Assuring That Women’s Stories are Told
Gloria Steinem has been quoted as saying, “If we don’t see a history with women, we don’t know that we can create it.” My final post for the month of March, Women’s History Month, will be dedicated to two organizations — the Smith College Library system and Women’s eNews — both of which are assuring that history will include the contributions of women.
For the last few years, I have been on the Friends of Smith College Executive Committee. I’m a Smith alum, and as a writer, I treasure libraries. What’s more, the Smith libraries are special. Director Christopher Loring has made certain that the Smith library system looks to the digital future and provides all the latest necessities for students to conduct 21st century research, but he also oversees the past in the form of an archival collection of women’s history papers known as the Sophia Smith Collection, which has been under the direction of Sherrill Redmon for the past 17 years.
While one might assume that the Smith archives would be a repository for the papers of women who attended Smith, Redmon has made it her mission to actively pursue the papers of grassroots activists who have led the way in various social movements. While Gloria Steinem, a Smith graduate, might have donated her papers to Smith anyway, Redmon has made sure that a scholar coming to study Steinem’s papers will find that the collection is a home for many like-minded souls. The collection includes papers of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women, Planned Parenthood, the YWCA and of well-known women including Marcia Gillespie, Loretta Ross (human rights activist), and Margaret Sanger. Redmon also created “Voices of Feminism,” an oral history project of the contemporary women’s movement.
