ARCHIVE: Ethel Adamson Archive of Correspondence and related material.
National Woman’s Party Archive
From the Files of Ethel Adamson
1941-1948
National Woman’s Party. Archive, 1941-1948.
An archive of correspondence and printed matter from the National Woman’s Party, 1941-48 (with a concentration of material dated 1943). Present are typed signed incoming letters, typed carbon outgoing letters, typescript and typescript carbon memos and speeches, some annotated; and much related printed matter. All together in a specially made cloth slipcase.
Adamson’s carbon correspondence and carbon typescript material is confined primarily to 1942-43. Much is on onionskin stamped at the head, “Susan B. Anthony Memorial Committee, Mrs. Robert Adamson, Chairman, Middletown, New Jersey,” and bears her occasional pencil notes and red pencil underlining. Slightly less material is present relating to Adamson’s role as chairman of the Committee on Pioneers of the Woman Movement, whose letterhead lists at the top the birth and death dates of Mott, Stanton, and Anthony.
Further typescript material and correspondence includes,
Barney, Nora Stanton, Chairman, National Advisory Council -- NWP. “Why I am for the ERA.” Photocopy typescript, 3 legal leaves, few marginal lines and underlines in red.
Progress of Women Stamp: several pieces of correspondence, including an annotated press release from the Post Office Department Information Service, relating to the design and release of the stamp, 1948.
NWP business: ca. three dozen pieces of correspondence and photocopy typescript, occasionally annotated by Adamson in red pencil, relating to a range of issues, such as hospitality, radio addresses, bulletins, speeches, endorsements, and other public and internal comments, including statements and addresses; budgets and contribution notes; a “confidential” transcript of an interview by Ethel Ernest Murrell (Florida branch chairman of the NWP) with Cardinal Dougherty in Miami, 1943; organizations such as the American Association of University Women and the National Council of Catholic Women; excerpts from resolutions by national organizations; commemoration of Susan B. Anthony.
Printed material includes,
ERA Endorsement leaflets, ranging in size from 4 x 5” through 8 ½ x 11”. Texts by Dr. Mary E. Woolley (President Emeritus of Mount Holyoke), Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Helen Hayes, Margaret Culkin Banning, James Truslow Adams, Irving Fisher, Raymond Gram Swing, Pearl Buck, and Jeannette Marks (Mount Holyoke Professor).
Articles reprinted as leaflets: from the New York Herald Tribune (August 22, 1943), and the New York Times (May 10, 1943).
Other items in favor of the ERA or more generally in support of women’s rights, all published by the National Woman’s Party: “Men Speak for the ERA,” Josepha Whitney’s “Appeal to Women for United Support,” Burnita Shelton Matthews’ “Equal Rights Versus Sex Disqualification Removal,” Anita Politzer’s “Is the Law Unfair to Women?,” speeches in favor of the ERA by Mollie Maloney and Lena Madesin Phillips.
Program for the NWP’s 1945 Silver Anniversary of the Suffrage Amendment (24 pp., photographically illustrated throughout in black and white).
Brochure for the Alva Belmont House, H-Q of the NWP and of the World Woman’s Party for Equal Rights (8 pp., photographically illustrated throughout in black and white).
ERA Questions and Answers prepared by the Research Department of the NWP, Helena Hill Weed, Chairman, Presented by Mr. Austin, September 21…, 1943, “ordered to be printed,” printed by the US Government Printing Office, 1943.
Congressional Record, 79th Congress, First Session, Monday, January 29, 1945, Vol. 91, No. 16; 1 legal leaves, both sides printed; multiple copies.
Speech by Representative Louis Ludlow of Indiana, in the House of Representatives, January 31, 1945; single leaf, 8 ½ x 11”, recto printed only; multiple copies.
Several newspaper clippings, severely browned.
Leaf torn from Equal Rights, Marc
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