News from the
Schlesinger Library
In the past year, the Library has been transformed in ways we could scarcely have imagined, with exhibition and meeting spaces turned into solitary berths for staff to safely eat, bespoke digitization stations set up in remote corners of each floor, the classroom empty, and the reading room turned into a massive staging and decontamination space.
Meeting the Moment
Writing from the Library
Three biographers—of pioneering women doctors, journalists reporting from Europe in the mid 20th century, and an environmental activist within a Black internationalist movement—relied on Schlesinger collections for their research.
Layered Narratives
Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, is a writer whose life experience—construction worker, autoworker, community organizer, civil rights activist—defies easy sorting. With her papers bound for the Library, we asked her to ponder what researchers might find, and illuminate, in the stories the collection tells.
Amplifying Black Women’s Voices
In a year of demonstrations, conflict, and, in the form of the country’s first Black vice president, historic achievements, the Library drew from collections to create an audiovisual series that speaks to the times.
Voting Matters: Gender, Citizenship, and the Long 19th Amendment
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” What did these words mean in 1920, when states ratified the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution? What do citizenship, voting, and sex mean in America today? On the occasion of the 19th Amendment’s centennial, Harvard Radcliffe Institute offered an online conference, spread across six sessions, that brought together scholars from multiple disciplines, alongside activists, teachers, and students, to consider the long history of gender and citizenship in the United States. The sessions of the conference represent the culmination of the Schlesinger Library’s Long 19th Amendment Project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute, and Harvard University.
