LibGuides: U.S. History: Women's History

Primary Sources

Contemporary Women's Issues This link opens in a new window
Peer-reviewed and non-scholarly articles reflecting issues that influence women’s lives across the globe. Topics include civil rights, health, education, professional development, and entrepreneurship.
Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Historical documents and other primary sources including personal writings of women of the 1700s-1900s from around the U.S., drawn from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society. The letters and diaries reveal, in each woman’s own handwriting, the details of the authors’ daily lives, their activities and concerns, and their attitudes towards the people and world around them.
Women's Magazine Archive (1846-2005) This link opens in a new window
Full-text and high-resolution digital archive of "women's-interest" magazines covering topics such as family life, home economics, health, careers, fashion, culture, and much more.
Women's Studies Archive: Women's Issue and Identities This link opens in a new window
Primary source materials on women's issues, movements, and achievements, including topics such as sexuality and reproductive freedom, women and the labor movement, and second wave feminist movements, Includes manuscripts, ephemera, newspapers, journals, and more.
Women and Social Movements in the United States This link opens in a new window
Scholarly articles and digitized primary documents such as images, pamphlets, training guides, ephemera, and more covering women's reform activism in the U.S.

Black Women's Sufferage
The materials in this collection include photographs, correspondence, speeches, event programs, publications, oral histories, and other artifacts that document the roles and experiences of Black Women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and, more broadly, women’s rights, voting rights, and civic activism between the 1850s and 1960—produced by the Digital Library of America.

Women's Studies Manuscript Collections: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights This link opens in a new window
Primary documents on: Woman's suffrage; Women in National Politics; and sexuality, sex education, and reproductive rights. The papers of key national leaders like Julia Ward Howe, Anna Howard Shaw, and Matilda Gage are included.
Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records This link opens in a new window
Historical records and primary source documents from the National Woman's Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance. Focus is on women's rights, including suffrage, employment, childcare, health care, involvement in politics, and much more.

Women's Liberation Movement Print Culture

Mazer Lesbian Archives
The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives is one of the largest archives in the world dedicated to collecting, protecting, and preserving lesbian and feminist history and culture. By creating a safe place for women to explore the richness of lesbian history, perhaps adding to it themselves, we are paving the way for future generations to understand more fully their own identity and history and help maintain this vital link to their own past.
ONE Archives
ONE Archives at the USC Libraries is the largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world. Founded in 1952, ONE Archives houses millions of archival items including periodicals, books, films, videos, audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records, and personal papers. ONE Archives has been a part of the University of Southern California Libraries since 2010.

Margaret Sanger Papers This link opens in a new window
Historical documents and other primary sources focusing on Sanger's personal papers and records of the birth control movement. Documents are related to birth control, women's rights, suffrage, feminism, reform and social work, arts, and middle-class family life.