Valley Women's History Collaborative

The Valley Women's History Collaborative's (VWHC) purpose is to find, share, and preserve contemporary local women's history through a collaboration between those who have participated in the history and those who are documenting it. The initial focus of the Collaborative is the history of feminist, lesbian, and progressive peoples' efforts to promote female equality and social justice as well as the freedom to express a variety of gender and sexual orientations. We are documenting the period from 1968 to the present in Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties of Western Massachusetts.

In fall 1997, at the 25th Women's Activist Reunion of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Kaymarion Raymond (long-time Valley feminist activist) and Joyce Berkman (Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts) discussed the formation of a women's history group which would preserve this activist history. Susan Tracy (Dean of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies and Professor of American Studies and History at Hampshire College) joined them in February 1998. Kaymarion had already compiled a Herstory Chronology (beginning in 1967), a Valley lesbian slideshow, a timeline, and a questionnaire which she had circulated among friends.

In May 1998, the new Valley Women's History Collaborative was awarded a MacArthur Grant through Hampshire College to establish the oral history project. In September, a small gathering of Valley feminists meeting at the Five College Women's Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke College launched the organization, planning its structure and foci. (Both oral history training documents and a Research Guide prepare volunteers for their VWHC work.) A few years later, Coordinators applied for and received non-profit corporation status for the VWHC. An Advisory Board was also formed and currently, more members are needed.

In January 1999, through the sponsorship of Five Colleges, Inc., and the support of the Five College librarians and archivists, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities awarded the VWHC a grant to develop the oral history training program. We were joined in fall 1999 by Marla Miller (Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts), who spearheaded the documentation and archive aspect of our work. Miller togethert with Berkman, Tracy and Raymond successfully wrote a grant to the Massachusetts Historical Records Advisory Board which allowed us to identify repositories for the documents and records we have collected and to create a donor guide for women with documents to deposit.

During 2000-2001, a grant from the Massachusetts Historical Records and Archives Board hastened progress on identification of relevant current holdings in area libraries, archives, and historical societies as well as enabled the creation of a donor guide. A subsequent grant for 2001-2002 from the Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts further financed the transcription of oral history tapes.

Using a collaborative methodology, we will continue to investigate research areas, conduct oral histories, gather and preserve new historical documents. We plan to share our findings in a variety of venues, making our knowledge accessible to as wide an audience as possible.