Women's History Past and Present

Among the treasures in the Schlesinger Library are photograph collections that document the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and 1970s: images by Bettye Lane and Freda Leinwand, both of whom spent years capturing the moments, both big and small, that made up one of the most transformative times in U.S. history. This website contains approximately 4,000 of the 40,000 images in the collection.

The Lucy Hargrett Draper Collections on Women’s Rights, Advocacy and the Law document state and national efforts to achieve equality for women. They include the Lucy Hargrett Draper U.S. Equal Rights Amendment (1921-1982) Research Collection, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on Feminist Activism in U.S. Politics, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on the Creation of Women's Archives, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on the Second U.S. Women's Movement (1963-1982), the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on Institutional Reforms for Women and the U.S. Military, 1970-1984, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Artifact Collection, and the Lucy Hargrett Draper Personal Papers.

This collection includes 448 digitized photographs selected from approximately 2,650 print photographs in the Records of the National Woman's Party, a collection of more than 438,000 items, housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The images span from 1875 to 1938 but largely were created in the years between 1913 and 1922. The images depict the tactics used by the militant wing of the suffrage movement in the United States—including picketing, petitioning, pageants, parades and demonstrations, hunger strikes and imprisonment---as well as individual portraits of organization leaders and members. The photographs document the National Woman's Party's push for ratification of the 19th Amendment as well as its later efforts for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

From the National Women's History Museum: timelines, primary sources, and other educational resources about the 72 year history of the suffrage movement in the United States.