Collection consists of audiotapes of talks given by speakers featured during the Schlesinger Library luncheon series, 1979-1987. One speaker, author and journalist Lou Ann Walker, discusses her childhood and learning to communicate with her deaf parents. April 23, 1987. All tapes in the collection have been digitized.

Laura Dewey Bridgman was the first deaf-blind person to be formally educated in the US. She was a pupil of Samuel Gridley Howe, director of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Mass. Collection contains six autograph letters by Bridgman; also article re: Bridgman and invitation to exhibition.

A niece of Henry and William James, Mary James Brown married author William Slater Brown in 1950. They lived in Rockport, Mass., and Mary made frequent visits to Cambridge, Mass., where William Brown's sister Joyce lived with her husband, David Bailey, a Harvard administrator. Collection consists of letters from Mary to Joyce and David, thanking them for their hospitality, and describing her health, deafness and social life.

Alice Olin (Draper) Carter, civic worker, was born in 1883 in New York City, the daughter of Dr. William Henry and Ruth (Dana) Draper, and the sister of Ruth Draper, the monologuist. Her maternal grandfather, Charles A. Dana, was the editor of the New York Sun. In 1908 she married Edward Carter general secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association and later secretary general of the Institute of Pacific Relations. From 1946 to 1955, ADC was president of the Play Schools Association of New York City which developed educational programs for children with disabilities in hospitals and housing developments.

Archaeologist Theresa Bathsheba Goell was born in New York City on July 17, 1901. While a student at Radcliffe College, she experienced partial hearing loss, diagnosed as otosclerosis; she compensated for this by lip reading and by the use of hearing aids. In the early 1930s, Goell participated in archeological digs in Jerusalem and Jordan. Her life-long work was focused on excavating the site known variously as Nemrud Dagh, Nemrud Dagi, and Nemrut Daği. During her many years at the site, she uncovered the tomb-sanctuary of King Antiochus I (64-32 B.C.). She also instituted an intensive digging program at Samosata, the capital city of Antiochus I. In 2005, her niece Martha Goell Lubell produced and directed a documentary about Goell and Nemrut Daği, titled Queen of the Mountain.

Interview of archaeologist Goell (1901-1985) about her education, struggle with deafness, and her work at Nemrud Dagh in Turkey by Rebecca and Frederick P. Latimer.

Greatwood contracted polio when she was three months old. She attended public schools in Buffalo, N.Y., graduating from high school in 1928. Greatwood underwent a number of treatments, including a stay at the Reconstructive Home for Infantile Paralysis in Ithaca, N.Y. She graduated from Canisius College in Buffalo in 1937, and unsuccessfully sought employment as a public school teacher. To gain experience, she taught piano and Sunday school, and was eventually hired as a substitute teacher in the Buffalo public school system, and finally, in 1946, as a permanent teacher at McKinley Vocational High School. In 1951 Greatwood was asked to serve as director of Christian education at St. Paul's (Episcopal) Cathedral in Buffalo. Resolved to continue her religious studies, she entered Union Theological Seminary in New York City, graduating in 1956. She taught at the National Cathedral School for Girls (Washington, D.C.), and was director of religious education in a Presbyterian church in Virginia before returning in 1963 to teach high school in Buffalo. Greatwood traveled widely, and for a year lived in Scotland where she studied at the University of Edinburgh.

Civic worker (Stanford, A.B., 1928), Griswold contracted polio in 1939 and thereafter was active in promoting programs for disabled people, serving as trustee or advisor to various organizations and agencies. She married Erwin Griswold in 1931, and was also a children's librarian, author and lecturer.

Author and reformer, Julia Ward Howe was perhaps best known as the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and was also active in a variety of organizations including the New England Women's Club and the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1843 she married Samuel Gridley Howe, director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. Collection includes correspondence of Samuel Gridley Howe (much of it referring to his work at the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind); documents relating to Helen Keller and the charges of plagiarism surrounding her re-use of Margaret T. Canby's work and correspondence with Laura Bridgman and her family.

Elizabeth Parrish Jackson was born on October 10, 1889. During World War I she worked in France with the American Red Cross, helping to rehabilitate French soldiers who had been blinded during combat. After the war, she lived in Boston, where she worked as personnel manager at Jay's Department Store. Collection includes correspondence, clippings, pamphlets, certificates, and photographs from her World War I service. Also one videotape entitled "Elizabeth at 94".

Keller was a humanitarian and author, who lectured internationally on behalf of the blind and served as an advisor to the American Foundation for the Blind, among other organizations. At the age of nineteen months, due to an attack of scarlet fever, Keller lost her senses of sight and hearing. She entered Radcliffe in 1900; with the aid of Anne Sullivan and other tutors, she took a full program and graduated cum laude in 1904. Keller was a prolific writer and among her works were two autobiographies: The Story of My Life (1902) and Midstream--My Later Life (1929). Collection consists of Keller's post-graduate correspondence with Radcliffe, the college Alumnae Association's correspondence about Keller as well as clippings and photographs.

Correspondence, clippings, photos, programs and biographical material. Included are fundraising letters for the American Foundation for the Blind written by Keller; other correspondence by her; letters by Ella J. Spooner and others that discuss Keller's experiences and difficulties at Radcliffe; a 1910 poem by Keller; and an itinerary from a 1947 trip she took to the Far East.

Interview with photographer Dorothea Lange by Suzanne B. Riess, 1960-1961, sponsored by the Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Childhood polio deformed Lange's leg and foot.

A physician who was one of the first to recognize the appearance of the AIDS epidemic, Laubenstein graduated from Barnard College and New York University Medical School. The author (with Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien) of the first published article on the alarming appearance of Kaposi's sarcoma, Laubenstein was outspoken about what she saw as neglect of the epidemic by government and society. A wheelchair user, she had severe asthma and childhood polio. Her role in the battle against AIDS inspired the character of Dr. Emma Brookner in Larry Kramer's play, The Normal Heart. Laubenstein died of a heart attack in 1992 at the age of 45.

Freda Leinwand (1932-2012) was a photographer known for her work documenting the women's movement, women working in non-traditional jobs, and disabled people. Collection includes over 36,000 prints, slides, and contact sheets; also notebooks, files, etc.
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State legislator, professor, and consultant. In New Hampshire, Nemzoff served as a legislator (1975-1981) and assistant minority leader (1979-1981), established the Equal Opportunity Office for the Department of Education (1980-1981), and was deputy commissioner of health and welfare (1982-1983). She was national field director for Women's Action for New Directions (WAND, 1987-1989), and taught at a number of institutions, including Brandeis University and Bentley College. While a visiting scholar at the Wellesley Center for Research, she wrote a historical analysis entitled "Changing Perspectives of Mothers of Children with Disabilities."

This collection contains letters and diaries of Barbara Nyland’s aunt Edith Rebecca Ervin documenting Ervin's work and friendships with several blind women, including her experiences living and working in settlement houses that cared for blind women in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Odencrantz was an investigator in industrial relations for the Russell Sage Foundation, 1908-1915; supervised the N.Y. State and the U.S. Employment Bureaus on the wartime employment of women in industry, 1915-1919; and was personnel director for a N.Y.C. silk ribbon company, 1919-1924. From 1927 to 1936 she was Director of the Employment Center for the Handicapped in N.Y., helped organize and train new staff for the N.Y. State Division of Placement and Unemployment Insurance, and during World War II was executive Director of the Social Work Vocational Bureau in N.Y.C.

Active in the fields of labor, education, women's rights, and consumer affairs, Peterson was involved in union organizing, worker education, and labor and consumer legislation lobbying. Among her many activities she worked to advance the employment of disabled people.

The Project on Women and Disability was founded in 1987 in the Boston (Massachusetts) area to bridge a gap between the women's community and the disability rights movement. Marsha Saxton was a founder who later served as executive director and as special projects coordinator focusing on medical advocacy and reproductive technologies. The mission of the Project was to eliminate sexism and disability bias, and to empower women with disabilities as equal and active partners in addressing the issues facing disabled women. It sponsored training workshops, provided community-building resources and referrals, and published educational material including WILDA, A Journal for Women in Leadership/Disability Activists. The Project worked with the Boston Women's Health Book Collective on the 1985 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Nurse and Republican congresswoman from the Fifth District of Massachusetts, Rogers was elected in 1925 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, John Jacob Rogers. Re-elected to every successive Congress, she died in office, having served as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. During both world wars, American presidents assigned Rogers to survey the medical care of wounded American soldiers overseas, and between the wars she oversaw the care of disabled veterans. Legislation attributed to Rogers includes improvement of the Foreign Service, establishment of the WAC, enactment of the G.I. Bill of Rights and the Korean veterans' benefits bill, establishment of a permanent Nurse Corps for veterans, and other laws providing aid and assistance to permanently disabled American war veterans.

The daughter of Harold B. and Violet Elsie (May) Salzer, Nancy J. Salzer was born in 1945 and grew up in Rochester, New York, with a congenital malformation that made walking difficult. She earned a master's degree in American history and worked as a librarian. Collection consists largely of diaries, detailing her personal life, her thoughts on religion and political events, her relationship with her mother, etc.; also included are juvenile writings (including an autobiography), and college papers.

Government official (Radcliffe, B.A., 1921), Switzer (1900-1971) worked for the Dept. of the Treasury, principally for the Public Health Service and the Federal Security Agency, until 1953. In 1950 she was appointed Director of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (which became the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration in 1963) and oversaw its move to the new Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953. In 1967 she became the first administrator of the Social and Rehabilitation Service, and upon retirement in 1970, became vice-president of the World Rehabilitation Fund. Switzer served as an advisor to many American health organizations, including the Menninger Foundation, and participated in international health associations.

Werren, a minister in Cambridge, Mass., transcribed the Bible into Braille. Thirteen typed letters from Helen Keller to Werren re: his transcription of the Bible, Keller's thoughts on religion, and her interpretation of specific biblical passages. Also autograph letter to Werren's wife Margaret from John Worcester re: her illness.