Radcliffe Archives Contains Largest Collection on Women

A woman suffragette in Iowa is more likely to have heard of the Radcliffe Women's Archives than most 'Cliffites. Little known in the college community, it is the foremost, and practically unique, collection on American Women and their contributions to history.

The collection is housed in Byerly Hall, next to Longfellow on the Radcliffe quadrangle. Science majors usually give only a casual glance at the woodpanelled, book-lined Library to the right of the entrance. Now overflowing their quarters, the letters, manuscripts, and records are shelved in a room adjacent to the Library.

Murder mysteries, soap operas, and historical treatises rub covers with the papers of women who led suffrage, temperance, and educational crusades. These more famous records of important American women are shelved opposite publications by Radcliffe graduates, books on women, and the records of the college itself. The special collection on Women's Rights is placed separately in 203 Longfellow Hall.

The Archives began rather haphazardly. In 1943 Maude Wood Park '98, the famous suffragette, gave valuable records of the suffrage movement to the college. This was followed a year later with papers of the World Center for Women's Archives, material of Women's contributions on the international level. It had been the project of the historian, Mary R. Beard, but one which had not received hoped-for financial support.

Organized in 1941

The Radcliffe Women's Archives were formally organized a year later to further knowledge and research on the part American women have played in making history. It has now grown to include 2500 books plus steadily increasing piles of manuscripts, letters, and papers. The only other collections comparable in size and importance are at Smith College and the Huntington Library in California.

Nucleus of the Archives is the original Women's Rights Collection. A huge orange banner proclaiming "The College Equal Suffrage League" in purple lettering greets one at the door. And portraits of famous suffragettes almost hide the walls of the Victorian-like room.

These records follow women through history from the time men had the legal right to beat their wives, to 1920 when women got the vote. There are other progressive landmarks like Emma Willard's pioneer "Female Seminary" and Oberlin's opening in 1821 as the first co-educational college.

More recent papers such as those of Frances Perkins '25, first woman cabinet member and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, are also in the collection along with the only complete compilation of the Woman's Journal, the paper that recorded the hard years of suffrage campaigning. Praised and damned alike, women were alternately described as "the unsolved mystery, the central Sun around whose shining splendors men ever revolves" and "everyone" knows the fairer sex as physically and mentally delicate."

Women's roles in education and the professions are also recorded: the papers of the first woman member of the Mississippi Legislature, the first woman on the Medical School Faculty, letters of women diplomats, explorers and missionaries along with the first records of the P.T.A.

"Our Manners at Home and Abroad" is only one book in a large collection on etiquette, the 175-volume gift of Arthur Schlesinger Sr., professor of History. These beautifully handtooled, leather bound books cover changes in social customs from 1811 through Emily Post. Some representative titles are "Gems of Deportment", "Success In Society", and "The Younger Lady's Guide."

Mandolin and Poetry

The early Radcliffe records include old yearbooks, letters of the early presidents, "Redbooks", and the Radcliffe News when it was a daily. In 1907 the Mandolin and Poetry Clubs were most popular, and the whole senior class could sit together on the steps of Agassiz. Also reported are the coed races that the girls won in '46 by "sheer brain power"--reported the Yearbook--the boys mistook the finish line. Correspondence of the Annex's second president. LeBaron Russell Briggs, shows the college's early difficulties.

Gertrude Stein '98, Helen Keller '04, and Rachel Field '18 are three of the Radcliffe graduates whose works figure prominently in the collection. The wide variety of these books comprise the third section of the Archives. Murder mysteries like "Wedding Eve Murder" and "Blood From A Stone" stand near Pearl Schiff's "Scollay Square" and Dorothy Heyward's famous "Porgy." Down the stacks from Olive Higgins Prouty's "Stella Dallas" is Vera Dean's "United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration" written as Research Director of the Foreign Policy Association.

The Archives also corresponds with many women's groups throughout the country. Letters for information are frequent. But a recent one seems to see a need for even more opportunities for suffrage work--it asked the married correspondent just why she uses her husband's name with the opinion this was an unnecessary compliment to the male. The Archives had an answer to this too--"it's more informative."