Andrews was a pacifist, internationalist, author and scholar. An authority on international law and the international aspects of education, Andrews founded the American School Peace League in 1908, which became the American School Citizenship League in 1919. She served as United States representative at numerous international conferences, and was instrumental in the establishment of the International Bureau of Education. This collection includes correspondence, diaries, reports, articles, and school papers reflect Andrews' concerns and activities.

The Association (AAWE) was born out of a need for shared community among American women living in Paris, specifically linked to questions around their children's citizenship. Phyllis Michaux (1922-2015), an American woman married to a Frenchman, became concerned after the passage of the United States Immigration and Nationality Act of 1960, which stated that children born overseas of one American parent would lose their American citizenship unless they lived five consecutive years in the United States between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight. The AAWE quickly became a social support network as well as concerned with legal issues, focusing on how to educate and lobby the United States government to change this citizenship law. In 1962, AAWE began to function as a membership organization, and organized social gatherings as well as events focused on topics like bilingual education. Beginning in 1980, the organization published a number of titles relating to education, ranging from pamphlets on pedagogy of bilingual education to a series of guides to education in France for Americans. This collection includes some founding documents, a few histories of the organization, and an almost complete run of the AAWE Newsletter and AAWE News.

Jane Maud Campbell was born in Liverpool, England, and when she was twelve, the family moved to the United States where she attended a private school in Richmond, Virginia. Returning to Great Britain, Campbell graduated from the Ladies' College of Edinburgh University and the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy. When she later returned to the United States, Campbell worked in Charles Town, West Virginia, as secretary in a family business, before taking a job as an assistant in the reference room at the Free Public Library in Newark, New Jersey. In 1902 she accepted the position of head of public libraries in Passaic, New Jersey, where she became increasingly concerned with the plight of newly arrived immigrants. In addition to furnishing the libraries with foreign language books about American life, Campbell was the sole woman on a 1906 commission (and the first woman on any New Jersey commission) appointed "to inquire into and report upon the general condition of the immigrants coming into or residents within this State." This panel was instrumental in persuading the legislature to provide free evening classes for immigrants, among the first such classes in the country. This collection consists of correspondence, speeches, and photographs of Campbell, and clippings about her work, libraries, and immigrants. Most of her speeches are concerned with the use of library resources in new and creative ways to meet the needs of immigrants, with libraries and librarians in an intermediary and interpretive role.

Denison House, the third college settlement in the United States, was founded in 1892 by a small group of college-educated women who who looked forward to "a time when there should be no barriers between workers of any kind and the so-called 'leisure class.'" Their ideal was not philanthropy but democracy, which they defined as "a free flowing life between group and group." Residents and members of the Executive Committee, Emily Greene Balch (a Wellesley College professor who later won the Nobel Peace Prize), Helen Cheever, and Vida Scudder, and other residents and day workers of Denison House in 1892 and 1893 kept a communal diary in which they recorded their daily conversations with each other, the parish priest, and with the people they referred to as their neighbors. The settlement grew rapidly, providing the neighborhood with various activities and facilities including a library, a gymnasium, and a clinic. In addition Denison House joined with other settlements in providing relief programs, such as a milk station and coal distribution. Located in a neighborhood of many nationalities, principally Italians, Syrians, and Greeks, the settlement worked closely with its immigrant neighbors. In 1941, as a result of neighborhood studies by Denison House and the Boston Council of Social Agencies, the decision was made to move Denison House to the Dorchester-Roxbury area. In 1965 Denison House and three other settlements merged to form Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses. In 1975, after a fire destroyed the Howard Avenue building, Denison House moved to Codman Square, Uphams Corner, where it still operates today as part of Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes was born in 1928 in Berlin, Germany. In 1933, she left Germany for Belgium with her parents to escape the Nazis. In April 1934, they emigrated to the United States and eventually settled in the Catskills in New York State. A graduate of Cornell University (1950, B.A. in liberal arts) and University of Miami Law School (1957). From 1965 to 1973, Fuentes worked at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as the first woman attorney in the Office of the General Counsel, and later became the chief of the Legislative Counsel Division of the General Counsel's Office. In October 1966, she attended the organizing conference for the National Organization for Women (NOW). She also helped found other feminist organizations, such as the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) and Federally Employed Women (FEW). She retired in 1993 to pursue her interests in writing and public speaking. Her memoir, Eat First -- You Don't Know What They'll Give You: The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter, was published in 1999. This collection includes other autobiographical writings about her experience as an immigrant to the United States.

E. Jane Gay, 1830-1919, the aunt of Jane Gay Dodge, is the central figure in this collection. Gay ran schools, worked (1861-1865) with Dorothea L. Dix (1802-1887), crusader for the mentally ill and superintendent of army nurses during the Civil War. She also accompanied Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838-1923), who as special agent for the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, apportioned tribal lands among the Winnebagos of Nebraska and the Nez Percés of Idaho. Gay was the official photographer for the expedition (1889-1893). The collection consists mainly of two hand-bound volumes of photographs and copies of letters written by Gay and Fletcher about their trip to the Nez Percé Indian territory.

Louise W. Holborn, born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, was an educator, political scientist, and internationally recognized authority on refugee issues. Holborn was an active volunteer during World War I, and became a certified social worker in 1923. Between 1928 and 1932, she studied at the University of Heidelberg and the German School of Politics in Berlin, but discontinued her studies when Hitler rose to power in 1933. Holborn left for England where she briefly resumed her studies at the London School of Economics before emigrating to the United States in 1934. She eventually enrolled in Radcliffe College, earning an A.M. (1936) and Ph.D. (1938). From 1939 until her retirement in 1971, Holborn served on various college faculties. In addition to her teaching career, Holborn worked for the United States Office of Strategic Services during World War II, received numerous fellowships and grants that enabled her to research the plight of refugees, and published her findings in seminal studies and reports. In recognition of her efforts on behalf of refugees, Holborn was awarded Norway's Golden Fridtjof Nansen Ring in 1971, and the Order of Merit First Class from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1975.

An educator and civil rights activist, Mary Gibson Hundley was educated at Dunbar High School, Washington D.C., Radcliffe College (A.B., 1918), Middlebury College (A.M., 1929), and the Sorbonne (1928). She taught French, English, and Latin at Dunbar High School (1920-1955), Miner Teachers College (1931-32), and Eastern High School (1955-1959), and French at Howard University (1959-1964). The Hundleys purchased and moved into a house with a restrictive racial covenant in January 1941. Their white neighbors brought suit against them and won the case in December 1941. The Hundleys were enjoined from occupying their house and were evicted in July 1942. The judgment was reversed on appeal in December 1942 (Hundley et ux. v. Gorewitz et al. No. 8154 U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C., 1942). The case was one of those cited in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 US1-23 (1947), which established that covenants restricting use and ownership of property to whites violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In 1978 she received Radcliffe's Alumnae Recognition Award as an "educator and courageous citizen." This collection contains personal and family papers; legal records of the Hundleys' civil rights case; correspondence with former students, educational, and political leaders; and records of her memberships and volunteer activities.

Alice Kessler-Harris, labor historian, professor, and author is considered the first historian to merge the fields of women's history and labor history in the United States. Her research interests include women and organized labor, and gender in the history of working people. Her works include Women Have Always Worked: A Historical Overview (1981), Gendering Labor History (2007), and In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (2001), which won the Bancroft Prize. In the mid-1980s Kessler-Harris was called to testify on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a sex discrimination case brought against Sears Roebuck and Company. She has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and of the Labor and Working-Class History Association.

A political scientist (Bryn Mawr, B.A.; University of Illinois, Ph.D., 1925), Key wrote and worked for the Social Science Research Council in Washington, D.C. This collection consists of correspondence, reviews concerning Key's book The Law of Citizenship (1934, revised 1948), pamphlets by Key on citizenship and state and county government reorganization, and her dissertation "The Effect of Changes of Sovereignty on Nationality."

Judge Matthews (National University Law School, LL.B, 1919, LL.M. and M.P.L, 1920) was the first woman to serve as a federal district judge, when appointed United States District Judge for the District of Columbia in 1949. In 1969 and 1970 she served on the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and since 1970 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge Matthews was an active participant in the suffrage movement and a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment since its inception in 1923. She has also served as counsel to the National Woman's Party and was active in drafting legislation to secure equal rights for women, including a law allowing women to serve on juries, laws eliminating preferences for males in inheritance, laws requiring equal pay for teachers regardless of sex, and, in 1931 and 1934, amendments to the nationality laws of the United States extending to women citizenship rights previously accorded only to men.

This collection is digitized and accessible through the finding aid for the Inez Miholland collection (Call#: MC 308).
A feminist, suffragist, and lawyer (Vassar, B.A., 1909; New York University, LL.B., 1912), Milholland specialized in criminal and divorce practice and was active in the women's suffrage and peace movements, and the effort to abolish capital punishment. In 1913, she married Eugen Jan Boissevain, a New York importer, of Dutch citizenship. The resulting change in her citizenship status threatened to exclude Milholland from law practice, and she quickly became involved in attempts to repeal the offending legislation. Concurrently, Milholland became increasingly active in the women's suffrage movement. She joined the Congressional Union and undertook a speaking tour of the West in support of suffrage.

íde B. O'Carroll was born in Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland, and taught in Cork for a number of years before moving to Boston, Mass., in 1986. A founder of the Irish Women in Boston group, she also set up a media collective, Trasna na dTonnta/Across the Waves, and has been a consultant for film, television, and radio documentaries on Ireland. With an M.A. in history from Northeastern University (1989), she was a doctoral student at Harvard Graduate School of Education when she donated this collection. Her master's thesis consisted of a history of Irish women immigrants and relied heavily on a number of oral histories, most conducted in the Boston area. This work was revised and published as Models for Movers: Irish Women's Emigration to America (Dublin: Attic Press, 1990). Models for Movers focused on three waves of emigration from Ireland in the twentieth century: 1920s, 1950s, and 1980s. The study concerned the question of choice: why some Irish women chose to emigrate to the U.S.A. rather than remain in Ireland, or move to Britain. The thesis of the study is that Irish women, half consciously, half unconsciously, rejected an Irish society that was oppressive to women and chose to move to the U.S.A., where they would have greater independence and control over their lives. Many of the interviews therefore contain information on life in Ireland as well as in the U.S.A.

A lawyer, educator, political activist, and writer, Pauli Murray was the first woman to become an ordained Episcopal minister. Murray attended Hunter College in New York City and graduated in 1933. She then held a variety of jobs with organizations such as the Works Progress Administration and the Workers' Defense League. When she applied to Harvard Law School in 1941, her application was rejected because Harvard did not admit women. 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. Murray coined the phrase "Jane Crow" to describe the discrimination against women and practices of excluding women from opportunities. The collection holds a number of materials related to sex discrimination in the workplace and in higher education and Murray's involvement with civil rights.

June Namias interviewed eight women and one man regarding their experiences immigrating to the United States and adjusting to their new country. Namias included excerpts from interviews in her book, First Generation: In the Words of Twentieth Century American Immigrants.

The National Organization for Women was formed on June 30, 1966, during the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C. The Statement of Purpose declares that "the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings." At their organizing conference (October 29, 1966), participants established task forces on education, employment, the role of women in the family, women's political rights, and images of women in the media. . As membership increased, the organization addressed more issues, including a "war on poverty," the Equal Rights Amendment, sexual harassment, women in government, and violence against women. See also the research guide for NOW for additional resources.

This collection is digitized. Visit the finding aid for the Alice Paul collection (Call#: MC 399) for access to the digitized content.
A Quaker, lawyer, and lifelong activist for women's rights, Alice Paul was appointed chair of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1912. In June 1916, following a clash between advocates of a federal amendment and proponents of a state-by-state approach, Paul founded the National Woman's Party, its sole plank a resolution calling for immediate passage of the federal amendment guaranteeing the enfranchisement of women. After the ratification of the suffrage amendment in 1920, the NWP began a long battle to end all legal discrimination against women in the United States and to raise the legal, social, and economic status of women around the world. The Equal Rights Amendment, as written by Paul in 1923, was first introduced in Congress in December of that year.

Editor, publisher, and poet Helene Pilibosian was born in 1933 in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Yeghsha and Khachadoor Pilibosian who were survivors of the Armenian Genocide. She graduated from Watertown (Massachusetts) High School and Katharine Gibbs School before attending Harvard University Extension where she received an Adjuncts in Arts (bachelor's equivalent) degree in 1960. The same year she married Hagop Sarkissian who worked at the Harvard University Printing Office. From 1964 to 1966 she served as the first woman editor of the Mirror Spectator, an Armenian Democratic Liberal Party paper in Boston; she later returned to the paper as an assistant editor (1975-1981). In 1983 she founded Ohan Press, a family-run press that published several books of her poetry, prose, and a memoir. Her poems appeared in a number of literary journals including North American Review, Louisiana Literature, and The Hollins Critic. She and her father also collaborated on his memoir, which described the Armenian Genocide, his experiences when enslaved, and his life in the United States.

The Center for Oral History and the Women's Studies Program at the University of Connecticut carried out an oral history project (1980-1982), funded by a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council, on political women in Connecticut. Joyce Pendery and Carole Nichols conducted the interviews with women who had been active in political office and/or community service between 1920 and 1945. The collection contains twenty-one interview transcripts and biographical information on each interviewee. The interviews discuss education, family, and political activities.

The Commission was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to examine the needs and rights of women and to make recommendations for "the diminution of barriers that result in waste, injustice, and frustration." Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the Commission until her death in 1962. The collection contains minutes, transcripts, reports, correspondence, and press releases of the Commission. Included are background, interim, and final reports, and agendas and minutes of meetings of the Commission's subcommittees for home and community, protective labor legislation, education, social insurance and taxes, civil and political rights, federal employment policies and practices, and private employment.

Anna Lord Strauss, civic worker, was the maternal great-granddaughter of the abolitionist and woman suffrage leader Lucretia Mott. Strauss was educated in New York City and attended the New York School of Secretaries. In 1934 Strauss became a member of the League of Women Voters. She served as president of the League of Women Voters of New York City from 1937 to 1943, and was elected national president in 1944. After her presidential term ended (1950), Strauss continued to work with the League in various capacities: president, Carrie Chapman Catt Memorial Fund, 1954-1959; trustee, Overseas Education Fund; and others. A presidential appointee to the President's Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights (1951) and the United States Delegation to the United Nations (1951-1952), Strauss directed the American Association for the UN, and was a member of the U.S. Committee for the UN, the UN Association of the USA, and the Committee of Correspondence, New York City. The Committee of Correspondence, New York City, was a group of eighteen American women who exchanged ideas and experience with women leaders throughout the world in order to bring about better understanding and cooperation.

Kiong Tien VandenBerg is the mother of Fernande R. V. Duffly, the first Asian American to serve on the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts. This collection consists of correspondence regarding the immigration to the United States of VandenBerg's mother, grandfather, and step-father.

The Window Shop opened in Cambridge, Mass., in 1939 to offer employment to and raise money for refugees from Germany and Austria. It developed into a restaurant and gift shop, managed by Elsa Brändström Ulich; in the mid 1940s, it added a Friendship House, which had a library and held lectures and English lessons; and provided medical insurance, retirement pensions, grants-in-aid, and scholarships. After unsuccessful attempts to aid Hungarian refugees in 1956 and Cubans in 1962, and faced with a deficit, the business closed. The collection includes correspondence, financial records, board and committee minutes, case and scholarship files, scattered annual reports, oral histories with founders, articles and historical material about the Window Shop, personnel files, clippings and publicity, photographs, and audio material.

In 1912, Edward Gardner Lewis proposed the creation of a Woman's Republic, where women would learn principles of good government in preparation for responsibilities of full citizenship. Land was purchased in San Obispo County, Calif., in 1913, but the project never materialized. The collection includes a folder of excerpts from letters and articles about the proposed project.

Under the auspices of the Schlesinger Library, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Women in Federal Government Oral History Project has interviewed 39 women in appointive and civil service positions in various departments and offices of the United States federal government. The collection consists of tapes and transcripts of the oral histories and supporting documentation. Topics covered include the interviewee's family background, education, choice and development of career and how it was affected by her sex, personal circumstances, memberships in organizations, awards, and her attitudes towards the Equal Rights Amendment and the women's movement.