Research Guides: Peace History Resources Online: Women's Activism

Greenham Common Peace Camp

Danish Peace Academy
Info and documents on the women's peace camp at Greenham Common (1981-1990s). Holger Terp of the Danish Peace Academy has created a website with original documents and information on the women's peace camp at Greenham Common (1981-1990s) and has reconstructed the Greenham songbook of feminist peace and anti-nuclear songs.
Your Greenham Common
A website created in 2007 with interviews of women who protested at Greenham, plus video, photographs, and history of the protests. Includes links to websites about other peace camp protests in Great Britain. Requires Adobe Flash Player.

Schlesinger Library on U.S. Women's History

Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
This site contains information on the Schlesinger Library, the foremost collection of primary documents in women's history in the United States. A few finding aids to the many manuscript collections at the Schlesinger are available on-line, including the following peace activists:

Barbara Deming
Alice Hamilton
Julia Ward Howe
Florence Hope Luscomb
Holly Near

Suffragists Oral History Project

Suffragists Oral History Project
In the early 1970s the Suffragists Oral History Project, under the auspices of the Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Office, collected interviews with twelve leaders and participants in the women's suffrage movement. Tape-recorded and transcribed oral histories preserved the memories of these remarkable women, documenting formative experiences, activities to win the right to vote for women, and careers as leaders of the movements for welfare and labor reform, world peace, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. These interviews are now available online as part of the Online Archive of California. Several of the women included in the Bancroft site are of interest because of their peace work:

Mabel Vernon
Burnita Shelton Matthews
Alice Paul
Jeannette Rankin (see also the FBI Freedom of Information Act Reading Room)
Rebecca Hourwich Reyher

Women and Social Movements in the U.S., 1830-1930 (SUNY Collection)

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930
This website has a rich collection of primary documents related to women and social movements in the United States between 1830 and 1930. It is organized around editorial projects completed by undergraduate and graduate students at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Each project poses a question and provides 15-20 documents that address the question. The material now on the website begins a larger project, co-directed by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin, and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. During the 1998-1999 academic year additional editorial projects will be added for use in high school and college classes. The links below are to projects concerning peace issues and peace advocates.

Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice (WEFPJ)

In the summer of 1983 feminist peace activists from the Women's Pentagon Action, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Women for Life on Earth, and the Upstate Feminist Alliance opened a peace camp backing on to the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, New York. The women opened the camp to facilitate the protest of mid-range nuclear weapons, specifically Cruise and Pershing II missiles, deployed in Western Europe and aimed at the U.S.S.R. The Seneca Army Depot was assumed to be the trans shipment site for these missiles on their way to Europe. The camp in New York was also designed to be a support group for the peace camps opened at Greenham Common, England two years previously. Activities at the WEFPJ lasted through the mid 1990s.

PeaCe eNCaMPMeNT HeRSToRY PRoJeCT
Former members of the WEFPJ have initiated a web based project to collect material from women who were active at the peace camp, and the later intentional community: "The PeaCe eNCaMPMeNT HeRSToRY PRoJeCT's mission is to collect, preserve and establish an online archive of the stories, songs, photographs and other media from the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, 1982-1993 and Women's PeaceLand, 1994-2006."