Bagley devoted much of her life to social welfare. While living in Chicago, she was an early worker at Hull House, helped organize the first juvenile court and the first day nursery for children of working mothers and widowed fathers in Chicago, and helped educate immigrants for citizenship. In Massachusetts, she served as president of the Equal Suffrage Association of the 10th Norfolk District, director of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association, congressional chairman for Massachusetts for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and vice president of the Massachusetts League of Woman Voters.

Balog was born in Hungary, learned to sew, and opened a shop near Budapest where she designed and sewed women's clothing; she later worked for fashion stores in Dresden and Berlin. At the outset of World War II, she returned to Hungary and continued to design and make clothing. In 1962 she immigrated to the United States and worked as a seamstress. After her retirement she continued to sew as a volunteer with the American Friends Service Committee.

Elsa Brändström, a relief worker born in Russia, was of Swedish descent and worked with the Swedish Red Cross in Russia on behalf of prisoners of war (1914-1920). She married Robert Ulich in 1929; they immigrated to the United States in 1934 when he joined the Harvard School of Education. Elsa Brändström was second president of the Window Shop (Cambridge, Mass.), an organization for refugees, and founder of Good Will House, Groton, Mass., a refugee hostel. She received honorary doctorates from the universities of Tübingen, Königsberg, and Uppsala, the Serafim Medal (from Sweden) and the Prince Karl Red Cross medal. Her book, Among War Prisoners in Russia and Siberia, 1914-1920, was published in 1922.

The Cambodian-American Women and Youth Oral History Project was initiated in 1986 by Richard F. Mollica, M.D., in conjunction with the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. With the support of the Ford Foundation and with the assistance of his Cambodian associate, Svang Tor, who served as interpreter, Mollica interviewed ten Cambodian women. Each interview explores the "trauma" story, beginning in Cambodia and continuing through immigration to the United States, the impact of the interviewee's experiences, both political and personal, on her life; changes in gender-related roles after her arrival in the United States, and the significance of Buddhism in her ability to cope with her trauma and new life.

Jane Maud Campbell was born in Liverpool, England, one of seven children of George and Jane Cameron Campbell. When she was twelve, the family moved to the United States, and 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. Campbell returned to the United States and worked as an assistant at the Free Public Library in Newark, New Jersey. In 1902 she was made head of public libraries in Passaic, New Jersey, and became increasingly concerned with the plight of newly arrived immigrants. Campbell joined the North American Civic League in New York City, where she taught immigrants about naturalization and their prospects for employment as American citizens. In 1913 she was appointed Educational Director for Work with Aliens of the Massachusetts Library Commission, the first such post in the United States.

Carr was a government official, welfare advocate, labor supporter, and the first salaried head of Hull-House (Chicago, Illinois). She sought to adapt the settlement movement to play a role in the emerging coalition of labor organizations, left-wing political groups, and grassroots neighborhood organizations. She recruited the first black residents to Hull-House and introduced workers' education and community relations programming. Carr saw political action and social reform as key to addressing the needs of the people in the Hull-House neighborhood, but when the board refused to support her in 1942, she resigned.

Chennault was an author, lecturer, business consultant, and citizen-diplomat. In 1968, she became Vice President for International Affairs of the Flying Tiger Line, a freight airline established by former members of the Flying Tigers. As the first female vice president of an airline, she established Asian landing rights for the airline and traveled extensively through Southeast Asia on the airline's behalf. She wrote for the Central News Agency in Taipei and published a number of books, including several works of fiction and poetry in Chinese, Chennault and the Flying Tigers (1963), and two autobiographies: A Thousand Springs: The Portrait of a Marriage (1962) and The Education of Anna (1980).

Under the auspices of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, and the Chinese Historical Society of New England, the Chinese American Women Oral History Project interviewed 22 women (most over the age of 65) living in New England. Interview topics include life in China, emigration and settlement in the United States, family life, education, work, ethnic identity, assimilation and acculturation, and continuing ties to China.

Chinese American culinary instructor and author. Early in her career, Madame Chu was very involved with the World Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), serving as international vice president from 1942-1947. She returned to the United States in 1941 when her husband was appointed military attaché to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., later becoming a U.S. citizen in 1955. In 1954 Madame Chu established her career as an instructor of Chinese cooking when she was invited to New York City to teach at the China Institute in America. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she taught many classes on Chinese cooking, including at the Mandarin House School of Cooking, the Culinary Institute of America, and in her own apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan.

Founded in 1892 in Boston's South End by a small group of college-educated women, Denison House was a settlement house that offered camps, clubs, sports for girls and boys, classes, a library and clinic, union organization, and other services for the neighborhood's mixed nationalities. In 1942 the House was moved to the Dorchester-Roxbury area, and in 1965 it merged with three other settlements to form Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses. Organizers included Emily Greene Balch, Helen Cheever, Vida Scudder, and Helena Dudley, who was head worker between 1893 and 1912. For nearly two years, beginning in 1926, Amelia Earhart was a social worker and resident of Denison House, working with children and adults as a teacher and home visitor.

Deutsch was a psychoanalyst, teacher, and writer. She founded the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924 and was its director for nine years. In her youth she fell in love with Herman Lieberman, a lawyer and leader of the Polish Social Democratic Party, and became a political activist, organizing strikes and campaigning for women's rights to education and employment. She studied medicine at the University of Vienna and in 1912 married Dr. Felix Deutsch, an internist. The first of Freud's women students to undergo analysis with him, Deutsch became a member of his circle of friends and colleagues. With the rise of Hitler, she left Austria with her husband and son and emigrated to Boston, where she resumed private practice, was an active member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, and published a number of books, including her autobiography. See also Helene Deutsch Papers (MC 578)

An author, public health nurse, and teacher, Lini Moerkerk De Vries worked as chief of American Hospital Number 3 on the Madrid-Valencia Road during the Spanish Civil War. She later organized health clinics in New Mexico, California, and Puerto Rico. Accused of being a subversive on account of her early affiliation with the Communist Party, she left the U.S. in 1949 for Mexico. She taught medicine and public health to indigenous villagers in the Papaloapan River Basin in Oaxaca; taught anthropology and public health at the University of Veracruz; was a founder of CIDOC, a religious, educational and cultural school; and helped found Cemanahuac, an educational community in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

A professor, novelist, and biographer, Elzbieta Ettinger was born in Lodz, Poland, on September 19, 1924, to Emmanuel Ettinger and Regina Stahl. She survived the Holocaust in Poland, escaping the Warsaw ghetto and working and living in Poland under the wartime pseudonym Elzbieta Chodakowska. After the war, she was director of the Import Department of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Trade, and she worked as a journalist and interpreter, traveling to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia with the International Commission of Supervision and Control. She earned a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Warsaw University in 1966 and emigrated to the United States the following year with her daughter Maia. From 1967 to 1974 she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute. In 1973 she became a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was appointed a full professor of rhetoric and literature from 1986 until her retirement in 1997.

The Fishermen's Wives of Gloucester (Association), known familiarly as the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association (GFWA) is a non-profit organization promoting the New England fishing industry, helping to preserve the Atlantic Ocean as a food supply for the world, and assisting active and retired fishermen and their families to live better lives. This group of primarily Sicilian-American women, many first-generation immigrants, referred to themselves informally as "the Wives." With their husbands at sea on fishing trips, they assumed responsibilities that were traditionally divided according to gender. Initially vocalizing concerns of local fishermen, in the late 1970s the GFWA became active at the state, federal, and international levels as well. Among the Wives' first goals were lobbying for the federal government to prohibit oil drilling in Georges Bank and to protect the rights of American fishermen by passing fisheries conservation and management legislation. To promote the industry and protect against overfishing and depletion of stock, GFWA endeavored to teach the public to use species of fish (e.g., calamari and herring) popular in Sicilian cooking but not in American cooking.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes was born in 1928 in Berlin, Germany, to Hinda and Zysia Pressman, who were originally from Poland. She had one older brother, Hermann, born in 1914. In 1933, she left Germany with her parents to escape the Nazis and join Hermann, who had earlier moved to Antwerp, Belgium. In April 1934, they emigrated to the United States and eventually settled in the Catskills in New York State. 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.

Tove Gertrud (Mueller) Gerson was born in Munich, Germany, and married Gerhard Gerson, a research engineer, in 1924. She worked as a teacher and physical education instructor until 1939, when she joined her husband, who was half Jewish and working for Phillips Petroleum, in the United States. For the next three decades, while they lived in Michigan, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Cambridge, Mass., she was a teacher, physical therapist, YWCA administrator, and activist for peace and civil rights. In 1970 Gerson began to lose her sight; she returned to Germany in 1973.

Louise W. Holborn was an educator, political scientist, and internationally recognized authority on refugee issues. 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. See also Additional papers of Louise W. Holborn

Bessie Zaban Jones was born in 1898 in Atlanta, Ga., the daughter of Austrian immigrants. She married Howard Mumford Jones; they had eight children. During World War II she worked with the Window Shop, an organization that assisted Jewish refugees from Europe; later she worked for Harvard University Press and wrote three books. She died in 1997.

Lilli Cohen Kretzmer was born in Germany and studied law at the University of Bonn. She married Dr. Eugen Kretzmer, a dermatologist; they had two children. The Kretzmers left Germany in 1939 and settled in Worcester, Mass., where Dr. Kretzmer died in 1955. In 1964 Kretzmer became Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Office of the Worcester Section of the National Council of Jewish Women; she also chaired the newly-created Resettlement Department, which worked with the Jewish Family Service to help Jewish refugees who came to the United States after World War II. In the early 1950s, as a representative of the United Restitution Organization, she helped refugees from Germany fill out the necessary forms and file claims for restitution. In 1949 the Board of Immigration Appeals of the U.S. Department of Justice licensed Kretzmer to appear in court to handle immigration cases.

Founded in 1917 by a group of Syrian-Lebanese immigrant women as the Society for the Relief of Syria and Lebanon, the Society sought to raise funds and provide aid (food and relief supplies) to the suffering people of "Greater Syria" during World War I. Following the war, the organization devoted its efforts to helping new immigrants and needy Syrian-Lebanese people in greater Boston and surrounding areas by providing food, shelter, financial assistance, medical and legal support, etc. The group was incorporated as the Syrian Ladies' Aid Society in 1920 and established its headquarters at 44 West Newton Street (Boston) in 1929.

An author, historian, and educator (New School for Social Research, A.B., 1963; Columbia University, A.M., 1965, Ph.D., 1966), Lerner was born in Vienna, Austria, came to the U.S. in 1939, and married Carl Lerner in 1941. She taught (1968-1980) at Sarah Lawrence College, where she developed the women's studies program, and later became professor of history emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was president of the Organization of American Historians from 1981 to 1982 and was one of the earliest proponents of women's history as a field of study in developing curricular material, in preserving and publicizing source material, in upgrading the status of women in the profession, and in her distinguished research and writing.

Sylvia Shlifer Levine (her name was sometimes spelled Sylvia Schlafer) was born in Berdichev, a tiny shtetl in the Ukraine. Fleeing the pogroms in 1913, the family moved to the United States, where Levine attended Radcliffe College for three years and was affiliated with the class of 1928. She was employed by the Historical Records Survey of the Works Progress Administration, where she was part of a team that produced American Portraits, 1620-1825, Found in Massachusetts (published in 1939). In 1943 she married Leo Levine, a Latvian journalist. They lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where he ran an import-export business. Their daughter Helena lived in Sharon, Massachusetts, and was a poet and piano teacher.

Walter Bieringer and Alice Cope, chair and vice-chair respectively of the Massachusetts Displaced Persons Commission, were also officers of the Window Shop, a Boston-area charitable organization that provided assistance to refugees and recent immigrants from 1939 to 1987. Alice O'Connor served as acting executive secretary of the MDPC.

The Maxwell Fund operated from 1943 to 1949, using money left to the New England Christian Committee for Refugees by Janet Maxwell to care for children evacuated to the United States from England and Scotland. The Fund also granted money to the Boston Provident Association (agent of the British Charitable Society) for salaries of social workers working with the English or Scottish war brides and their children and to defray the educational and medical expenses of the children. Alice Cope, one of the three trustees of the Fund, was also an officer of the Window Shop, a Boston-area organization that provided assistance to refugees and recent immigrants.

Pauline (Agassiz) Shaw was considered the founder and the guiding spirit of this trade school and settlement house in Boston's North End. Founded in 1879 to provide a means of self-help for the poor, the North End Industrial Home first established a sewing room managed and staffed mainly by women for women. In 1885 the school was incorporated under its present name to serve the surrounding immigrant community, which after 1900 was mainly Italian. It aimed to help the immigrants become citizens and improve their economic conditions.

A professor of materials science and engineering, Gertrude Neumark Rothschild was born in Germany and emigrated in 1937. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College (1948) and earned a master's from Radcliffe College (1949) and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University (1951). She worked at Sylvania Research Laboratories (1952-1960) and at Philips Laboratories (1960-1985) before joining the faculty at Columbia in 1985. Many of her patented processes led to the development of blue and ultraviolet LEDs (light-emitting diodes) and other improvements in consumer products such as flat screen TVs and mobile phones.

Saturday Evening Girls began as a reading group for high school-aged girls which met at the North Bennet Street Industrial School in Boston's North End beginning in 1899. Organized to meet the needs of working class girls, the club sponsored activities such as folk dancing and drama, programs on literature, music, and art, and discussions of the social, political and economic problems of the day. Mrs. James Storrow subsidized their programs and in 1906 built a vacation house for the S.E.G. at Wingaersheek Beach in West Gloucester, Mass. The club was supervised by librarian Edith Guerrier and Edith Brown, an artist and illustrator. In the summer of 1907, Guerrier and Brown started a small experimental pottery with the goal of providing a vocation and a healthful, creative place for SEG members to work. Mrs. Storrow bought a building for them in 1908 in the shadow of the Old North Church, and the Paul Revere Pottery was born.

Olga Gruenberger Schiffer was the daughter of Theresa Posiles Gruenberger and one of the founders of the Window Shop, an organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that offered employment to and raised money for refugees from Germany and Austria during and after World War II. The Window Shop included a restaurant serving German and Austrian specialties.

A settlement worker and housing reformer, Simkhovitch received a B.A. from Boston University in 1890 and did graduate work at Radcliffe, the University of Berlin, and Columbia. She was one of the organizers of the Association of Neighborhood Workers (1901) and a founder and first director of Greenwich House, a settlement house in Greenwich Village, N.Y. Simkhovitch, a published author, taught social economics at Columbia, was chair of the Congestion Committee and the City Recreation Committee in N.Y.C. and president of the National Federation of Settlements and the Public Housing Conference. She also served on the N.Y. State Boards of Welfare and Health and with the N.Y. Housing Authority.

Educator (Vassar College, 1923; University of Michigan, M.S.W.) Margaret Earhart Smith was a founder in 1943 of the Special Services Committee of Ann Arbor, MI, an organization that advised and funded programs in workers' education. Between 1950 and 1952 she was chair of the Labor Participation Committee of the United Community Services (UCS) of Boston, which sought to improve communication and cooperation between labor unions and social agencies. Smith was also a member of the Committee on Race Relations of the Michigan Council of Churches (1943-1945) and a consultant, fundraiser, and faculty member of the Management Training Program (MTP) at Radcliffe (1946-1953). In 1939 she helped found the Window Shop in Cambridge, MA, which offered employment to and raised money for refugees from Germany and Austria. In 1941 she became its first president.

A social worker and teacher, Marianna Sommerfeld was born in Frankfurt, Germany, the daughter of Helene (Schott) and Martin Sommerfeld. She graduated from Smith College (B.A. 1940), Radcliffe College (M.A. 1946), and Simmons College (M.S.W. 1957). During the early 1940s she worked as a teacher of Latin, German, and English and as a translator. She later held a number of positions as social worker in eastern Massachusetts, finishing as supervisor of clinical social work at the Erich Lindeman Health Center in Boston (1971-1990). In 1991 she published Diary of a Single Woman.

South Boston Neighborhood House was founded in 1901 as the South Boston Day Nursery through the efforts of a group of women that included Mrs. William Dewart, Olivia Buckminster James, and Marian J. Homans. Gradually adding more and more educational and recreational programs, the nursery was renamed Olivia James House ("the Ollie") in 1935. A year later a gymnasium, kitchen, and print shop were added. During the 1940s, under the guidance of Mary Mooney Perry and Vincent Connors, road racing, wrestling, boxing, and gymnastic activities were established, as were the Friendly Circle for the Blind and youth programs, including a summer camp, musical reviews, dances, and pet shows.

Zionist leader Henrietta Schaar Szold was secretary of the Jewish Publication Society of America (1892-1915); founder of a night school for Russian immigrants in Baltimore in 1899; Secretary of the Federation of American Zionists; and founder and first president of Hadassah, which supports health work in Palestine. Having settled in Palestine in 1933, Szold became the director of the Youth Aliyah, the youth immigration movement from Germany to Palestine.

The children of Margaret (I'Anson) and John Thompson – David, Annie, Laura, Bertha, Grace, and William Leonard (known as Leonard) – were born in England. Most of the family immigrated to Chicago in 1892. Following the deaths of his parents, the eldest brother David joined the rest of the family in 1896. Although very poor, the family valued education. Annie became a home economics teacher; Laura graduated from the University of Chicago (A.B. 1901) and served for thirty years as a librarian at the U.S. Dept. of Labor; and Bertha studied at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute and was involved in establishing Byrdcliffe, an artists' colony near Woodstock, N.Y. The collection includes Laura's personal and professional correspondence, writings, commonplace book, photographs, etc.; reminiscences, photographs, recipes, etc., of Annie; and correspondence and a life story (containing photographs) of Bertha.

Toll was a social worker and lieutenant in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). As executive secretary for the Refugee Resettlement Program of the Department of Social Service for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (1954-1956), Toll organized the Massachusetts Association of Agencies Sponsoring Refugees and was the state representative to the American Conference on Immigration and Naturalization.

A social worker (Simmons College, B.S., 1907), White did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia and was head social worker at the Elizabeth Peabody House from 1909 to 1944. She also held positions as a professor of social economy at Simmons College (1922-1950) and a non-resident lecturer at Bryn Mawr College (1917-1929). Additionally, White was a member of the Boston Board of Public Welfare (1925-1947), director of the Americanization and Immigration Division of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1927-1950), and President of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of Boston (1929-1952), as well as being active in other city, state, and federal government agencies concerned with health, education, and immigration.

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. It also 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 and the property was sold to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. The profits of the sale were transferred to the Window-Shop Inc. Scholarship Fund.

Suzanne Amelie Wunder, a journalist and writer, was born in Boston in 1889 to immigrant parents. After graduation from Radcliffe (1913), she held various personnel positions and directed the Publicity Office at Radcliffe College (1937-1938). She wrote for the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor during the Second World War and later worked with refugees. At the time of her death in 1946, Wunder left uncompleted a biography of Nadia Boulanger as well as her own autobiography.