December 2005

Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine-Harvard University (Boston, Massachusetts)
Submitted by: Jennifer Pelose

Abraham Stone Papers, 1916-1959
Stone was the director of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau (MSRB) in New York City, and was a vice-president of the Planned Parenthood Federation and a close colleague of Margaret Sanger. His wife was Hannah Stone, also a physician at the MSRB. After her death, Abraham took on a much larger role at the MSRB. The Stones were also among the first marriage counselors in the United States and staunch advocates of family planning.

Alan Guttmacher Papers, 1860s, 1898-1974
Alan Guttmacher served as President of Planned Parenthood from 1962 until his death in 1974. He, like Stone, also was active in New York at the MSRB before assuming the presidency of the PPFA. The collection includes his efforts to expand family planning the US and abroad, but to my surprise in processing, contains little on the Roe v. Wade decision.

Both collections have finding aids available online through OASIS, Harvard's online finding aid database at http://oasis.harvard.edu.

An exhibit highlighting these collections will open in March at the Countway Library.
A related collection, the papers of John Rock, who is considered the father of the birth control pill, will be available in the near future (2006).

Iowa Women's Archives, University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa)
Submitted by: Kären M. Mason

Mujeres Latinas: Preserving the History of Iowa Latinas and their Communities
It's hard to imagine Iowans living in boxcars alongside the railroad tracks and city dump, without running water or sanitary facilities. Yet that is how Mexican Americans in the Davenport barrio known as Cook's Point lived as recently as fifty years ago. This is a part of Iowa's history that has yet to be told. The libraries, historical societies, and archives in Iowa are nearly devoid of sources on the history of Mexican Americans and other Latinos in the state. The Iowa Women's Archives is working to uncover this hidden history through its Mujeres Latinas project, recording the life stories of the women who lived in Cook's Point and other Latino communities in Iowa.

Over the past two years, staff members of the Iowa Women's Archives in the University of Iowa Libraries have gathered historical documents and conducted oral history interviews with 35 Latinas and 3 Latinos in Davenport, Muscatine, Fort Madison, Sioux City, Columbus Junction, and Des Moines, Iowa. The women who have told their life stories range from recent immigrants from various Latin American countries, to migrant workers from Texas who settled in Iowa in the 1960s, to octogenarians whose parents came to Iowa from Mexico as children and lived in the barrios alongside the railroad tracks where their fathers worked. Many of the women interviewed have been activists in their communities, through labor unions, migrant action committees, LULAC, and in the grape and lettuce boycotts of the 1960s and 1970s.

For further information contact:

Curator, Iowa Women's Archives
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City IA 52242-1420
phone: 319-335-5068
fax: 319-335-5900
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/

University of California-Santa Cruz: Regional History Project (Santa Cruz, California)
Submitted by: Irene Reti

Crossing Borders: The UCSC Women's Center, 1985-2005
http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/womencenter.html

Alta and the History of Shameless Hussy Press
http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/alta.html

Sandra Martz: Papier-Mache Press and the Gentle Art of Consciousness Raising, 1984-1999
http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/martz.html

Irene Reti and Herbooks Feminist Press
http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/reti.html

There are other oral histories on our website that may also be of interest.
http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/index.html

Most are available in full text.

Woman's National Democratic Club and Museum (Washington, D.C.)
Submitted by Guido and Jewell Fenzi

The Woman's National Democratic Club and Museum (WNDC) has an oral history collection of about 75 interviews documenting the club's activities over eight decades. WNDC was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1922 as the first national Democratic women's club. When members purchased a clubhouse in 1924, the Club began sponsoring twice-weekly speaker luncheons that remain its hallmark today. Most recently, speakers have included Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tom Daschle, E.L. Doctorow, Madeleine Albright, Jim Lehrer, Vernon Jordan, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Loretta and Linda Sanchez, Roger Wilkins, and Jim Jeffords.

In addition to the oral histories, the Club archives and museum collections house a wealth of political memorabilia. Of primary interest is a scrapbook, assembled by Club cofounder and past president Florence Jaffray "Daisy" Harriman, documenting women's entry into national politics in 1912. "Donkey Tracks: Political Memorabilia from the WNDC Collections" is on exhibit indefinitely and incorporates excerpts from the oral histories of members who took part in presidential campaigns from 1928. The archives and museum collections are open to the public daily by appointment, 202/232-7363 or e-mail pfitzgerald@democraticwoman.org.