Oral History Collection: Barnard College Class of 1971

BCRW is excited to announce that the oral histories of the Barnard Class of 1971, held at the Barnard Archives and Special Collections, are now available for student and community researchers to view and utilize. These oral histories offer a window into the social and political lives of feminists who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Members of the Barnard Class of 1971 were inspired by a suggestion from the late Barnard Political Science Professor Peter Juviler, who, upon participating in a reunion conversation among BC ’71 alums about their experiences during the Columbia Student Building Occupation and Strike in April 1968, urged them to collect and share their stories. Stirred by Professor Juviler’s perspective, a group of BC ’71 alumnae incorporated the not-for-profit BC Voices, Inc., setting out to create a collection containing the oral histories (life stories) of class members of BC ’71 in the Barnard Archives and Special Collections.

To date, BC Voices has interviewed 35 classmates and donated the video tapes and transcripts to the Barnard Class of 1971 Oral History Collection (BC ’71 OHC). By Spring 2016, an additional 30-40 interviews will be added to the BC ’71 OHC. The oral histories reflect the diversity of the women of BC ’71 in terms of their geographic, socio-economic, and ethnic backgrounds, as well as the choices they have made and the lives they have lived since their Barnard days.

Watch a short video with excerpts from the first interviews, focusing on experiences at Barnard and on the events of 1968:

The Barnard Class of 1971 Oral History Collection provides rich, primary source material on the many issues that touched women’s lives from 1949 to the present. Classmates speak fully and frankly about growing up in the Jim Crow south; being the child of Holocaust survivors; life and learning at a Seven Sisters college; occupying buildings in 1968; and as a commuter, coming home every night to questioning parents. They also share their early experiences with the Women’s Liberation movement, reproductive justice, queer liberation, anti-racism, and more.

These conversations highlight the historical trajectory of student involvement in activism on campus and in New York City, be it in anti-war or anti-gentrification organizing, and its impact on social justice feminisms today.

The BC ’71 OHC is in active use by scholars at Barnard and Columbia and is currently being digitized by the Barnard Archives to make it available to the general public.

For more information on the project, contact Katherine Brewster, President BC Voices, Inc., bcvoicesinc [at] gmail.com. To access the BC ’71 OHC in the Barnard Archives, researchers can contact Shannon O’Neill, Barnard Archivist, soneill [at] barnard.edu. http://www.tb-credit.ru/kredit-na-kartu.html http://www.tb-credit.ru/contact.html