on Poverty in New York State, organized by the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State. The collection includes biographical information, writings by her and others, and material regarding her company, Alfonso Consultants, Inc., also known as, Alfonso Associates.

Known by some as the "mother of multiculturalism," Baker began her career as an elementary school teacher. During a parent-teacher conference, the father of one of her students noticed the class was learning about the history of Michigan and had created a paper doll timeline that featured Michigan explorers. When he asked why there were no Black explorers, Baker began to question the standard curriculum and why she had automatically assumed there were none. This event served as the catalyst for her involvement in the development of multicultural education, a teaching approach that integrates the influences and contributions of racial and ethnic minorities and women to the development of society in the United States and explores diverse cultural beliefs and values. Baker held a position in the Carter administration as Chief of Minorities and Women's Programs at the National Institute of Education. She was also the first African American woman to be named National Executive Director of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), and she was president of the the U.S. Committee for the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). Baker additionally served on the boards of a variety of organizations.

Civil rights activist and educator Ruth M. Batson was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She received her MA in education from Boston University (1976). Batson worked for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (1963-1966). She later became the executive director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (1966-1970), a voluntary busing program organized to achieve racial balance in schools in Boston and surrounding suburbs. In 1969, she formed the Ruth M. Batson Educational Fund to provide grants to African American students, educational institutions, and community organizations. A long-term member of the NAACP, she was the first woman to serve as president-elect of its New England Regional Conference. She subsequently served as president and director of the Museum of African American History (1987-1990). In 2001, Northeastern University Press published her book, The Black Educational Movement in Boston: A Sequence of Events (1638-1975).

Charlotte Eugenia Hawkins Brown was born in Henderson, North Carolina. In the late 1880s, her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she attended local schools. In her senior year of high school Alice Freeman Palmer, former president of Wellesley College, encouraged her to enroll in the State Normal School at Salem and provided financial support. In 1901 Brown accepted a job as teacher in a one-room school in rural Sedalia, North Carolina. With the assistance of donors she transformed the school into an accredited junior college, which she renamed Palmer Memorial Institute. Brown was active in the National Council of Negro Women and became the first Black woman to serve on the national board of the YWCA. Her lectures and essays about Black women, education, and race relations earned honorary doctorates from Howard and Tuskegee universities.

Author Gail Lumet Buckley was born Gail Horne Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of actress and singer Lena Horne and publisher Louis Jordan Jones. She attended Radcliffe College (BA 1959). After graduation, she worked for and Marie-Claire Life magazines, in addition to campaigning on behalf of John F. Kennedy. Inspired by a trove of family papers, Buckley published The Hornes: An American Family of her family's history (1986), in which she traced six generations exploring the experience of the Black bourgeoisie and her mother's challenges in becoming one of the first Black female stars in Hollywood. She also went on to write American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm (2001), The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family (2016), and Fighting for Freedom: National Museum of African American History and Culture (2017). Buckley is a frequent writer for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among many others. The collection consists of Lena Horne and Horne family papers including Horne's correspondence and personal papers. Buckley's writings and related material contain personal and professional correspondence and research material for her books.

Church received her B.A. and M.A. from Northeastern University and later became a social worker in Chicago. During her career, she served as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Labor and for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. She was also the first African American woman elected to the Republican State Executive Committee of Tennessee.

Scholar, author, and Black feminist Angela Yvonne Davis is one of the most recognizable political activists of the 1960s and 1970s. She rose to national attention in 1969 after being removed from her teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles for her membership in the Communist Party at the urging of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. In 1970, Davis was prosecuted for purchasing firearms used in the armed take-over of a Marin County courtroom. Her arrest sparked an international campaign to gain her release and led to a high-profile trial which culminated in her acquittal in 1972. Davis is an advocate for prisoners' rights and a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. She continues to write and lecture on social injustices, social movements, and the intersections of race, gender and, class.

The Boston Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority was founded in Boston, MA, on March 12, 1945, by African American women who were former members of Iota Chapter, the first African American sorority in Boston. The chapter's primary mission was to provide public service programs for African American communities. Annual fundraising events helped provide resources for community health centers and educational and cultural enrichment programs. Members were also active in civil rights and local political causes.

Born in 1896, Shirley Graham DuBois was a political activist, writer, playwright and composer. During the 1930s she studied music at Oberlin College and produced the musical drama Tom-Tom, which was performed in Chicago. DuBois later served as director of the Negro Unit of Chicago's Federal Theatre, where she produced several successful plays. Considered a prolific writer, DuBois published biographies of many prominent African Americans. In 1951 she married civil rights icon W.E.B. DuBois. The couple was politically active in various causes until they emigrated to Ghana in 1961.

Ernestine R. Etienne was a member of the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Etienne, from New Roads, Louisiana, enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in Houston, Texas, on December 17, 1942, when she was 21 years old. She trained at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and worked as a baker for the 1550th Station Complement at the Women's Army Corps facility at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Dorothy Othello Stallworth attended college at Tuskegee Institute and married a fellow student and Tuskegee Airman, Milton Lemmons, in 1943. Dorothy worked as a school teacher, and received a M.A. in clinical psychology from Washington University in St. Louis in 1963. The Lemmons's marriage ended in divorce in 1967; Dorothy moved with her children to Boston, where she pursued a second master's degree at Boston University. She worked as a guidance counselor in the Newton Public Schools for 13 years, and was involved in the METCO program there. She received an Ed. D. from Harvard in 1979, and opened a private therapy practice in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1981, developing a clientele of professional African American women, and spoke often about the psychological ramifications of racism. Dr. Frauenhofer enjoyed creative writing, and wrote a novel, Castles of Deferred Dreams, in 2011 and wrote a chapter of Ourselves Growing Older, published by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective in 1994.

Freeman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1945. She became the first woman to be hired as a trolley driver by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. Her collection includes descriptions of how she was subjected to harassment by predominantly white male counterparts and terminated in 1984.

Founded in 1992 by Nancy Pleasant, Girlfriends was a Cambridge-based peer support group for lesbians and bisexual women of African descent. Since its founding, group activities have included weekly meetings to provide a forum for discussion, talent shows, a film festival, and a newsletter (Girlfriends).

Grant attended Radcliffe College after winning a scholarship in 1914. She graduated magna cum laude in 1917. Grant was a teacher and librarian in New Jersey and New York City. See also Black Women Oral History Project for additional information on Grant.

Haley was the recording secretary at national conventions organized by the National Association of Colored Women and held in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1939, and in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1940. The organization, initially known as the National Federation of Afro-American Women, was founded ca. 1895 by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924) and later merged with the Colored Women's League.

Claudia White Harreld was the daughter of Josephine E. Thomas, who was born into slavery in Augusta, Georgia. The collection contains rare reminiscences about Harreld’s mother and the impact of the Civil War.

Civil rights and women's rights activist Dorothy Irene Height graduated from New York University (BA and MA in educational psychology, 1932, 1933). She began her career as a case worker with the New York City Welfare Department and at the age of 25 joined the National Council of Negro Women, an organization that she led for 40 years (1957-1997). Under its auspices she founded Wednesdays in Mississippi, during which Northern women of different races and faiths would travel to Mississippi to foster understanding across regional, racial, and class lines. Height also was a member of the national staff of the Young Women's Christian Association, and an active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, where she served as national president (1947-1956). She was a founding member of the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership, and a regular adviser to American leaders, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Height was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. The papers of Dorothy I. Height include correspondence, organizational records, photographs, audiovisual materials, memorabilia and other materials documenting Height's 50-year term as President of the National Council of Negro Women and work on behalf of other organizations.

Gattie Holmes was a single professional African-American woman whose music career teaching piano spanned from the 1940s through the 1990s. She was the daughter of a Canadian Native-American mother and an African-American father. As a child Holmes lived in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father owned a candy store. Holmes was a very musical child and her parents enrolled her in the Royal College of Music in London when she was a teenager. Either in Europe or later in the United States, she studied with the Austrian-American classical pianist Arthur Schnabel and with the pianist Lee Pattison, who built the music program at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Pattison recruited Holmes and she moved out to Claremont, California where she built a house and business as a music instructor. At some point, possibly from when Holmes attended the Royal College of Music, she began passing for white. She spent her entire professional career in Claremont, California, and participated in the Los Angeles music scene, without others being aware of her ethnic heritage. The collection includes correspondence; notebooks; sheet music; newspaper articles; music notebooks; and more. The materials document Holmes' personal life, music career, and other creative projects and interests.

The portion of the collection relating to Lena Horne includes Horne's awards and honorary degrees; fliers, programs and posters from her performances; clippings; scrapbooks; and Horne's own reflections about her life and career. Of particular interest is material related to her musical tour, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, "which toured in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom from 1981 until 1984. Notebooks from the tour include photographs, drawings, fabric swatches and detailed accounts of each outfit worn on stage; as well as guest lists, programs, and reviews for the shows are also included. Also of interest are the Horne family papers, Horne's correspondence, and personal papers.

Pat Matthews Howard worked as a school teacher, secretary, and for the Yellow Springs News in Ohio. She was active in the civil rights movement and was interested in the history of Blacks in Yellow Springs, helping a class write a book on local Black history and interviewing older members of the Black community. Howard’s collection mainly consists of interview transcripts.

An educator and civil rights activist, Hundley attended Radcliffe College from 1914-1918. In 1927, she pursued graduate studies at Middlebury College in Vermont and a year later at the Sorbonne in France. After graduation she taught at the Dunbar School, Eastern High School, and at Howard University, all in Washington, D.C.

Ellen Swepson Jackson was the founder and executive director of Operation Exodus, a program organized to bus inner-city students from Boston to suburban schools. She later co-authored Family Experiences in Operation Exodus, Inc. (1967), and served as dean and director of affirmative action at Northeastern University from 1978 to 1997.

The first African American woman to become a licensed pharmacist in Connecticut, Anna Louise James was born in Hartford. She attended local schools and graduated from Arsenal Elementary School (1902) and Saybrook High School (1905). She graduated from the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy in 1908 and returned to Hartford, where she operated her own drug store from 1909 until 1911. She later moved to Old Saybrook, where she continued to operate a pharmacy and became active in Republican Party politics. James was one of the first women in Old Saybrook to register to vote after the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Mildred Jefferson was the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School (1951) and the first woman employed as a surgeon at Boston University Medical Center. Jefferson became involved in the pro-life movement in 1970. She was a founding member of the Value of Life Committee (VOLCOM) in Massachusetts and subsequently helped formed Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL), which was incorporated in 1973. MCFL's efforts led to the founding of the National Right to Life Committee (NRTLC), an umbrella organization comprising 50 state-run organizations and more than 3000 local chapters. She advised and influenced local, state, and national candidates on pro-life issues and actively campaigned on their behalf. Jefferson received numerous awards and citations for her contributions to the pro-life movement.

Darlene Jeter was the president of Jet-A-Way, a recycling and waste disposal company based in Boston. Founded in 1969 by her and her husband Eddie, by 1996 the company was one of the largest minority-owned businesses in the city. Trained as a practical nurse, Darlene Jeter began her work for the company as a bookkeeper and office manager. After her husband's death in 1991, she became president and expanded the company's range of services and clientele. The collection includes mostly printed material about Jet-A-Way and Darlene and Eddie Jeter; also some correspondence and audiovisual material.

Educator Kathryn Magnolia Johnson attended Wilberforce University, where she earned a teaching certificate and BA. She taught in Ohio, North Carolina, and Kansas City, Kan., and later served as Dean of Women at Shorter College in Little Rock, Ark. (1906). In Kansas City, she also helped establish a Young Women's Christian Association for African Americans. In 1913 she conducted field work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, selling Crisis magazine and organizing branches in Kansas City, Topeka, and Oklahoma. During World War I, Johnson went to France with the American Expeditionary Forces and described the experience in Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces (1920), which she co-authored with Addie D. Hunton. After the war, Johnson traveled widely, lecturing on African American history.

An award-winning author, poet, and social and political activist, June Jordan was born in Harlem, New York and attended public schools in Brooklyn. She graduated from Northfield School for Girls in 1953, attended Barnard College (1953-1955), and enrolled in the University of Chicago for a year. She returned to New York and briefly resumed studies at Barnard and Hunter College (1962). Shortly after she withdrew from college, Jordan became involved in urban development and conducted research for Mobilization for Youth, Inc., on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and collaborated with R. Buckminster Fuller on an architectural redesign of Harlem. She also received an award for creative writing from the Rockefeller Foundation (1969) along with the Prix de Rome in Environmental Design (1970). A prolific writer, Jordan produced fiction and nonfiction while successfully pursuing a teaching career.

Kemp was born in Panama, Central America, in 1910 and moved to New York City with her mother, Diane Stewart, in 1917. In 1932 Kemp went to work as a pinker and hand finisher in a garment factory in New York. She joined Local 22 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) in 1933; this was the beginning of her involvement in the American trade union movement, which eventually included participation in the workers' education movement, African trade union movements, labor education worldwide (particularly for women), and the women's movement. Kemp ran for State Assembly of New York County on the American Labor Party ticket in 1942. She was appointed to a War Price and Rationing Board of the Office of Price Administration (1944), and in 1945 became the first Black woman to represent the AFL abroad, serving as its delegate on a trip sponsored by the Office of War Information to observe wartime conditions for workers in Great Britain.

Adrienne Kennedy is one of the first African American playwrights to incorporate non-linear structure and surrealism into her work, which also incorporates elements of her own life and examines issues of race and violence in the United States. Kennedy's first produced play, Funnyhouse of a Negro, won the 1964 Obie Award for Distinguished Play. In 1991, her younger son, Adam, was severely beaten by a policeman after driving with a broken taillight. He was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer but was found not guilty. Kennedy and Adam based the play Sleep Deprivation Chamber upon this disturbing incident. The play, together with Kennedy's June and Jean in Concert, won an Obie for Best New American Play in 1996. Kennedy has taught at a number of universities, including the University of California, Berkeley; and Princeton, Brown, and Harvard. She has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Rockefeller Grants, and a lifetime achievement Obie Award, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2018.

A lawyer and civil rights activist, Kennedy’s lifelong involvement with political and social activism included the Black liberation movement, women’s liberation, media awareness, consumer protection, and reproductive rights. Kennedy represented the estates of jazz legends Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker and became involved in the defense of various high-profile criminal cases including Black Panthers H. Rap Brown and Assata Shakur, as well as Valerie Solanas (the woman who shot Andy Warhol), before eventually becoming a professional activist and lecturer. Dubbed by the 1970s popular press as "radicalism's rudest mouth," she cultivated a reputation for her distinct personal style and colorful language as a social critic. She also hosted The Flo Kennedy Show, a thirty-minute talk show that aired regularly on Manhattan Cable Television and highlighted the causes of individuals facing discrimination.

Professor of history Robin W. Kilson graduated from Harvard University (AB 1983, AM 1984, PhD 1990) and taught at a number of institutions including Bryn Mawr College (1989-1991), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1991-1995), Mount Holyoke College (1992), the University of Texas at Austin (1995-2001), and Northeastern University (2001-ca. 2005). Kilson's academic areas of interest included African American history, gender history, European imperialism and colonialism, and British history. A fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College in 1993, Kilson's research examined the experience of Black women doctorates at predominantly white institutions of higher learning from 1921 to the 1990s. Kilson, along with professor Evelynn M. Hammond, co-sponsored a conference entitled "Black Women in the Academy: Defending Our Name, 1894-1994," held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. The conference, the first of its kind, provided a forum for Black women professors of all ranks and disciplines to discuss scholarship and challenges they faced in their personal and professional lives. It included presentations from prominent scholars and activists such as Angela Davis, Florence Ladd, Lani Guinier, and Vinie Burrows.

Florence Cawthorne Ladd is a graduate of Howard University (B.S. 1953) and the University of Rochester (Ph.D. 1958), and has taught at. Simmons College, Robert College and the American College for Girls in Istanbul, and Harvard University's Graduate School of Education and Graduate School of Design. Shifting her focus to administration, Ladd was assistant, then associate dean at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (1977-1979), dean of students at Wellesley College (1979-1984), director of education and outreach and later associate executive director at Oxfam America (1985-1989), and director of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College (1989-1997). Her first novel, Sarah's Psalm, was published in 1996 and received the Literary Award for Best Fiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her second novel, The Spirit of Josephine, was published in 2014. She is also the co-author of the non-fiction work, Is That Your Child? Mothers Talk about Rearing Biracial Children (2008). This collection contain drafts and reviews of Sarah's Psalm and The Spirit of Josephine; personal and literary correspondence; office files related to Ladd's tenure at Radcliffe College's Bunting Institute and Harvard's Graduate School of Design; photographs; and audio recordings of interviews with Ladd.

Founded in 1950, the Links, Inc. Boston Chapter is a public service, non-partisan, volunteer organization of African American women. The membership seeks to enrich, sustain, and ensure the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African descent. Past fund-raising events include Ebony Fashion Fair, Carnaval, and Day at the Races. All Links chapters are mandated to developing programming related to four national program areas of: Services to Youth, National Trends and Services, The Arts, and International Trends and Services in order to support and strengthen African American communities and enhance the nation through education, civic, and cultural activities. The collection consists of photographs, financial material, and committee files.

Owner and operator of the Modern Funeral Home, MacKerrow was one of fifteen children born near Churchland, Virginia. After her mother died MacKerrow was sent to St. Paul's, an Episcopal boarding school in Lawrenceville, Va. She later moved to Boston and worked as a chiropodist and beautician. In 1926, she and her brother, Millard Fillmore Reid, opened the Modern Funeral Home on Dartmouth Street. After his death, she ran the business alone for thirty years, finally closing it in 1971. She also served as treasurer and vice-president of the Women's Service Club and as president of Harriet Tubman House.

A specialist in early childhood education, Lucy Miller Mitchell received her formative education at Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute. She graduated from Talladega College in 1922 and became active in the field of childhood education. After taking courses at the Nursery Training School with Abigail A. Eliot, she received certification in 1934 and was awarded a master's degree in early childhood education from Boston University in 1935. Mitchell served as director of the nursery school at Robert Gould Shaw House from 1932 to 1953 and developed practices that were adapted by other schools and by students new to the field. Additional information is included in the Black Women Oral History Project.

An activist, theologian, journalist and motivational speaker, Reverend Monroe has written and lectured extensively on a broad range of social issues and on the history of African American, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in Boston and across the nation. She has taught classes on women’s healing and served on various boards, including the Cambridge Family YMCA and the National Black Justice Coalition. Her writings, which include columns, news features, and book reviews, have been published in Chicken Bones: A Journal, In Newsweekly, the Boston Globe, The Other Side, and The Witness. In addition to her papers, researchers can view her web site at www.irenemonroe.com, which is being archived by Harvard University.

A lawyer, educator, political activist, and writer, Pauli Murray was the first woman to become an ordained Episcopal minister. She was born in Baltimore, Md., and grew up in North Carolina, where she was raised by her maternal aunt. Murray attended Hunter College in New York City and graduated in 1933. She held a variety of jobs with organizations such as the Works Progress Administration and the Workers' Defense League. She attended Howard University Law School (1941-1944) and completed graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. During the 1940s she operated a law office in New York City and was later hired as an associate attorney for the law offices of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison (1956). During the 1960s Murray was a university professor and served on the President's Commission on the Status of Women.

The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs was conceived in 1934 by Emma Odessa Young, a New York realtor and member of the New York Club of Business and Professional Women. In 1936, during its first convention, the organization elected Ollie Chinn Porter as its first president. The goal of the organization was to promote and protect the interests of Black professional women, encourage support and fellowship among members, direct interests toward united action for improved social and civic conditions, encourage the formation of subsidiary clubs throughout the United States, and create opportunities for Black women in business and the professions. Today, the organization continues to provide support to Black business women and the African American community at large.

The National Institute for Women of Color (NIWC), founded in 1981 in the District of Columbia, was an independent non-profit organization created to promote the strengths of diversity along with educational and economic equity for women of color. Funded mainly through grants, NIWC was managed by its Board of Directors, with the help of state coordinators, a national advisory committee, and volunteers. NIWC was an advocacy group which acted as a networking center for women of color and focused on mutual concerns of education, housing, healthcare, and pay equity. NIWC's main objectives were to develop leadership skills in women, to recognize women of color leaders, to educate society about the status and basic needs of women of color, to provide a support network, and to advocate for changes in public policy. NIWC sponsored numerous conferences including the National Conferences for Women of Color in 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1987. The group also published a newsletter, fact sheets, and NIWC Brown Papers, which researched writings on issues of concern to women of color. NIWC stopped functioning in 1995 and legally disbanded in the early 2000s.

The collection contains New York Coalition of 100 Black Women event calendars, meeting agendas, committee reports, by-laws, mailings, and printed materials collected by Doris E. Chambers. Chambers was a member of the New York Coalition of 100 Black Women, an organization formed to act as an advocate for Black women and to promote leadership development and gender equity in the areas of health, education, and economic empowerment. Printed materials include New York chapter newsletters and two National Coalition of 100 Black Women publications, The Directory (1980), a "bound index to minority small businesses," mostly located in New York City, and Our First Decade (ca.1980), a booklet detailing the Coalition's history and accomplishments.

African American feminist lesbian poet Pat (Cooks) Parker earned an undergraduate degree at Los Angeles City College and a graduate degree at San Francisco State College. In 1962 she married Ed Bullins, a playwright and member of the Black Panthers. They divorced after four years and she married Robert F. Parker and had two daughters, Cassidy and Anastasia. In the late 1960s, Parker began to identify as a lesbian; following her divorce from Parker she had committed relationships with Laura Brown and Martha Dunham. Parker gave her first public poetry reading in 1963. Her first book of poetry, Child of Myself, appeared in 1972 followed by Pit Stop in 1973. In 1976 Parker and Judy Grahn released a phonograph album, Where Would I Be Without You. In 1978 Parker became director of Oakland's Feminist Women's Health Center and in 1980 she founded the Black Women's Revolutionary Council.

Rebecca Primus, an educator and member of the Hartford Freedmen's Aid Society, was the eldest of four children in the prominent free Black family of Holdridge and Mehitable "Hettie" Primus in Hartford, Connecticut. Her paternal grandfather was enslaved but won his freedom by fighting with the American army during the Revolutionary War. Primus traveled to Royal Oak, Maryland, toward the end of the Civil War to teach newly liberated Black people. A collection of her correspondence with friends was previously published in the book Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854-1868 by Farah Jasmine Griffin (1999).

The Riverdale Children's Association was founded in 1836 and incorporated in 1838 as the Colored Orphans' Asylum. It was the first institution for the care of African American orphans in the United States. Since 1942 it has accepted children of every ethnic background. This collection consists of the History of the Association, 1836-1956, compiled by Elizabeth Leonard.

A lawyer and jurist, Sampson was an active member of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). Based on the recommendation of Mary McLeod Bethune, she participated in the Town Hall of the Air, a radio program and lecture series that promoted solidarity and peace during the post-World War II era. She later became the first African American woman to serve as an alternative delegate at the United Nations.

Hortense Carter Saxon worked in New York City in domestic service. She lived in Far Rockaway, Queens, as well as in Harlem. While in Harlem she boarded with two friends of the family, Lottie and Arthur Washington. Around 1927 she was a housekeeper for Dr. Eleanor Bertine, one of the first Jungian analysts in the United States and a founder of the New York Association for Analytical Psychology. The papers of Hortense Carter Saxon include correspondence between Saxon and her family and friends, employment agency receipts, bank passbooks, a health booklet, and two photographs. These materials document the daily life and relationships of working-class African Americans in Connecticut and New York. Recurring themes within the correspondence include financial difficulties, work and employment, daily errands and outings, health, and social activities. The correspondence provides glimpses into social life and courtship. It also demonstrates the daily personal and financial hardships ordinary African Americans faced during this time period. Materials also offer insight into Black family life and the extensive familial and community networks used for financial and social support.

Margaret Perkins Simmons enlisted in the Women's Army Corps (WACs) in 1943. She served in the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only overseas battalion composed entirely of Black women. The Battalion was initially based in Birmingham, England, and charged with sorting through warehouses and airport hangars filled with millions of pieces of undelivered mail intended for members of the United States military, government personnel, and Red Cross workers. While in the corps, Simmons performed on guitar as a member of an all-female orchestra and designed costumes for shows put on by the military. She was also interested in photography. The collection includes photographs of her time in the military, and of friends and of Simmons's parents. The collection also includes clippings on topics including African Americans and women in the military, a reunion of African American WACs, African American women in the fashion industry, and racism.

The Sister Soldier Project was founded in 2006 by Myraline Morris Whitaker in response to the needs of Black female soldiers serving in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan for hair care products and other toiletries. She secured donations from leading hair care manufacturers and funds for shipping from individuals and women's groups around the country, created a web site to support the effort, and organized packing parties on the east and west coasts of the United States.

Educator and active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Young Women’s Christian Association, and other religious and civic organizations, Julia Hamilton Smith taught in Washington, D.C., schools for over forty years. In 1947 she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to care for her brother, a successful physician. Additional details are included in Julia Smith’s interview for the Black Women Oral History Project.

The daughter of enslaved parents, Mary Jane Spriggs Thomas was born in Alabama and lived in Kingston, Ohio. After graduating from high school she married Jacob Seymour Stratton Thomas. The library holds her high school oration given in 1892, which offers an optimistic view concerning the rights of women.

Artist Frances Euphemia Thompson was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1896 and completed her high school education at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School (now Tennessee State University). Olive Giovanne Taliaferro, a teacher of art education at Tennessee A&I, became her mentor and sponsored her education at the Massachusetts School of Art (now the Massachusetts College of Art). After graduating in 1923 Thompson returned to Nashville, where she began a career in art and art education at Tennessee A&I. During this period she also worked as a freelance artist and designed the official seal of Tennessee A&I, drew cover illustrations for publications, and painted murals and oil paintings of landscapes and portraits.

A business executive and expert in state, national, and international regulatory issues, Linda A. Davis Watters was a graduate of Bowling Green State University (BA, economics, 1975) and University of Dayton (MBA, 1979). Watters began her career in finance and international export sales at General Motors Corporation (1980-1987). In 2003, Watters was appointed Michigan's Commissioner for the Office of Financial and Insurance Services (OFIS), where she led a successful effort to integrate the historically separate regulation of insurance companies, banks, credit unions, securities dealers, and consumer finance lenders. She was also part of a landmark Supreme Court case, Watters v. Wachovia Bank, on federal pre-emption of state banking regulation. The collection primarily documents Watters's professional career, highlighting the upward career progression of an African American woman executive in the business and finance industry during the late 20th century. Additionally, Watters's efforts to ban the use of credit scores to determine insurance premiums and her involvement in the Supreme Court case, Watters v. Wachovia Bank, are well documented.

This collection has been digitized. Visit the finding aid for the Dorothy West collection (Call#: MC 676) for access to the digitized content.
Born and raised in Boston, West was a prolific writer of short stories, novels, and newspaper articles. West began writing at a young age. Her story "The Typewriter" won second prize in a 1926 contest in the journal Opportunity. She then moved to New York City and became part of the Harlem Renaissance, publishing stories in magazines and the Daily News. She visited the Soviet Union with a group of African American writers in 1933 and later became editor and publisher of two African American literary journals, Challenge and New Challenge. In the early 1940s, West moved to Martha's Vineyard, where she wrote a weekly column for the Vineyard Gazette. Her first novel, The Living is Easy, was published in 1948. Her second novel, The Wedding, was published in 1995, and was later made into a television miniseries. A volume of her collected short stories was also published in 1995.

African-American feminist and professor of social psychology, Aaronette Michelle White attended the University of Missouri (AB 1983) and Washington University (MA 1984, PhD 1988) and was affiliated with a number of institutions before joining the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2008. She was also the recipient of numerous fellowships and studied the intersections of race, gender, and class in approaches to liberation and justice. Her first scholarly book looked at Black male feminism and was titled Ain't I a Feminist? African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom (2008). Her second edited collection, African Americans Doing Feminism: Putting Theory into Everyday Practice, appeared in 2010. A survivor of sexual assault and rape, White began speaking out as an anti-rape activist and feminist in the 1990s, and worked to mobilize anti-rape advocacy in Black communities. This collection includes biographical materials; personal journals; photographs; and administrative correspondence from White's tenure as Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of Equity and Social Responsibility at University of California, Santa Cruz.

Linda Crichlow White attended the University of Cincinnati, West Virginia State College (BA, Home Economics, 1972), and Howard University (MS, 1979). A gifted seamstress, Crichlow White taught home economics in Brooklyn, New York and Washington, DC, public schools. After 20 years of teaching home economics, White received an MLS from Catholic University, and worked as a school librarian from 2004 to 2013. Collection contains material of Linda Crichlow White's family members Constance Glover Bruce, Goldie Glover Bruce, and Martha Archer Crichlow Grant. Goldie Glover Bruce material in the collection includes 25 years of diaries; Charles H. Bruce, Jr.'s letters to his mother are from ports around the world, and describe life at sea, conditions in various countries (including Japan post World War II), and his family at home in New York; Constance Bruce wrote often to her mother from her home in the Bronx in the 1940s to 1960s, and described her social life, enclosing programs, tickets, and flyers from performances and events she attended. Also included is Martha Archer Crichlow Grant's scrapbook from J.K. Brick Junior College in North Carolina, which she attended from 1929-1933.

Beatrice Jeanette Whiting was born on April 25, 1890, in Henrico County, Virginia, to Robert Walter Whiting, a contractor, and Nancy Manning-Whiting. Her sister, Tossie Permelia Frances, was the first Dean of Women at Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute (now Virginia State University), a historically Black college in Ettrick, Virginia. Whiting spent her life as a primary and secondary school teacher. She taught home economics at the all-Black Armstrong High School in Richmond, Virginia, and eventually earned a four-year college degree. After Whiting retired in 1960, she received an award from the Old Dominion Vocational Association for her many years of faithful service in the public schools of Richmond, Virginia.

Williams graduated from Wayne State University in 1970 with a BS in Elementary Education and subsequently decided to pursue a law degree and earned a JD in 1976 from the University of Notre Dame Law School. She started as law clerk for Judge Robert A. Sprecher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and in 1985 she was appointed by Ronald Reagan to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, where she served until her appointment by Bill Clinton to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1999. Williams also collaborated with non-government organizations, including Lawyers Without Borders, Fordham Law School, and the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice at Cornell Law School. Williams was a member of the delegation sent to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, held in Arusha, Tanzania, where she taught trial advocacy skills to prosecutors of persons accused of genocide and human rights violations. She also participated in tribunals held in former Yugoslavia, and at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Areas of special interest in the collection include a speech presented to the National Summit of Black Women Lawyers on the topic of African Women lawyers and the glass ceiling, Williams' oral history, transcripts of interviews and conversations facilitated by Williams with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayer, Sandra Day O'Connor, and the international scope of judicial training in Africa and Europe.

Ozeline Barrett (Pearson) Wise was one of four children born to Frances Lavina (Gale) and William B. Pearson. She attended local schools and held clerical jobs until she married John Wise in 1931. During World War II she worked for the Navy. She later became the first Black woman employed by the banking department of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where she worked for nearly twenty years. She also devoted herself to working with St. Paul AME Church, serving as a Sunday school teacher, trustee, and chair of the building fund.

An educator and minister Deborah (Cannon) Partridge Wolfe was born in Cranford, N.J., in 1916, and educated at New Jersey State Teachers College (BS 1937) and Columbia University (M.A. 1938, Ed.D. 1945). She was a faculty member at Tuskegee Institute (1938-1950) and served as director of the graduate studies program at Queens College of the City University of New York, where she was a professor of education. In 1970 she became an ordained minister and in 1975 was appointed associate minister in the First Baptist Church of Cranford. For additional information, see the Black Women Oral History Project.

Organized in 1919 to promote active cooperation among African American women in community service and philanthropic work, the Women's Service Club met at 464 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. Their activities included educational assistance to young girls and boys, supporting women’s right to participate in government and civic affairs, and organizing annual fundraising events to provide financial support to various causes.