Florence Hope Luscomb, social and political activist, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on February 6, 1887, the daughter of Otis and Hannah Skinner (Knox) Luscomb. With an S.B. in architecture (M.I.T., 1909), she worked as an architect until 1917, when she became executive secretary for the Boston Equal Suffrage Association. She held positions in the Massachusetts Civic League and other organizations and agencies until 1933, when she became a full-time social and political activist. In the early 1920s Luscomb began to serve on the boards of civil rights, civil liberties, and other organizations; over the next 50 years these included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Boston), the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the American League for Peace and Democracy, and many others. She helped organize and was president of a Boston local of the United Office and Professional Workers of America. Luscomb ran unsuccessfully for the Boston City Council, United States House of Representatives, and governor of Massachusetts. Never a communist, she opposed anti-communist investigations as attempts to curtail dissent and in the 1950s worked to stop them. In 1955 she was investigated as a subversive by government committees in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Luscomb travelled to the Soviet Union in 1935 and illegally to China in 1962 and attended several international peace and women's conferences. In the 1960s she worked against the Vietnam War and in the 1970s frequently spoke to women's groups and conferences. From the 1950s to the mid 1970s, Luscomb lived in cooperative houses, usually with much younger people. She died in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1985 at 98. Collection consists of a permit issued to Florence Luscomb by the Health Department of the City of Boston, Massachusetts. The permit grants permission to Luscomb to act as a hawker and peddler. Luscomb sold copies of suffrage journals, including The Woman's Journal, on the streets of Boston.

Harriet Eliza Dunton was born February 25, 1862, to Zenas and Emily Jane Ingraham, in Naples, New York. She married Frank Eugene Dunton in 1883; they had three children. The Duntons lived in rural Ontario County, New York. Harriett Dunton died in 1933. Collection contains Dunton's daily diary from 1914. She describes household and farm tasks, including butchering, butter churning, baking pies and cakes, canning, pickling, and quilting. Seasonal tasks relating to grape growing and harvesting are also mentioned. Dunton also writes about attending church, helping neighbors, her health, comings and goings of her husband and children, and the family's purchase of a car.

Effie A. Trimble McGrew was born in 1868. She married Alfred N. McGrew (1863-1951) in 1891 in Sullivan, Indiana. They had five children: Gladys (1892-1932), Hellen (1894-1982), Nathan Trimble (1896-1986), Ogel David (1898-1982), and Margaret (1904-2004). By 1910 the McGrew family were living in Lewis Township in Clay County, Indiana, where Alfred was manager of the telephone office and Effie, Gladys, and Hellen worked as operators. In 1917, Nathan and Ogel McGrew enlisted in the United States Navy. The rest of the family continued to live in Lewis Township, where they ran a small family farm as well as held other jobs. Effie and Gladys worked as telephone operators, store clerks, and supported the daily needs of farm animals, vegetables, and crops. Alfred was also working as a wallpaper salesman and paperhanger. By 1920 Alfred was working as a coal miner, but later reverted to primarily taking care of the farm. Effie McGrew died in 1832. Collection contains Effie McGrew's diary from May to August 1917, written on the reverse pages of one of her husband's wallpaper sample books. Pasted on the first page is a letter from her son Ogel, at the United States Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, Illinois. Throughout the diary she tracks letters from her sons, as well as records their needs and visits home. McGrew also writes about daily life, parenting, running a farm, and working other jobs. Other topics include caring for chickens, sometimes in her kitchen, planting crops and vegetables, tending to cows, and harvesting. She frequently comments on her health and suffering from headaches and neuralgia. McGrew also records her dreams, the weather, exploits of townspeople, and her family's health concerns. Many entries detail accidents at local mines and injuries to miners. The collection also contains a transcript and index to the diary.

Lucy Florilla Clapp was born in Franklin Township, Ohio, in 1845 to Mary (Brown) and Selah Sheldon Clapp. The Clapps lived on a small farm where they raised cows for milk. Lucy and her older sister Mary Adelia worked with their parents on the farm and never married. Lucy Clapp died in 1934. Collection contains Lucy Florilla Clapp's leather-bound daily diary from 1872. Clapp, at the time age 27, records her daily activities working on the family farm and details of an active social life. Her work includes washing dishes, churning butter, milking, baking and canning, sewing and mending clothes. Clapp also describes frequent visits with friends and neighbors, singing, church socials and services. She also records comments on the weather and her bedtime. A cash accounting for 1872 is at the back of the diary, as are two later notes, one about a broken engagement. Collection also contains a transcript of and index to the diary.

Ambassador and breast cancer advocate Nancy Goodman Brinker was born December 6, 1946 in Peoria, Illinois, to Marvin and Eleanor (Newman) Goodman. She attended Peoria High School and the University of Illinois (B.A., 1968), where she was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority. After college, Brinker moved to Dallas, Texas, where she worked at Nieman Marcus and married Nieman Marcus executive Robert Leitstein; they had a son, Eric, in 1975 and divorced in 1978. In 1981 she married businessman Norman Brinker; they divorced in 2000. Brinker's older sister Susan Goodman Komen died of breast cancer at age 36 in 1980. In 1982, Brinker established the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization to raise money for breast cancer research. Susan G. Komen is the largest breast cancer-focused nonprofit in the United States, Brinker served as CEO of Komen from 2009 to 2013. Brinker herself survived breast cancer in the early 1980s. Her memoir, Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer, was published in 2010. In 2018, Brinker founded the Promise Fund of Florida with Julie Fisher Cummings and Laurie Silvers, to raise money for breast cancer prevention and diagnosis specifically in South Florida. Nancy Brinker was an early donor to the Presidential campaign of fellow Texan George W. Bush. President Bush nominated Brinker to be the United States Ambassador to Hungary; she served in that capacity from 2001 to 2003. Brinker also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States from 2007 to January 2009. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Since 2009, Brinker has been the World Health Organization's Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control. Collection includes correspondence, speeches, clippings, and photographs. The collection documents Brinker's family relationships that led to the founding of Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation; Brinker's work to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research, and her role as United States Ambassador to Hungary and Chief of Protocol.

In 1990, at age 21, Denise Solla was convicted in New York State Court of murder in the second degree and sentenced to 17 years to life. She served time in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a maximum security prison, and after 2007 at the medium security Albion Correctional Facility. While incarcerated, Solla earned an Associates Degree from Marymount Manhattan College and completed several work certificate programs. Solla was paroled in 2019 after 30 years of incarceration. Kathleen Kanet, a sister of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, was on staff at the Intercommunity Center for Justice and Peace in New York City from 1976 to 1989. From 1990 to 1993, Kanet was a caseworker at the Incarcerated Mothers Program (IMP) in East Harlem. Kanet worked with families when the mother was incarcerated and the family needed support to keep the children out of foster care. She met Solla through that program in 1990. Collection contains letters Solla and Kanet exchanged while Solla was incarcerated at Bedford Hills and Albion prisons in New York State. Solla and Kanet discuss Solla's experiences in prison, books they are reading, spiritual ideas, Solla's family members and other mutual friends, and Solla's attempts to get paroled.

Hildegard Elizabeth Peplau (1909-1999), educator and psychiatric nurse, was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Polish and Russian immigrants Gustav and Ottylie Peplau. Educated at local schools, she received a diploma in nursing from Pottstown Hospital Training School in Pennsylvania, in 1931; an A.B. from Bennington College (1943); an A.M. (1947) and Ed.D (1953) both from Teachers College, Columbia University; and a certificate in Psychoanalysis Applied for Teachers from William Alanson White Institute (1954). Peplau served in the United States Army Nurse Corps (1943-1945), and was a faculty member at the College of Nursing at Rutgers University (1954-1974), becoming chair of the Department of Psychiatric Nursing and director of the graduate program in 1955, and Professor in Nursing in 1960. An advocate of professionalization and graduate training for nurses, Peplau was active in the leadership of many nursing and health associations. Collection consists of letters Hildegard Peplau wrote to Mary Beth Mathews, Director of Continuing Education at Ohio State University College of Nursing. Mathews organized an alumni international study tour to Greece and Israel, to coincide with the 1985 meeting of the International Council of Nurses in Israel. Peplau lectured on nursing history, international nursing trends and the relationship of nursing and mothering. Letters detail the logistics of the trip and ideas for Peplau's lecture topics. Mathews and Peplau continued to correspond after the trip about family matters, nursing, etc. Also included are two letters about Peplau's poor health and death from her daughter Anne.

Serena Yuan Volpp received a BA in women's studies and biology from Harvard University/Radcliffe College in 1992, an MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. A clinical associate professor in the department of psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, Volpp previously worked at Bellevue Hospital, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program. The Harvard and Radcliffe College women's event posters collected by Serena Yuan Volpp contains five posters: "Montreal Massacre Rememory Day," December 6, 1990?, "Radcliffe Union of Students Presents Women's Expo 89," 1989, "Take Back the Night," 1991?, "Take Back the Night," 1992, and "Women in the Arts Women's Expo '90," 1990.

Marjorie Millace Whiteman (1898-1986) was an international law expert, advisor to ten United States Secretaries of State, and author of the 15-volume Whiteman Digest of International Law (1969). Whiteman advised and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt during Roosevelt's time (1945-1952) as a United Nations delegate. These papers of Marjorie Whiteman primarily relate to her work and relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and include correspondence, notes, clippings, and printed material. The collection consists mainly of letters Whiteman exchanged with Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as typed copies of Roosevelt's public remarks and clippings about Roosevelt. Also included are other letters and invitations received by Whiteman. Several letters between Whiteman and Roosevelt reveal their close working relationship, and Roosevelt's reliance on Whiteman's expertise on matters relating to international human rights matters and international law in general. Whiteman's letters to her family members about Roosevelt and an article she published about Roosevelt and human rights show her profound admiration for Roosevelt's public work and private persona.