U.S. History

Women's Rights Activism

This is a guide to scholarly research and primary source collections related to United States history. Subpages include Boston history, Indigenous people's histories, Caribbean history, as well as African American History.

Primary Sources on Women's Rights

Within the United States, women from different parts of society--including social classes, ethnic groups, etc.--have fought for their rights. Those struggles sometimes meant rights for all women and at times meant rights for specific groups to the exclusion of others. This page provides access points to women's activism specifically for women's rights. Visit our page on LGBTQ+ history for more.

What's on This Page

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, May 19, 1919; Ratified Amendments, 1795-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

Broad Digital Collections

These collections showcase an impressive range of material including various documents (e.g., magazines, letters, and more) and other ephemera (e.g., photographs) about movements for women's right to vote as well as other civil and political rights in the United States.

Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online This link opens in a new window
This database covers the study of international women's history, feminism and the feminist movement. It consists of periodicals, books, and pamphlets in 15 languages.
Women and Social Movements International - 1840 to Present This link opens in a new window
Primary source material focusing on women's international activism since the mid-nineteenth century with content from international agencies like the United Nations, Women's Africa Committee as well as from national agencies with emphasis on the U.S., U.K., and India. Includes proceedings of women's international conferences, books, pamphlets, articles from newspapers and journals, as well as diary entries, and memoirs.
Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights This link opens in a new window
These collections from the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College consist of three distinct series of collections from the Schlesinger Library: voting rights, national politics, and reproductive rights. The voting rights papers include documentation of national, regional, and local leaders.
History Vault: Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990 This link opens in a new window
This module is comprised of records of three important women's rights organizations: the National Woman's Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance. Originally a committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the National Woman's Party (NWP) was founded in 1913 when Alice Paul and her colleagues broke away from NAWSA in dissent over strategy and tactics. The Women's Action Alliance, established in 1971 as a grass-roots organization, concerned itself with issues such as employment and employment discrimination, childcare, health care, and education. The League of Women Voters collection documents almost every facet of women's involvement in U.S. politics from 1920 to 1974.
Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Primary documents covering U.S. history and women in social movements in the U.S. between 1700 and 2000. Contains document projects that interpret and present documents, most of which are not otherwise available online. Each document project poses an interpretive question and provides a collection of documents that address the question.

Personal Papers

Blackwell Family Papers (Schlesinger)
The Blackwell family, four generations of whom are represented in the Schlesinger Library's papers, played important roles in 19th- and 20th-century American social reform movements: abolition of slavery, women’s rights, woman’s suffrage, and temperance. Access to five generations of family diaries, correspondence, sermons, lectures, orations and political speeches.

Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry This link opens in a new window
The papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney (17221793) and her daughter Harriott Pinckney Horry (17481830) document the lives of two observant and articulate founding-era women who were members of one of South Carolina's leading families. Their letters, diaries, and other documents span nearly a century (17391830) and provide a window on politics, social events, and people of the late colonial and early national periods.

Alice Paul Digital Collection (Schlesinger)
Quaker, lawyer, and lifelong activist for women's rights.
Beecher-Stowe Family (Schlesinger)
The Beecher-Stowe Family was a prominent New England family noted for its contributions in the fields of education, religion, social reform, and literature.
Black Women Oral History Project (Schlesinger)
Interviews with 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Digital Collection (Schlesinger)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was many things throughout her life: philosopher, artist, novelist, lecturer, mother, divorcée, editor, suffragist, journalist, wife, invalid, and publisher. Within this suite, researchers will find material related to a variety of interests that Gilman pursued including art, economic theory, fiction writing, and philosophy. The collection contains items that document Gilman’s thinking about women’s dress, housekeeping responsibility, domestic architecture, and the demand for equal rights.
Dorothy West Digital Collection (Schlesinger)
Dorothy West was the youngest among a group of artists and writers working in the period that came to be called the Harlem Renaissance. Includes writings, correspondence, and biographical documents from between 1910s and 1990s.
Susan B. Anthony Digital Collection (Schlesinger)
Include diaries, correspondence (with family members and with fellow suffragists, abolitionists, and temperance workers), genealogies, and speeches, as well as photographs and memorabilia, documenting Anthony’s life and work as well as the lives of other suffragists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt.
Carrie Chapman Catt Papers
The papers of suffragist, political strategist, and pacifist Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947) span the years 1848-1950, with the bulk of the material dating from 1890 to 1920.

Suffrage (Right to Vote)

Black Women's Suffrage (DPLA)
A collaborative project to provide digital access to materials documenting the roles and experiences of Black Women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and, more broadly, women’s rights, voting rights, and civic activism between the 1850s and 1960.
HeinOnline: Women's Rights and Suffrage
A digital legal library of texts from across U.S. history related to women's legal rights.
National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection
A library of nearly 800 books and pamphlets documenting the suffrage campaign that were collected between 1890 and 1938 by members of NAWSA. The collection consists of a variety of materials including newspapers, books, pamphlets, memorials, scrapbooks, and proceedings from the meetings of various women's organizations that document the suffrage fight.
National Women's Party
The National Woman’s Party (NWP) collection housed at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument is an important resource for the study of the suffrage movement and the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This unique collection, including the nation’s first feminist library, documents the mass political movement for women’s full citizenship in the 20th century, both in the United States and throughout the world. The collection contains books, scrapbooks, political cartoons, textiles, photographs, organizational records, fine arts, decorative arts, and artifacts produced primarily by women, about women.
Woman's rights collection, 1853-1958 (Harvard)
Correspondence, journals, notebooks, speeches, etc., from the unmicrofilmed portion of the Woman's Rights Collection (1853-1958).
Women's Suffrage and Equal Rights (Calisphere)
Held in the Macpherson Collection by and about Women at the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College, the Women's Suffrage and Equal Rights Collection traces the development of the American women’s suffrage movement with a significant focus on California's history. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the collection primarily emphasizes the years from 1901-1924, preceding and immediately following the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Contents include leaflets, flyers, newspaper articles, suffrage programs, magazine clippings, and memorabilia from the United States, with correspondence and ephemera related to suffrage pioneers such as Susan B. Anthony, Alice Park, and Carrie Chapman Catt.

Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
Digital transcripts of late 19th and early 20th century publications. For material on women's suffrage, users should select the checkbox at the end of the list ("Women's Suffrage [collection]"), which includes publications like National Citizen and Ballot Box and The New Citizen.

For Additional Help

For additional recommendations, contact your History Liaison, Erin, at erinkate.scheopner@bc.edu or schedule an appointment.

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Law Library

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O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

U.S. History

Women's Rights Activism

Primary Sources on Women's Rights

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

Personal Papers

Suffrage (Right to Vote)

For Additional Help