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Context

This assignment was originally prepared for a Zoom archives session with a Yale first-year seminar on Comparative Women's History taught by Professor Rebecca Tannenbaum. She intended this virtual visit (Yale first-year students took classes remotely during Spring term 2021) to special collections as a fun activity for the class's meeting during the penultimate week of the semester, before their final exam. There was no follow-on assignment for the students. They got this assignment at the end of class the week before the Zoom class meeting with Bill, and gave longer group presentations, with Google slides, during the class session.

Course description from Yale's course catalog:

Comparative perspective on the lives of women and their experiences, the ways in which historical forces shaped gender roles in different cultures, and the similarities and differences in gender roles across different time periods and around the world. Topics include work, family roles, political participation, health and sexuality, religious roles, and global feminisms. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.

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Your assignment for our Friday, July 29th, First Period RBS L-60v class session

You'll be working in pairs on the collection assigned to your group below. Each collection description provides a quick overview (and a link to the finding aid, or guide, to the collection in case you’d like to explore it to look for additional contextual information) and includes links to digitized folders of collection material. Note: The links to the digitized collection material in the subsequent posts, which are stored on Google Drive, work best if you use the Google Chrome web browser.

Your group should spend 30 minutes doing the following:

Assign a recorder and a reporter for your group.

Survey the digitized folder(s) content for your collection.

Discuss the questions below and help your reporter prepare to informally "present" your collection & discussion to the class. That way all of you will leave on July 29th with some perspective on these six archives of women who lived from the late 19th century to the present. 

The reporter for each group will have about 3 minutes when the class comes back together to present your group's collective thoughts on some (not all!) of the questions below:

Try to address any of the following questions that your group thinks are relevant in reporting your discussion back to the class:

Who created this archival collection, when were the materials in it created, where were they created?

What is going on in the documents in the digitized folders?

Whose perspective(s) comes through in the document(s)? Whose doesn’t?

What can you know based on these primary sources? What do you not know?

Do the sources engage broader themes in women’s history that you’ve read about or discussed in class? If so, how? [Note from Bill: I know you're not studying women's history right now, so feel free to talk about how the sources engage any broader historical themes your group is interested in].

What questions do the sources raise that could lead you to further research?

Did anything surprise you when looking at the folders in your collection?

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Group 1: Ella Barksdale Brown

Ella Barksdale Brown Papers (JWJ MSS 41), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for the collection.

Overview of the collection: Correspondence, writings, financial papers, newspapers and other materials that document the work of Ella Barksdale Brown (1871-1966) as an educator, anti-lynching activist, suffragist, and journalist. The bulk of the papers provide evidence of Brown’s activism and involvement with numerous schools, youth groups, war relief, civil rights and community organizations. Brown, a member of the first graduating class of Spelman Seminary (later Spelman College) in 1887, wrote for several well-known African American newspapers in the early twentieth century, including The Chicago Defender and The New York Amsterdam News.

Digitized collection material:

Series I, Box 2, Folder 71: Correspondence with and printed ephemera from the Circle for Negro War Relief, 1918-1920 (folder 1 of 3).

Series I, Box 2, Folder 72: Correspondence with and printed ephemera from the Circle for Negro War Relief, 1918-1920 (folder 2 of 3).

Series I, Box 2, Folder 73: Correspondence with and printed ephemera from the Circle for Negro War Relief, 1918-1920 (folder 3 of 3).

Series I, Box 2, Folder 75: Correspondence from the Federation of Colored Organizations of New Jersey, 1918-1919.

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Group 2: Louise Bryant

Louise Bryant Papers (MS 1840), Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library

Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for the collection.

Overview of the collection: Correspondence, writings, notebooks, artwork, photographs, and printed matter which document the career of journalist and feminist Louise Bryant (1885-1936). She graduated from the University of Oregon in 1906, and following a brief stint as an illustrator became an international correspondent. During the years 1917-1920 Bryant covered the Russian Revolution with her husband John (Jack) Reed. Her series of articles on her experience of the Bolshevik Revolution was published as a best-selling book, Six Red Months in Russia, in 1918. Following Reed’s death in 1920 in Moscow, Bryant spent several years reporting from the Middle East and Europe. She lived the remainder of her life in Paris and from 1923-1930 was married to writer and diplomat William C. Bullitt, Jr.

Digitized collection material:

Series II, Box 15, Folder 85: Journalism, notes, circa 1917-1921.

Series II, Box 15, Folder 100: Journal and notebook, Russia, December 1917-January 1918.

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Group 3: Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson Papers (YCAL MSS 46), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for the collection.

Overview of the collection: Manuscripts, notebooks, letters, newspaper clippings, photos, and printed material relating to the research and publications of Rachel Carson (1907-1964). Carson, a biologist and environmentalist, who graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women (later Chatham College) in 1929 and received an M.S. in genetics from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. Her work as an aquatic biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service led to a career as an author, including her international bestseller Silent Spring (1962), which explored the human destruction of the environment through the careless use of pesticides. Ruth Harrison was a British animal welfare activist and author.

Digitized collection material:

Series II, Box 103, Folder 1952: Correspondence with Ruth Harrison, 1962-1963.

Series III, Box 116, Folder 2207: Scrapbook, Silent Spring and pesticide issues, circa 1962-1964 ). Note: This is a large, 434 MB, file and Google may ask you to download it in order to open it.

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Group 4: Nina Gage

Yale-China Association Records (RU 232), Manuscripts and Archives

Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for the collection.

Overview of the collection: Records, including correspondence and memoranda written by staff members while serving in China, documenting the activities of the Yale-China Association in mainland China (1901-1951), Hong Kong (1951-present), and the United States (1901-present). Nina D. Gage (1883-1946) was an American nurse who was a leading teacher of modern nursing in China. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1905 and from the Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing in 1908. She began working as a nurse in 1909 at the Yale-in-China mission in Changsha, Hunan Province, China, and was instrumental in the founding of the School of Nursing there, serving as the school’s dean beginning in 1919. The collection includes her correspondence from China.

Digitized collection material:

Series III, Box 66, Folder 208: Correspondence: Gage, Nina (Nursing Staff), 1925. Note: This is a large, 123 MB, PDF file and Google may ask you to download it in order to open it.

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Group 5: Ericka Huggins

Catherine Roraback Collection of Ericka Huggins Papers (JWJ MSS 96), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for the collection.

Overview of the collection: Documentation compiled by civil rights attorney and lead defense counsel Catherine Roraback (1920-2007) during the New Haven trial of Black Panther leader Ericka Huggins (born 1948), including Huggins’ prison writings, legal files, and other documentation of the trial and Huggins’ imprisonment. Huggins attended Lincoln University, where she met her future husband John Huggins, with whom she moved to California to join the Black Panthers. After the murder of her husband in Los Angeles in 1969, Huggins moved to New Haven and became a leader of that city’s Black Panther chapter. Her 1969-1971 arrest, incarceration, and trial in New Haven, along with Panther co-founder Bobby Seale and others, for the kidnapping and murder of Panther member Alex Rackley resulted in the 1970 May Day rally in New Haven. The trial ended in a mistrial and dismissal of all charges against Huggins in May 1971. Huggins moved back to California, where she was active with the Black Panthers and taught sociology and African American studies.

Digitized collection material:

Series II, Box 8, Folder 87: Letter from Angela Davis to Ericka Huggins, 2 May 1971.

Series II, Box 8, folder 88: Letter from Ericka Huggins to Catherine Roraback, 1969-1970.

Series III, Box 8, Folder 125: Prison writings of Ericka Huggins, 1969.

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Group 6: Lisbet Tellefsen

Lisbet Tellefsen Papers (GEN MSS 1431), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for the collection.

Overview of the collection:  Materials created and collected by Lisbet Tellefsen (born 1961). Many of the materials center around the creation of Aché, which was first issued in 1989 as a journal and existed as a collective in the Bay Area until 1994. The rest of the materials generally relate to allied groups and other events that Tellefsen participated in and helped to organize, such as the National Black Gay and Lesbian Conference’s Video Project.  Tellefsen–a political activist, feminist, and community organizer–is a Bay Area native who co-founded Aché along with Pippa Fleming, and has worked as an editor, recording engineer, and producer, receiving a number of awards for her service to the lesbian and gay community.

Digitized collection material:

May 2012 Accession, Box 6, Folder 191: Aché layout, volume 1, number 10 (November 1989).

May 2012 Accession, Box 7, Folder 195: Aché layout, volume 2, number 3 (May/June 1990).