World Center for Women's Archives

The World Center for Women's Archives was a groundbreaking organization founded in nineteen thirty-five by historian Mary Ritter Beard and feminist activist Rosika Schwimmer. Based in Manhattan, the center was built on the urgent premise that without documents, there is no history. The founders believed that women had been systematically erased from the historical record because their personal papers, letters, and achievements were rarely viewed as worth preserving. By collecting everything from political correspondence to Native American artifacts and household records, they aimed to prove that women had always been central to the development of civilization.