Overview
Blackwell's letters from the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberties organizations.
Dates
- Creation: 1921-1950
Language of Materials
Materials in English.
Access Restrictions:
Access. Collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright. Copyright in the papers created by Alice Stone Blackwell is held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College for the Schlesinger Library. Copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns.
Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.
Extent
.21 linear feet (1/2 file box)These letters of Alice Stone Blackwell contain fundraising, membership, and political action letters to Blackwell from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Civil Liberties Committee of Massachusetts, and other civil liberties, labor, and civil rights-oriented organizations. Letters include both personal solicitations as well as mass-produced mailings. Some detail subscriptions Blackwell maintained to organization newsletters and periodicals, and some folders include pamphlets and other printed material produced by the organizations. As a whole, they provide a snapshot of the kinds of issues that were important to Blackwell and others concerned with safeguarding civil liberties in the years after the funding of the American Civil Liberties Union.
BIOGRAPHY
Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950) was a suffragist, journalist, and human rights advocate. Her parents, Henry Browne Blackwell and Lucy Stone, were prominent 19th century abolitionists and women's rights activists. She was secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1890 to 1908. Blackwell both wrote for and edited The Woman's Journal, the woman's rights newspaper her parents founded and edited. A self-proclaimed radical socialist, Blackwell supported numerous humanitarian causes. She was affiliated with Friends of Russian Freedom, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), among other organizations. She was a founder of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. With the help of foreign-born friends, Blackwell translated into English the works of Mexican, Armenian, Russian, Yiddish, and Hungarian poets.
Physical Location
Collection stored off site: researchers must request access 36 hours before use.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Accession number: 2019-M178
These letters of Alice Stone Blackwell were once in the possession of Edna Stantial, friend to Alice Stone Blackwell and archivist of suffrage and other related movements. Stantial donated these letters to the Seely G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton in 1961, as the records of the American Civil Liberties Union are held there. In October 2019, archivists at Princeton determined that these were not actual records of the American Civil Liberties Union, and transferred them to the Schlesinger Library.
Processing Information
Processed: November 2019
By: Jenny Gotwals.
The Schlesinger Library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit. Finding aids may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.
- Author
- Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
- Language of description
- eng
- Sponsor
- Processing of this collection was made possible by the Alice Jeanette Ward Fund.
- EAD ID
- sch01701
Repository Details
Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository
The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.