Socialist Feminist Conference Records

The records and correspondence pertaining to the Socialist Feminist Conference provide insight into a significant women’s movement. The collection includes correspondence relating to the “birth” of the conference, as well as correspondence pertaining to planning the actual conference. Letters to and from the major members of the planning committee provide ideas of the political thinking of the day. The collection is arranged into seven series.

Series I, Background and Fostering of the Socialist Feminist Conference, includes general correspondence from women across the country who urged the planning of the conference. Letters from the Third World Alliance, Black Women’s Caucus, and other third world “sisters” are incorporated into one file.

Series II, Steering Committee Details, contains records of the steering committee meetings held in various areas of the country. Notes from meetings in November 1974, February 1975, March 1975, April 1975, and May 1975 are included. Very specific ideas for the conference and workshops are included in the minutes of the meetings. Rough drafts of the agenda and procedures for the conference are in papers in File 4. A policy paper written by Barbara Ehrenreich for presentation at the conference is in File 5.

The files in Series III, Members of Conference Planning Committee, contain correspondence and papers of the nine major organizers of the conference: The Dayton Socialist Feminist Group, The Boston Area Socialist Feminist Organization, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, C.P. Gilman, Lexington (Kentucky) Socialist/Feminist Union, New York Women’s Union, Radical Women, Twin City Union, and Valley Women’s Union. Several files include position papers of the various organizations. The Dayton group’s papers deal mainly with the New American Movement and requests for that group to endorse and coordinate the conference. The Lexington file has a rough draft of the symbol used at the conference and the Radical Women file includes reprints available at that time.

Series IV, Conference Registration Details, has three files that are informal requests for conference information, conference applications listed alphabetically, and a rough draft list of conference attendees. Please note that while it was estimated that the conference was attended by 1600 women, this number of conference applications is not included in the collection. One can get an idea of the number from the rough draft list in File 17.

Series V is a file of Post Conference Press Releases. Among these are “Saskatoon Women’s Liberation News Letter” and “What She Wants.”

Series VI is Printed Materials including various reprints, pamphlets, booklets, and articles pertaining to issues of the women’s movement. In the last file, is a copy of the Socialist Feminist Conference leaflet mailed to women to provide conference information and application procedures. All the printed matter gives a look into the topics of issue at conference time.

Series VII consists of audiocassette tape recordings of the plenary sessions and workshops at the conference. The tapes were in the possession of Robin Suits prior to donation. Three of the audiocassettes are digitized in .WAV and .MP3 file formats. Note there are portions of tape 1 where the audio is not clear due to deterioration, and tape 12 is labeled “not audible”.

All correspondence is arranged chronologically within each file. The undated letters are to the back of each file.