In 1870, following the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe issued what became known as her “Mother’s Day Proclamation.” The grief she witnessed during and after the war, while working with widows and mothers of soldiers from both sides, inspired her to “rise up through the ashes and devastation.” Originally titled “An Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World,” Howe’s proclamation urged women to influence policy-making and advocate for world peace. She established a Mother’s Day for Peace, celebrated in June.
Although the modern observance of Mother’s Day is more closely associated with the work of Ann Jarvis, Howe’s Mother’s Day for Peace continued to inspire women’s groups, particularly those connected to the suffrage movement. Related festivities were organized in Boston for several years.
Although Howe, a poet and abolitionist, is best known for writing “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” her proclamation, which called for the “amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interest of peace,” served as a precursor to the eventual adoption of the modern Mother’s Day in 1914.
Howe kept scrapbooks of articles she was interested in or that mentioned her work. The article featured in this picture discusses the ninth annual meeting of the Women’s Peace Festival.
Image: Julia Ward How Scrapbook dated 1857-1898. From the Records of Julia Ward Howe A24 Box 1 Folder 21v.
Last week, members of the Schlesinger staff had the opportunity to visit our off-site storage facility, which we refer to as HD. Since our onsite space cannot accommodate all of the collections we manage, many materials are stored at the Harvard Depository and are delivered daily in response to researcher requests. HD houses collections from across Harvard, supported by a dedicated team that maintains and ensures accessibility to these materials.
Thank you to our colleague Mimosa for giving us a behind-the-scenes look and sharing these great photos!
Do you write in the margins?
The highlight, the underline, the notes on the side all speak to an exchange between reader and writer. And for those of us who get to study the marked-up text, we, too, are included in the conversation. Studying the practice of deep reading allows us to think alongside previous readers and, according to science, is good for the brain.
This copy of Leon Trotsky's "Women and the Family" previously belonged to poet and activist Merle Woo. Examining both the main text and Woo's highlighted passages and marginal notes reveals her ongoing engagement with the material. Would you choose to highlight or underline the same sections? Were the highlights and comments made at the same time or over multiple re-readings? Would Woo still highlight the same sections today?
Merle Woo’s books were added to the collection when her papers were acquired in 2025. Several of the works contain Woo’s marginalia and can be requested through Hollis for further study in the reading room.
Have you ever found yourself buried in archival boxes, reading some of the best correspondence, only to be frustrated by not having the other side of the conversation?
Us too!
In many collections, correspondence is a one-way street, unless the recipient of a letter also saves a copy of their reply, or vice versa. Saved copies are often found in organizational papers. But in personal papers, we often only have the letters the person received, not their responses. This is one reason it is so important to remember that archival research often takes place in multiple repositories.
There is a collection here at Schlesinger that holds both copies of years of letters between a wife and her husband during World War II. It is a unique opportunity to see both halves of a conversation, without having to wait for another appointment date or travel time!
The World War II correspondence between Jenny Moore and Paul Moore Jr. (MC 1227) contains the letters exchanged between the pair during their courtship and first year of marriage while Paul was serving in the Marines. The collection has recently been digitized, providing another level of access to a set of letters that provide an honest look not only at the experience of deployment in a relationship, but also at pieces of their life that deal with religion, marriage, pregnancy, social life, and disappointment with decisions of family members.
Ready to dive in? The link to the digitized collection is in our bio.
Join us in celebrating National Poetry Month and our Cooking Up Change exhibition by exploring culinary-themed poetry.
Although our French may not be flawless, we present our English translation of the first two stanzas of a culinary-themed French poem from our collection.
The Bacon Omelette, or Easter Hallelujahs
Hallelujah! My dear neighbor,
Lent is coming to an end,
Goodbye cod and beans,
Herring, sardines, snails
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! No more delays
Let's break the eggs, let's cut the bacon
For me, this dish is delicious!
And my appetite is sharp:
Hallelujah!
If you know French, let us know if you can translate the rest!
Image: From the Nadine Lindzen Culinary Collection, MC 1273. Box 1 Folder 1
For our next #collectiondeepdive, we will take a close look at the papers of Pauli Murray.
Describing Pauli Murray in just a few words is difficult. She was a lawyer, an activist, a writer, and the first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest.
The many sides of Murray’s life are reflected in the more than 141 boxes of the collection at the Schlesinger Library. What stands out most is how Murray expressed herself in writing, always documenting the issues, causes, and concerns she faced. Murray had a rare talent for using words to break through barriers.
A notable example is Murray’s correspondence with three different First Ladies of the United States—Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosalyn Carter, and Barbara Bush. Murray consistently identified opportunities to engage with the highest office as a citizen, expressing strong opinions in a thoughtful and considered manner. Her efforts were directed toward advancing the well-being of African Americans and the broader American public.
Murray shared a long correspondence with Eleanor Roosevelt over the years. In 1973, Murray sent her letters from Eleanor to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, but maintained copies, which are now among Murray’s papers at Schlesinger. Throughout their lives, Murray reached out to Roosevelt and expressed hope to maintain a similar relationship with future first ladies. While there is less correspondence with Rosalyn Carter and Barbara Bush, Murray’s letters employ a similar tone of care not only for the offices their husbands held, but also for each of the women. Murray never masks her sentiments and is at times extremely strong-willed in her position, but she sees the importance of speaking truth to power and of honoring the nonviolent communication method she shared with Bayard Rustin, who coined the phrase around 1942. Together with Rustin, George Houser, and James Farmer, they would form the Congress of Racial Equality.
Over the next few months, we will explore Murray's life and legacy through her papers. Follow along next month to explore Murray’s commitment to speaking truth to power through her work as a lawyer and later an Episcopal priest.
Thursday, April 16th at Radcliffe!
Priya Krishna will share her experiences as a cookbook author, food writer, and video host in a wide-ranging discussion with Durba Mitra, Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.
This program coincides with our new exhibition at the Library, Cooking Up Change: Women’s Agency and Community Building Through Cookbooks, featuring selections from the Library’s renowned collection of cookbooks, which include the papers of Julia Child, Zarela Martinez, Grace Zia Chu, and Rosalyn and W. Paul Coates, as well as Madhur Jaffrey.
Image of Priya Krishna by Marc J. Franklin
Image of books and publications held at Schlesinger Library. Lucky Peach was where Krishna began her career in food publishing before becoming a full-time writer with best-selling works such as Indian-Ish and Cooking at Home.
Link to register can be found in our bio
In 2003, Jennifer Finney Boylan published the memoir “She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders,” which recounts her gender transition and explores themes of friendship, love, and family. Boylan is recognized as a best-selling author, human rights advocate, and transgender activist. She served as a Radcliffe Fellow in 2022. A recording of her 2023 talk, “The Heisenberg Variations: Imagination, Invention, and Uncertainty,” is accessible via the provided link.
The draft of "She’s Not There," acquired by the Schlesinger Library from Boylan in August 2018, offers insight into the creation of an intimate literary work. These drafts document the memoir’s evolution, showing changes over time, deleted or revised sections, and the editor’s influence, providing a comprehensive perspective on the writing process.
The collection of Boylan's papers at the Schlesinger includes drafts of several of her works, correspondence with publishers, and materials documenting various aspects of Boylan’s life, including her gender transition.
Images are from the Jennifer Finney Boylan Papers, 1961-2004; MC 1025. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
As we close out Women’s History Month, we’d like to introduce you to a couple of high school teachers who are working to bring US women’s history year-round to AP students nationwide. They received a Teacher Support Grant to conduct much of the research at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, a treasure trove that transformed their teaching. A short film about their efforts will debut later this spring!
Fried alligator, prune pie, and salmon loaf 🐊 🥧 🐟 These are some of the recipes in the Schlesinger Library's collection of more than 4,300 community cookbooks
Community cookbooks are recipe collections compiled by civic or religious groups, often as fundraising efforts. They give clues to the social and cultural history of the time, shining a light on the kinds of organizations that existed, who was in them, and what they thought was important, as well as what local business existed and which ingredients were available and popular.
Video: @Niles_Singer /Harvard University
Do you have an old family recipe, passed down for generations, written in hard-to-read handwriting and stained with years of use? These handwritten cookbooks, featured in the new exhibition Cooking Up Change, evoke that same feeling of the love and labor that go into a recipe and how the kitchen can be a place of community building. As the exhibit label notes, "These unique keepsakes embody the physical labor involved in producing them and the hands of the community at work to raise funds for their causes."
Each copy of this 1938 Milwaukee cookbook, created by the Visiting Nurse Association of Milwaukee, is unique. They are reminders of how each project started out with a group of women who put pen to paper for a cause. This is just one example of how individual stories and community efforts are preserved within these treasured books.
Visit the Lia and William Poorvu Gallery at Schlesinger to see "Cooking Up Change: Women’s Agency and Community Building Through Cookbooks", open Monday through Friday, 9-5.
We've been posting about the records of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, and teaching with them, too! Harvard College history of science concentrators enrolled in sophomore tutorial spent a class at the library exploring the extensive research potential in the collection, and considering the research questions and pathways they could generate from these documents. Students also spent time comparing editions of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," noticing the changes made over time and differences in translated editions from around the world.
Stay tuned as we begin to explore a new collection in April.
