Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger (July 3, 1886 – June 3, 1977) was an American suffragist, civic leader, feminist, and pioneer in the field of women's history.
Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger was born in Columbus, Ohio to Clara Weilnman Bancroft and Arthur Bancroft. [1] She was the eldest of three children. Her siblings were Clara L. Bancroft (1888-1903) and William H. Bancroft (1891-??). Clara Weilnman Bancroft and Arthur Bancroft divorced when the children were young, and Clara Weilnman Bancroft began working for the Veterans Bureau, first in Columbus, Ohio, and later in Washington D.C. [2]
Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger graduated from Ohio State University in 1910. She was active in student life at Ohio State University participating in the Glee Club, the Y.W.C.A Cabinet, the Lantern (school newspaper), History Club, Pi Beta Phi and serving as a board member for the Makio (university yearbook). [3] She intermittently taught in a one-room country school to support herself during college. After graduating, she began teaching History and English in Central High School, Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 1914 she left teaching to marry Arthur M. Schlesinger, who she had met during college. They had two sons, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr and Thomas Bancroft. The family lived in Columbus, Ohio until 1919 when they moved to Iowa so that Arthur M. Schlesinger could assume a position at the State University of Iowa. In 1924 they settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Arthur M. Schlesinger was appointed Professor of History at Harvard. [4]
Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger was active in many civic organizations focused on women's rights and teaching. While living in Columbus, Ohio, she was active in the Franklin County Suffrage Association and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1916, she also served as North-side Vice President in the Columbus Housewives League, which organized to fight the high cost of food staples like butter, eggs, and meat. [5]
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger was part of the Cambridge League of Women Voters in the post of Chairman of the Committee on Education and served on the boards of the Cambridge Public Library and the American Association of University Women of Boston. The U.S. Office of Education appointed Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger to a committee to interview teachers who applied to teach abroad. [4]
Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger made substantial contributions to historiography in the fields of history and women's history. She was actively involved with the administrative and intellectual lives of the Radcliffe College Women's Archives, serving on the Archives Advisory Board along with her husband Arthur M. Schlesinger, who chaired the Board for sixteen years. [6] Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger also regularly contributed papers to the Women's Archives seminars on women's history and to the Mother's Study Club. [4] In honor of their commitment to the Women's Archives, which is recognized as one of the preeminent locations for the study of United States women's history, the archives were renamed the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in 1965. [7] Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. attributed his mother as a strong influence on the political views and historical work of Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. who is noted as one of the first scholars "to draw the attention of the historical profession and the public to "The Role of Women in American History."" [6]
Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger was a frequent reviewer for the New England Quarterly and published numerous articles on American women in historical journals and national magazines. She was also a contributor to the first volume of Radcliffe's prominent Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. [1] An abbreviated list of her publications is as follows:
Following Arthur M. Schlesinger's death in 1965, Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger continued to live and work in Cambridge, MA. In 1975, after having lived in Cambridge, MA for more than fifty years, she moved to Williamsburg, Virginia to live with her son, Thomas Schlesinger. Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger died in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1977 at the age of 90. Her obituary in the New York Times notes that "In her 20s Mrs. Schlesinger marched as a pre-World War suffragette; in her 80s she marched with her granddaughters in Vietnam War protests." [8] A small collection of Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger's papers is held at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Samuel Eliot Morison was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic (1930) with Henry Steele Commager.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger's work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II. Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger was an American historian who taught at Harvard University, pioneering social history and urban history. He was a Progressive Era intellectual who stressed material causes and downplayed ideology and values as motivations for historical actors. He was highly influential as a director of PhD dissertations at Harvard for three decades, especially in the fields of social, women's, and immigration history. His son, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007), also taught at Harvard and was a noted historian.
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. According to Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director, it is "the largest and most significant repository of documents covering women's lives and activities in the United States".
Charlotte Murray Curtis was an American journalist, columnist and editor at The New York Times.
Mildred AdamsKenyon was an American journalist, writer, translator, and critic of Spanish literature.
Ruth Edmonds Hill was an American scholar, oral historian, oral storytelling editor, journal editor, educator, historic preservation advocate. Her oral history office is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is an iconic figure among oral storytellers, particularly in the United States but also abroad, and has advised storytellers' organizations. Her spouse is Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill who is also known as Brother Blue. Ruth Edmonds Hill is sometimes known as Sister Ruth. Ruth Edmonds Hill is the daughter of Florence Edmonds of western Massachusetts, whose life story is chronicled and has been critically analyzed as part of African-American oral history. Hill has degrees from Simmons College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Ida Mary Inman (1894–1985), known as Mary Inman, was an American political activist and writer. Inman is best known for her 1940 book, In Woman's Defense, which was a pioneering effort to legitimize the domestic labor associated with homemaking as worthy and respectable field of human endeavor.
Maud Wood Park was an American suffragist and women's rights activist.
The Black Women Oral History Project consists of interviews with 72 African American women from 1976 to 1981, conducted under the auspices of the Schlesinger Library of Radcliffe College, now Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Lucile Atcherson Curtis (1894–1986) was the first woman in what became the U.S. Foreign Service. Specifically, she was the first woman appointed as a United States Diplomatic Officer or Consular Officer, in 1923; the U.S. would not establish the unified Foreign Service until 1924, at which time Diplomatic and Consular Officers became Foreign Service Officers.
Rosalyn Baxandall was an American historian of women's activism and feminist activist.
Mary Jane (Whitely) Coggeshall was an American suffragist known as the "mother of woman suffrage in Iowa". She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1990.
Lucy Miller Mitchell was an early childhood education specialist and community activist from Boston who was instrumental in getting the state to regulate day care centers. She is credited with modernizing the day care system in Massachusetts.
Frances Mary Albrier was an American civil rights activist and community leader.
Christia V. Daniels Adair was an African-American suffragist and civil rights worker based in Texas. There is a mural in Texas about her life, displayed in a county park which is named for her.
Elizabeth Morrison Harbert was a 19th-century American author, lecturer, reformer and philanthropist from Indiana. She was the first women to design a woman's plank and secure its adoption by a major political party in a U.S. state.
Pauline Dorothea Goldmark was American social reformer, focused on equal pay and the health aspects of women's work.
Joyce Reopel (1933–2019) was an American painter, draughtswoman and sculptor who worked in pencil, aquatint, silver- and goldpoint, and an array of old master media. A Boris Mirski Gallery veteran, from 1959 to 1966, she was known for her refined skills and virtuosity. She was also one of very few women in the early group of Boston artists that included fellow artist and husband Mel Zabarsky,, , ], and others who helped overcome Boston's conservative distaste for the avant-garde, occasionally female, and often Jewish artists later classified as Boston expressionists. Unique to New England, Boston Expressionism has had lasting local and national influence, and is now in its third generation.
Eva Steiner Moseley, is an American curator and archivist. She has served as the curator of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Moseley has written on women in archives and has been involved in many institutions and organizations in at least administration level. Moseley has been involved with the Society of American Archivists as Council Member (1984–1987), served on multiple committees, and a frequent contributor and editor of the American Archivist (1982).
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
