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| Women's History | |||
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| While earlier 20th century historians, like Mary Beard, focused on
women's history, it wasn't until the later 1960s, that a growing
number of historians - primarily women - began to develop a more
comprehensive field of study. Initially, attention focused on the
history of the women's rights movements. Like others involved in the
new social history movement of the late 1960s, however, women
historians shifted their focus from the lives and experiences of the
more famous to people's everyday lives. The CSULB Women's History Collection reflects both the initial focus on movements for women's rights, like woman's suffrage, and the broadening focus on women's work and daily lives. These interviews were initiated in 1972 as part of the Feminist History Research Project (FHRP), a community-based project co-founded by Sherna Berger Gluck and Ann Forfreedom at the Westside Women's Center in Los Angeles. Students in women's oral history seminars at UCLA in 1974-1975 and in a special 1977 senior seminar at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, along with a labor researcher in Chicago, contributed their interviews to the FHRP. Over the years, these were all transferred to CSULB Library/Special Collections and Archive. Starting in 1976, women's oral history became a component of women's studies at CSULB. The interviews conducted by students in women's studies seminars over the next two decades were deposited in the CSULB Archive and made available for use, greatly expanding the scope and the historical timeline of the collection. Additionally, in the 1980s, two collections related to women during WWII were archived: interviews with aircraft workers in Los Angeles, the Rosie the Riveter Revisited project, funded by NEH and Rockefeller Foundation grants; and a series of interviews with women who served in the military conducted by DC area independent researcher, Eleanor Stoddard. The resulting Women's History Collection derived from these various sources is comprised of eleven series which focus on different historical periods/moments in twentieth century U.S. history: the early 20th century (4 series); World War II (2 series); and the 1960s and 1970s (5 series). The early twentieth century series includes: suffragists; reformers and radicals; professionals and entrepreneurs; and women's lives, i.e. a variety of "everywomen" interviews focused on women's daily lives and women and work. (Interviews with labor union activists are included in the Labor History collection.) Women in World War II is comprised of two series: Rosie the Riveter Revisited; and women in the military. The six series for the 1960s and 1970s all focus on women's movements and include: Asian American activists; Chicana feminists; feminist health movement activists; Los Angeles feminists (including members of NOW, radical feminist and lesbian feminist groups); and the welfare mothers movement. |
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| Asian American Women's Movement Activists | |||
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| Although not widely known outside the Asian community or among
feminist activists and scholars outside of the Los Angeles area, there
was a thriving, militant Asian American women's movement in southern
California starting in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Like other
movements among feminists of color, it both grew out of and remained
tied to the larger national/ethnic movement and the anti-war
movement. Asian American consciousness and activism most often developed on college campuses and, ultimately, often led to the development of Asian American studies. The core women activists in the Los Angeles area, however, focused most of their political work and organizing in grass roots community programs, and looked to Chinese and Vietnamese women revolutionaries for their inspiration. Many of them were members of the Community Workers Collective, which engaged in studying political liberation movements in other countries as a basis for their community organizing. Based on their study and organizing experience, the Asian Women's Group developed one of the first multi-media interactive presentations on the Asian women's movement which was performed at venues along the West Coast. They also founded the first Asian Women's Center in the US, establishing principles of unity to guide their programs; and collectivized their salaries to generate more staff and programs. They collaborated in anti-Vietnam War activities, and used their resources to support other struggles such as Wounded Knee. Despite ongoing struggles with the men in the larger Asian American movement, these women activists remained committed to and involved in the broader movement and eschewed separatism. The Asian American activists included in this series include: May Ying Chen, Miya Iwataki and Evelyn Yoshimura. An additional interview with long-time Asian American male activist, Alan Nishio, sheds further light both on the activities of the women and on the relationship between them and the broader Asian American movement in Los Angeles. |
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| Chicana feminists | |||
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| Chicana feminists in Southern California engaged in a range of groups
and activities, both on college campuses and in their communities -
often both. Regardless of the specifics of their politics or focus,
most were initially politicized in the Chicano movement of the late
1960s; and most developed their feminist consciousness as a result of
their direct experience with sexism in that movement. The six individual narrators in this series reflect this common background. The four activists in Hijas de Cuauhtemoc (Anna NietoGomez, Corinne Sanchez, Leticia Hernandez and Sylvia Castillo) cut their political eye teeth in the Chicano student group, UMAS/MEChA, at CSULB. In fact, it was their experiences in MEChA that motivated them to form the Hijas group (which published a newspaper by the same name). They were also involved in community groups and continued this activism after they left college, particularly in the Chicana Service Action Center. Yolanda Nava , who was one of the founding members of Comision Femenil Mexicana (CFM) and later served a term as president, was also introduced to the Chicano movement through MEChA. Although more than a decade older than these activists, Consuelo Nieto had similar experiences with sexism. Her introduction to the Chicano movement came while she was teaching in the schools in ELA, where high school students had organized to demand better education. A word about language in this series: While the term Anglo came to be used later, during the heyday of the Chicana feminist movement - and particularly in the debate and conflict with those who excoriated the feminists - White was the term most often used. In their interviews, the women themselves used the term White. It should also be noted that Cuauhtemoc is sometimes spelled "Cuahtemoc." NOTE: The interviews with the founders and former members of Hijas de Cuauhtemoc were conducted by Maylei Blackwell for what became her larger research project. As a courtesy to her, the audio recordings of these interviews will not be available until 2006. Until then, they can be used on-site at CSULB with her permission. See also her essay, "Contested histories: las hijas de Cuauhtâemoc, Chicana feminisms, and print culture in the Chicano movement, 1968-1973" in Gabriela Arredondo et al., Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003) and the response by Anna NietoGomez. See also the writings of Anna NietoGomez, and other femenista pioneers in Alma Garcia, ed., Chicana Feminist Thought: Basic Historical Writings. New York: Routledge, 1997. |
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| Feminist Health Movement | |||
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| From its earliest days in the 1960s, the women's liberation movement
focused on abortion and women's right to control their bodies. Some of
the more radical groups engaged in underground abortion clinics, most
notably in Chicago; others, like the Boston's Women's Health
Collective began writing/publishing projects; and organizations like
NOW formed Task Forces to work on the issue of reproductive
rights. In fact, it was in NOW that leaders of the feminist health movement, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, first became active and initially demonstrated gynecological self-examination. And while Downer and Rothman went on to open the first Feminist Women's Health Center at the Crenshaw Women's Center, other women, like Vi Verreaux worked at and opened more conventionally structured, service-oriented clinics for women. This series is comprised of interviews with these three women. The long interviews with Downer and Rothman document the evolution and expansion of their work, and although the much shorter interview with Verreaux barely touches on her clinic work, it does provides a glimpse into a service-oriented, community-based clinic. |
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| Los Angeles Feminists | |||
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| While some 1960s/1970s women's movements in Los Angeles were
inextricably linked to ethnic or national communities and movements,
many White Anglo women from different communities came together to
participate in groups that, taken together, was often referred to as
"the women's liberation movement." These groups ranged from chapters
of a national organization like NOW - usually characterized as a
liberal feminist group - to smaller radical groups of
anarcha-feminists, lesbian feminists and radical feminists. In Los
Angeles, many of these groups were spawned at the Crenshaw Women's
Center (CWC), where NOW also participated initially. After the center
closed in 1972, many of these groups operated out of the Westside
Women's Center (WWC), where Sister monthly newspaper continued
to be published. This series is by no means comprehensive or inclusive, but rather includes interviews with a few of the women who were key players in some of these Los Angeles feminist groups and/or institutions. Toni Carabillo was the force behind Los Angeles NOW during its infancy and later became a national leader in the organization as well. Joan Robins was one of the main forces behind the founding of the Crenshaw Women's Center, and Nancy (aka Dara) Robinson became active at the Center from the start. With Robins, Robinson began the Center Newsletter, which eventually became Sister newspaper. She was also instrumental in the formation of Lesbian Feminists. Originally active in the Lesbian Feminists at the Crenshaw Women's Center, Jeanne Cordova went on to start the monthly magazine, Lesbian Tide. Sherna Gluck, on the other hand, became active at the Westside Women's Center, where she also initiated the Feminist History Research Project. Carabillo, Gluck, Robins and Robinson were first interviewed in 1984 as part of a project initiated by Women Rising, a group to which the latter three belonged. Four years later, all of them except Robinson, were interviewed in conjunction with an Honors Thesis project of Michelle Moravec at UCLA. Cordova was also interviewed by her. In addition to these generally longer, life history interviews, this series includes both shorter interviews and other audio materials, including an interview with Lilyan Frank about her experience at the UN Conference in Mexico City; interviews with Bernadette Carmier, Consuelo Nieto, and Priscilla Oaks, taken at or shortly after the 1977 Houston IWY Conference; and a panel discussion by Los Angeles women who attended the conference. Although the audio quality of the 1983 Women's History Day speak-out organized by the Women Rising Collective is poor, it has also been incorporated into the series because it provides a glimpse of the range of activities of the Los Angeles women's movement dating back to the late 1960s/early 1970s. |
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| Professionals and Entrepreneurs | |||
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| By the early 20th century, women increasingly were entering into a variety of professions, including law, medicine and journalism although teaching and nursing still provided the most common options available to them. Although they had entered medicine in the 19th century, two hundred years later they still faced discriminatory practices both in medical school and in their professional organizations; and if they became journalists, they were less likely to follow in the footsteps of Nellie Bly and more likely be assigned to the columns specifically designed for the woman reader. On the other hand, they had more latitude in the new helping profession of social work, both because it was dominated by women and was seen largely as a legitimate extension of their social housekeeping role. Regardless of the profession that the educated white middle class woman chose, she rarely was able to combine this with marriage and family life. The rare exception was usually found in a profession or a setting that was relegated to women, for instance as a gynecologist, a social worker, or as a professor and/or administrator at a women's college. The contradiction between marriage and career generally was not as problematic for African American women, although frequently they balanced these by starting their own businesses and/or working in family enterprises. The women included in this series represent these varying patterns and experiences. Most, like Mildred Baer, Rosalind Cassidy, Elizabeth Cuddeback, Bertha Foler, Rosemary Hays, Edith Holton, Ruth Mills, Wanda Phillips, Lillian Sherman, Olive Stone, and Zuma Palmer are examples of the extent to which the professions were dominated by women who were single, including divorced mothers. On the other hand, the interview with Anita Robbins, who left the practice of law, dramatically illustrates the stigma that married women felt if they pursued a career. Others, like Amalia Conray and Barbara Sargent married late and had more checkered careers after marriage, or like Mildred Lightfoot, returned to a professional career later in life. By contrast, some married women succeeded in combining and balancing business and family life. Crystal Marshall started a catering business, while Victoria Cook first opened a store and later went into various business ventures with her husbands. Ventriloquist Minnie Tenebaum went on the road with her husband and son, while photographer Imogen Cunningham had an independent career that enabled her to maintain an active family life even as she pursued her art. One of the unsurprising, yet disturbing, patterns revealed in several of these oral histories is how women were blocked from pursuing the medical education they sought. Except for Bertha Foler, who did become a doctor, Elizabeth Cuddeback, Mildred Lightfoot and Lillian Sherman all ended up in alternative medical careers, usually in nursing. Similarly, the women involved in media like Ruth Mills, Zuma Palmer and Wanda Phillips, were usually relegated to special women¿s pages or programs. Despite the limited career options faced by women in the early part of the 20th century, these women forged ahead. Elizabeth Cuddeback and Amalia Conray were real pioneers in public health education, while someone like Ruth Mills paved the way for women¿s radio programming. Almost all had satisfying, active careers until they retired late in life. Their oral histories, many of which were conducted by students in women's oral history classes at UCLA and CSULB, offer valuable insight into women's exexperiences in the professions, business and entertainment although their quality varies. (Note: the distinction between women social workers as reformers or as professionals is not always clear. YWCA professional, Louise Emery, who is included in the Reformers series, might well have been placed here. On the other hand, Barbara Sargent¿s work in the YWCA was more the result of fortuitous events than a decision to pursue reform work. And although Olive Stone engaged in significant civil rights work in the south in the 1930s, her career was the focus of her life.) |
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| Reformers and Radicals | |||
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| Historically, women's reform and radical activities have taken various forms. Some women worked in organizations that specifically focused on the position of women in society, such as the fight for woman suffrage (see Suffragist Series) while others worked in organizations like the National Council of Negro Women, which organized more generally for the "uplift of the race." Many other women worked for social change through clubs, churches, political groups, and organizations like the YWCA. The women included in this series represent this range of activities; they are neither unique nor, with one exception, particularly well known. This series is not intended to be comprehensive, nor was the collection of these narratives part of a planned study of women's social reform work and radical organizing. Some of the narratives were collected by students in women's oral history classes and their depth and comprehensiveness varies. Nevertheless, even the highly truncated interviews provide insights both into the types of women who engaged in social reform activities and the outlet that religious based organizations often provided. African American women like Nellie Gibson and Mary Holloway immersed themselves in the life of the Black churches. Mildred Hutchinson, on the other hand, turned to the Methodist church, finding that the kinds of activities that Progressive era women's clubs offered her mother had lost their edge. Despite her upbringing in a Methodist household, Della Pack sought her work, instead, in the Salvation Army. For a single woman like Louise Emery, the YWCA offered a career through which she worked for social change. Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon, Ethel Erickson, Grace McDonald and Charlotte Stern were all products of social reform movements fueled by concern for workers rights. Both Pidgeon and Erickson were exposed to the work of the women connected with the University of Chicago, and both went to work for the Women¿s Bureau in the 1920s. McDonald and Stern, on the other hand, after working together in the New York Joint Board of Sanitary Control (the body established after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire) went on to form the independent Workers Health Bureau. The life histories of Barbara Nestor, Ethel Bertolini, Yetta Land, Flo Kushner, Bessie Letwin and Dora Keyser parallel, to some extent, some of the suffragists and labor activists, illustrating how beliefs in anarchism and socialism drove women¿s reform and radical activism. A lifelong anarchist, Dora Keyser, was involved in early educational and communal living experiments like the Stilton, New Jersey Ferrar Colony and the Sunrise Farm in Michigan. Bertolini and Kushner were both Communist party organizers who went underground during the McCarthy era, while Land was a member of the Foley Square Smith Act trial defense team. The interview with Nestor is particularly important, both because she was one of the founding members of the Communist Party (in 1919), and the mother of California Communist party leader, Dorothy Healey. As a result, in addition to detailing the kinds of grass roots organizing in which Nestor engaged in Los Angeles, her oral history offers insights into the background and experiences of communist activists of the following generation. While Nestor¿s interview sheds some light on the next generation, Kathleen O¿Hare¿s focuses on the previous generation and details growing up as the daughter of leading socialist, Kate Richards O¿Hare. In contrast to the sixteen women who were active in various parts of the country and who pursued their reform or radical activities through widely varying organizations, Zita Remley operated in the electoral arena. She was a Democratic party activist who wheeled and dealed in party politics of California. While this series is focused on the range of reform and radical activities of women, the fuller life histories also document their work and family lives. With the exception of Kathleen O¿Hare and Charlotte Todes Stern, all the women were interviewed in California. And although many of their activities were initiated elsewhere, they often continued as activists after they came to California. |
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| Rosie the Riveter Revisited | |||
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| The Rosie the Riveter Revisited project, funded by NEH Grant (RC 00019-80-1459) and Rockefeller Foundation Grant (GA HUM 7924 and 8139) grants, was designed to do just that, using the medium of oral history. A total of forty-four Los Angeles production workers and two Women's Counselors were interviewed for the project; their numbers drawn from some 250 women with whom initial phone interviews were conducted. In life histories that averaged six hours, we traced what their prewar lives were like, their experiences during the war years, and the meaning and impact of their war work experience on their lives. Most the narrators worked in production jobs at Douglas, North American and Lockheed Aircraft; and their numbers include nine Mexicanas/Latinas and six African Americans. Additional interviews were conducted to better understand both aircraft manufacturing and the role of the Black community in creating wartime job opportunities. Arch Wallen's interview on the former topic is included in this series, while the interviews with Clayton Russell and Herbert Ward can be found in the series on Desegregating Unions during WWII. The interviews in the Rosie the Riveter Revisited series were conducted by three staff members during the period 1980-1982: Cindy Cleary, Jan Fischer and Sherna Berger Gluck. Transcripts of the interviews are on deposit in several archives: CSULB, Wayne State Labor Archive, and Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe/Harvard and ten edited interviews were published in Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, The War and Social Change (Boston: GK Hall, 1987; New York: Penguin, 1988). While these edited, published accounts have been used widely and have contributed to our understanding of the meaning of women's wartime work, the spoken words presented here brings to life the subtle meanings of their experiences, as reflected in voice, pitch and performance. |
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| Suffragists | |||
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| With the ratification of the 19th amendment in August, 1920, woman's suffrage was granted to most women in the United States. This marked the culmination of a long organized struggle that began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. For the next seventy two years, women participated in a host of organizations and engaged in a range of activities to gain the right to vote. Some, like the General Federation of Women's Clubs with its three million members, were highly respectable mass organizations comprised mainly of older, married women. Others, like the Women's Political Union, which was modeled after its British counterpart, were more militant and smaller, and its members were generally younger. Although most of the suffrage organizations were composed mainly of White women, African American women also participated in the suffrage struggle, mainly in their own clubs and organizations. The suffrage series was initiated in 1972 as a project of the newly formed Feminist History Research Project. The eight narrators interviewed by Sherna Berger Gluck were active in the suffrage movement in the early part of the 20th century. Their activities, which took place outside California, ranged from organizing or participating in college suffrage groups, to marching in parades, speaking atop soap boxes on street corners, and picketing the White House. Some were also involved in the drive to ratify the 19th amendment. Many of them remained active in social issues after their move to California. Several of the women interviewed for the project gained public attention as a result of their participation in the 50th anniversary celebration of the ratification of the woman's suffrage amendment in Los Angeles in 1970. Full life histories were recorded for 4 of the women. [Note: highly edited transcripts with five of the women are available from the Oral History Program at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, and an edited narrative version of the interviews with the same five women was published under the title "From Parlor to Prison: Five American Suffragists Talk About Their Lives," edited by Sherna Berger Gluck , originally published in 1976 by Vintage, and reprinted by Monthly Review Press in 1985]. |
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| Welfare Mothers, Welfare Rights | |||
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| The welfare mothers movement in Los Angeles can be traced to 1963 and the founding of the ANC Mothers Anonymous of Watts. Initially it had little connection with the larger women's movement, and its members did not view themselves as part of that movement. Later, after the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), and especially after Johnnie Tillmon took the helm of the national organization, this changed. The turning point might well have been the publication of her 1972 Ms Magazine article, "Welfare is a Woman's Issue." By 1979 and the International Women's Conference in Houston, women of color and poor women had become a visible presence in the larger women's movement (which ranged from reformist groups like NOW to radical feminists) and were making their voices heard and their issues public. At the present time, there is only one interview included in the "Welfare Mothers" series: the oral history of Johnnie Tillmon, one of the founders and leaders of the ANC Mothers Anonymous of Watts. Hopefully, an oral history of Ardelphia Hickey, another key person in the ANC mothers group, might be conducted eventually. It should also be noted that Alicia Escalante, the founder of the ELA Welfare Rights group (later named Chicana Welfare Rights Organization) was interviewed for a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of California, Santa Barbara. |
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| Women's Lives, Women's Work 1900-1960 | |||
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| This series is comprised of a range of women whose work and lives are not easily classified. With only one exception, they constitute a cohort born in the period from 1885 to 1900, and although they all eventually ended up in southern California, their work, family and community lives often played out elsewhere. Like women of that era, some worked outside their homes only rarely after they married and their lives revolved mainly around their families; others worked in various jobs to support themselves and their families. By and large, work was a necessity for them, not a choice, and the jobs available to them were limited. Like most working class women of their generation, they rarely had the education, skills or resources to exercise many options. Beatrice NeView¿s work experience is typical of urban Black women of her generation who invariably worked as domestics or in laundries. On the other hand, both Black and White poor women in the rural south often worked on tenant farms. Regardless of race, it was not unusual for them to begin to work in the fields as young girls, as revealed in the lives of Eliza Harrison and Lottie Lee Spharler. The hard lives and difficult choices that poor, working class women made is perhaps revealed most dramatically in the account of Elizabeth Anderson, whose fear of repeated pregnancies led to seek twelve abortions. The lives of other working class women were not always as difficult and some, like Russian Jewish immigrant Dora Rosenzweig, were able to exercise more choices. Although she had worked as a cigar maker in Chicago since her teens, she later followed her husband to Montana where they staked a claim. They left Montana after about ten years and tried their hands at various ventures, including farming and running a resort in Michigan. Victoria Cassiles and Sadie Kastleman, by contrast, worked outside the home only rarely. Rather, each was intimately involved in the life of their respective communities. For Cassiles that was the Mexican neighborhood of Santa Monica, where her father had laid down roots following the Mexican Revolution; and for Kastleman it was the Jewish community in various southern cities where she lived, especially her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Sofia Zamora¿s life also revolved mainly around her family although she did work in garment factories for a dozen or so years after her children were grown before opening her own dressmaking business out of her home. Community activities figured prominently in the life of Barbara Kalish, too, a woman raised in a more privileged household some three decades after most of these women. In an unusual twist, her active involvement in the PTA and the development of a relationship with another PTA leader is what led to her realization that she was a lesbian In other words, the nine women included in this series were neither path breakers in their professions nor social activists. They were both typical and, in some cases, atypical of the women of their class, region and period. Regardless of the paths they followed, their oral histories ¿ conducted mainly by students in women¿s oral history classes at UCLA and CSULB ¿ afford us a glimpse into the lives of ordinary women in the first half of the century. |
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