Activist Women's Voices

Activist Women's Voices
Housed at	Mina Rees Library, CUNY Graduate Center

The Activist Women's Voices collection is an oral history project of 35 women activists who worked in community-based organizations in the New York City area. The project covers the period from 1995 to 2000 and was a project of The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center's Women's Studies Program and Center for the Study of Women. The digitized collection is made up of women from a diverse cross-section of cultural and ethnic social service organizations including activists from Arab-American, Haitian, Hispanic, African American, and Asian American communities. It is held at the Mina Rees Library, CUNY Graduate Center.

The project began in 1995 under the aegis of the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center's Women's Studies Program and Center for the Study of Women and Society. Initially started as part of a graduate class "Women, Community, and Public Voice," Women's Studies Director Joyce Gelb and Deputy Director Patricia Laurence curated a list of oral history subjects: New York City-based women who were leaders in their communities. The specific focus was on unheralded women from a diverse cross-section of the five boroughs of New York. Although the project was based in the Women's Studies Program, the subjects were not specifically working in organizations that specifically supporting women. The focus was on the women leaders themselves. The last interviews were completed in 1998.

The scope of the project included compiling a list of oral history projects as well as a now-defunct searchable database of oral history collections.

Graduate students from different concentrations within CUNY Graduate Center completed weekly internships as part of their degree programs, working at the organization that was the focus of the oral history project. Through this process they identified and interviewed leaders in the organization in a fieldwork environment within the metropolitan area of New York City. After receiving training on conducting oral history interviews, the graduate students went into the field and interviewed their subjects.

The main focus of the interviews was on biographical experiences that shaped their community-based work, and on challenges, achievements, motivations, and methodologies used to effect changes within their communities. The project was categorized into a subject map.

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