More than half a century ago, “No Documents, No History” was the rallying cry of women's historian and archivist Mary Ritter Beard. In that spirit, the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC) at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, sponsored a two-day conference from September 22–23, 2000, to celebrate the opening of eight collections that document the incredible achievement of six women and two organizations in the collective struggle for social change throughout the twentieth century. In the papers of Mary Metlay Kaufman, Dorothy Kenyon, Constance Baker Motley, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, Frances Fox Piven, and Gloria Steinem, and in the records of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women and the Women's Action Alliance can be found primary documents associated with the ongoing quest for social justice. The potential impact of movement history based on such archival holdings is immense. As conference organizer Joyce Clark Follet noted in her opening remarks, such documentation can change the way we think about the past, thus changing the way we think about the future.
ICITISEE 2018 Conference Organizer
