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 of the women interviewed for the project were active in the protest movements of their era. Among these include interviews with Clementine Hunter, the first black artist to exhibit in the New Orleans Museum, and Lois Mailou Jones, professor of design and watercolor at Howard University. Three of Clementine Hunter's paintings have been digitized and can be found through a search in HOLLIS Images for "Clementine Hunter". Access to the audio and transcripts of the interviews are available via the Research Guide for the Black Women Oral History Project.

Judy Chicago is an artist, feminist, and writer. She is a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned recognition for her minimalist sculptures in 1967 and a one-woman show in 1970. Chicago became increasingly sensitive to the need for an environment in which women artists could freely express themselves, and thus she pioneered feminist art education programs at California State University at Fresno and at the California Institute of the Arts. She is best known for The Dinner Party, a multi-media installation honoring the achievements of women in Western civilization. This collection documents her personal and professional life, including her art. Relevant digital material can be found in the finding aid for the Papers of Judy Chicago, the finding aid for the Additional Papers of Judy Chicago, and the Judy Chicago Research Portal.

Helen Augusta Whittier was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and taught china painting at Lowell Evening Drawing School. She founded a club of 15 friends known as XV, a group that pursued home-study courses under the guidance of Anna E. Ticknor. Whittier was involved in many organizations, including the Middlesex Women's Club of Lowell, the New England Women's Club, and the Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs. This collection consists of one 58 page volume entitled "Ye Log of Ye Square Partie at Ye Great Brewster in Ye Pleasant Month of July 1891," which contains drawings, watercolors, photographs, and daily entries for a two-week stay by four women on Great Brewster Island off of Boston Massachusetts. The album has been digitized and made available via Harvard's Mirador Viewer.

Jessie Tarbox Beals was a photographer and photojournalist. She was an itinerant photographer, then joined the Buffalo Inquirer and Courier as a staff photographer. She was a photographer at the St. Louis Exposition, 1904, and covered President Roosevelt's trip to Texas in 1905. Later that year she opened a studio in New York City. She was a magazine photographer for Vogue, Town and Country, Ladies' Home Journal, Country Life in America, and Harper's Bazaar, and specialized in portraiture, animals, houses and gardens, and cityscapes. Beals' photographs have been digitized and made available in HOLLIS Images.

Internationally-known war correspondent, photographer, and philanthropist, Bonney attended the University of California, received an M.A. in Romance Languages from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in 1920. She lived in Europe, working as a photographer and photographic researcher. During World War II, Bonney was a war journalist and published a series of photographs depicting the ordeals of Europeans during the war. After the war she translated European plays for the American theatre, tried to promote European-American relations, and directed post-war relief programs. Photographs from this collection have been digitized and are available in HOLLIS Images.

Photographer, artist, and feminist activist Mima Cataldo was interested in the field of visual sociology. Cataldo took part in the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice, a gathering of women near the Seneca (New York) Army Depot protesting the deployment of nuclear weapons in 1983. Her book (written with others) The Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice: Images and Writings, appeared in 1987. Photographs from this collection have been digitized and are available on HOLLIS Images.

Schlesinger Library holds a number of photograph collections that document the women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Among these are images by Bettye Lane and Freda Leinwand, both of whom spent years capturing the moments, both big and small, that made up one of the most transformative times in U.S. history. In 2014, the Schlesinger Library was awarded a Hidden Collections grant by the Harvard Library, which allowed the Schlesinger to select, catalog and digitize images that depict the women's movement by Leinwand and Lane. "Catching the Wave" is a curated view into these images.

E. Jane Gay, the aunt of Jane Gay Dodge, is the central figure in this collection. Gay ran schools, worked with Dorothea L. Dix, crusader for the mentally ill and superintendent of army nurses during the Civil War, and accompanied Alice Cunningham Fletcher, who as special agent for the United States 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 from 1889-1893. Photographs and correspondence pertaining to the expedition have been digitized and made available in the finding aid for the papers of Jane Gay Dodge.

Dorothea Jacobson-Wenzel is an American photographer known for documenting the women's movement in the United States. This collection contains photographs of speakers and marchers, mostly at National Organization for Women Events in the years 1975 to 1989. It also includes photographs of anti-gay and anti-abortion protesters. Jacobson-Wenzel's photographs have been digitized and are available on HOLLIS Images.

Photojournalist and free-lance photographer Bettye Lane was best known for her documentation of the women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s. One of her first assignments, while working for the National Observer, a weekly newspaper based in New York, was to cover the first Women’s Strike for Equality, a march called by the National Organization for Women to demand equal treatment in the workplace. She went on to work for Time and Life magazines and the Associated Press, and also photographed civil rights demonstrations, war demonstrations during the Vietnam era, and marches for gay rights. Lane's photographs have been digitized and are available in HOLLIS Images.

Freda Leinwand was a photographer known for her work documenting the women's movement, women working in non-traditional jobs, and children and adults with disabilities. Leinwald's photographs have been digitized and are available in HOLLIS Images.

Starr Ockenga is a writer, photographer, designer, educator, and lecturer. This collection contains photographs of student life at Radcliffe College during the 1970s. The photographs are digitized and available on the HOLLIS entry page for the collection, linked above.

Seeing Citizens: Picturing American Women's Fight for the Vote is a digital exhibition in Schlesinger Library's Long 19th Amendment Portal. Seeing Citizens explores the images that women's rights advocates distributed as part of a visual campaign to challenge ideas about women's roles and to expand notions of citizenship. The exhibition examines suffrage pictures as vibrant visual debates about women and the vote in the United States.