Best known for her lifelong crusade for woman’s suffrage, Susan B. Anthony was first active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. Discrimination within these movements, along with her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton, helped to convinced Anthony that women could not fully participate in social action until equal rights were first secured. She opposed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because they granted black men the right to vote without addressing women's suffrage, a position that led the suffrage movement to split. As a result, Anthony helped to organize the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. She also served as the second president of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1891-1900. In 1872, Anthony cast a vote for which she was arrested and tried. Anthony died in March 1906, at the age of 86, fourteen years before the Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the right to vote. This collection has been digitized.

Hunkins-Hallinan was inspired to join the National Woman’s Party after she was denied the opportunity to teach chemistry and physics because she was a woman. She became a prominent figure in the suffrage picket lines in front of the White House, which led to her arrest and imprisonment in the Occoquan Workhouse, where she and other suffragists participated in a hunger strike.

This collection is digitized and accessible through the finding aid for the Inez Miholland collection (Call#: MC 308).
Milholland was a feminist, suffragist, and lawyer who specialized in criminal and divorce practice and was active in the women's suffrage and peace movements, as well as the effort to abolish capital punishment. In 1916 she undertook a speaking tour of the western United States in support of the suffrage cause. However, she suffered from pernicious anemia and collapsed during a speech in Los Angeles, dying ten weeks later.

Alice Paul was a Quaker, lawyer, and lifelong activist for women’s rights. She was active in the Women’s Social and Political Union in England where she was arrested and jailed repeatedly as a participant in the campaign for women’s rights led by Emmeline Pankhurst. After returning to the United States in 1910, Paul was appointed chair of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1912. In June 1916, Paul founded the National Woman’s Party (NWP), its sole plank a resolution calling for immediate passage of the federal amendment guaranteeing the enfranchisement of women. Members of the NWP began to picket the White House, leading to their eventual arrest and imprisonment. In prison, Paul led a hunger strike which resulted in prison officials force-feeding her and other suffragists. This collection has been digitized.

Doris Stevens became active in the suffrage movement in 1913, when the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became the National Woman’s Party, hired her as an organizer. Stevens held this position through 1920, at which time she published her book, Jailed for Freedom, which described the imprisonment of women activists in 1917 during the National Woman’s Party’s radical campaign for suffrage. Stevens was an active member of the National Woman’s Party for thirty years and served the party in various capacities: as vice president, as chair of the Committee on International Action, and as a member of the National Council. This collection has been digitized and is available through the finding aid.

Lucy Stone, suffragist and abolitionist, gave her first public address on woman’s rights in 1847. In 1850 she called for the first national woman’s rights convention and had much to do with arranging the later conventions. When the Fourteenth Amendment was pending both she and her husband, Henry Brown Blackwell, tried in vain to strike the word "male" from it and thereby win suffrage for women. She split with suffrage leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton over this issue, because she insisted on supporting the suffrage of black men even without the inclusion of women's suffrage. When the American Equal Rights Association was organized (1866), she became a member of the executive committee. In 1868, Stone and Blackwell helped organize the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She was a leading figure in the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, which she helped found in 1870, and in the American and New England Associations. See also materials relating to Lucy Stone in the Blackwell family papers, which have been digitized.
[Digital content from the Woman's Rights Collection can be found in ProQuest's History Vault. This database requires a Harvard ID to access from offsite, but those without a Harvard ID can access it onsite at the Schlesinger.]

Betty Gram Swing joined the women's rights movement in 1917 with her sister Alice and was part of a group arrested for protesting the treatment of Alice Paul in prison. After her release, she joined the National Woman's Party as a national organizer and worked for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Donated by Maud Wood Park in 1943, this collection of papers concerning women and men involved in the woman's rights movement formed the nucleus of the Women's Archives, which is now the Schlesinger Library. The collection contains correspondence, journals, notebooks, speeches, financial documents, reports, minutes, membership lists, agendas, bulletins, pamphlets, manuals, articles, clippings, maps, scrapbooks, photos, posters, memorabilia, plays, books, etc. Highlighting the work done in Massachusetts, the collection primarily documents the suffrage movement and also the gains for women in government participation, protective legislation, and employment opportunities after 1920. It includes papers of and about little-known women, suffrage leaders, and professional women; records of suffrage groups; and information on international peace activities.
[Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault. This database requires a Harvard ID to access from offsite, but those without a Harvard ID can access it onsite at the Schlesinger.]