University Library News

Georgia State University

Over the past two semesters, GSU Women’s/Gender and Sexuality Collections Archivist Morna Gerrard and Graduate Research Assistant Tiffany Gray partnered with donors Suzanne Donner, Anne Deeley Easterly, and Joy Rogers to plan and complete a detailed history of Feminist Action Alliance, an organization established in 1973 by young feminist women in Atlanta who wanted to actively make change and improve the lives of women by advancing the full participation of women in social, political and economic institutions. During its lifetime, Action developed and delivered diverse programmatic solutions, nurtured significant partnerships, fostered the development of other organizations, and built media relationships to educate, advance and advocate for change.  Feminist Action Alliance was active until 1984, by which time, many of its members had moved into highly successful professional careers.

The history is now complete and a research guide has been developed to provide access to interviews with past members, digitized newsletters, lists of past officers, members, and events, as well as links to finding aids for related collections at GSU and other institutions. Below are the reflections of the women who dedicated much time and energy into bringing the Feminist Action Alliance history to life.

Reflections from Morna Gerrard, Archivist, Women’s / Gender and Sexuality Collections

In March 2023, I attended a fiftieth anniversary party for members of Feminist Action Alliance, an organization that was run by young feminists in Georgia from 1973-1985. The event was organized by past presidents Anne Deeley Easterly, Suzanne Donner, and Joy Rogers, and it was held at Anne’s home. Many years ago, Anne donated her papers to the Women’s Collections, and she was interviewed for the Georgia Women’s Movement Oral History Project. Anne also sustained the Women’s Collections by establishing an endowment an to support the work that I do. More recently, Anne became a member of Georgia State University’s Women’s Philanthropy Network, and in that capacity, she requested to be the organization’s liaison to the Collections.

At that anniversary event, surrounded by enthusiastic peers who were reminiscing about their experiences with “Action”, Anne and I talked about the possibility of raising funds to hire a graduate research assistant to do a deep history of the organization. Initially we requested (and were granted) funds by the Women’s Philanthropy Network, but those funds would not be available in time to hire a student during the anniversary year. So, Anne, Suzanne, and Joy set about raising the funds through donations from Action members. I hired an outstanding Graduate Research Assistant, Tiffany Gray, who had just completed her master’s in Rhetoric and Composition at GSU and was going straight into her PhD. Tiffany’s interests lie with women’s voices – particularly those of Mormon women. She plans to work with a Mormon Women’s oral history project and conduct interviews of her own, so her being selected for this position was perfect timing.

In August 2023, Tiffany and I met with Anne, Suzanne, and Joy, who committed to be our advisors throughout the creative process. We made a plan, created a timeline, and got down to work. Tiffany began her research in the collections at GSU, and I reached out to the archivists at Emory University to ask if we could borrow the official Action records that are in their custody.  We scheduled 14 oral history interviews that were mostly conducted by Tiffany, and I arranged for materials to be digitized. I created a research guide that would be a landing page for all information and materials related to the project, including the history, images, transcripts, and lists of officers and members. Future researchers have been gifted an amazing resource in this content, and I look forward to seeing how it will be used.

This experience has been incredibly rewarding. Archivists know their collections pretty well, but they don’t always get to know the deep history hidden in those records. They also don’t normally get to collaborate in such meaningful ways with their donors, or with our students. Between working with the records, listening in to the interviews, and talking with our advisors, I learned just how focused, organized, and dynamic this group of young women were, and continue to be.  I also had the pleasure of watching Tiffany thrive through this process. Together, I believe that we mirrored the way that Action members worked so purposefully fifty years ago.

Reflections from Tiffany Gray, Graduate Research Assistant

In July 2023, I applied for a Graduate Research Assistant position to work in GSU’s Special Collections on a women’s centric project. However, two weeks later, Morna contacted me and asked if I would instead be interested in working on a different kind of project that involved an opportunity to work directly with donors, conducting oral histories, and spending a year researching and compiling a full history about Feminist Action Alliance. I jumped at the opportunity – especially because this project fit so perfectly with my PhD dissertation research that I’m conducting for an oral history collection about Mormon Women based out of California.

Over the last year I’ve had the chance to train as an oral history interviewer, conduct 11 of the 14 scheduled interviews, and dive into researching Feminist Action Alliance. Along the way, I learned so many things about archival work that I didn’t know. First, archival work is both personal and professional. My time in the archives and conducting interviews affected me personally as I learned about the amazing work and lives of the women of ACTION. Not only was the work about gathering material and organizing everything into a historical account, but it was about me growing professionally as an academic and researcher.

Second, the archive research journey is just that…it’s a journey. Every box, every folder, every document and image told a story about Feminist Action Alliance. Sometimes the story was chronological and easy to follow, and other times pieces were hidden in a folder that didn’t match the description but was essential to giving a more complete accounting of ACTION’s history. Reading through the boxes, both in the GSU women’s collections and on loan from Emory University, I’ve seen how an archival story unfolds by showing what people and organizations prioritized. I’ve learned that records hold clues to the past, and for ACTION, their records show strong, determined women interested in promoting women’s equality through professional engagement and thoughtful community outreach.

Above all, this experience has been about getting to know the women of Feminist Action Alliance and telling their story in a positive and reflective way. The opportunity to work directly with donors Anne Easterly, Suzanne Donner, and Joy Rogers of Feminist Action Alliance is unique – graduate students don’t usually have the chance to work directly with their patrons in an academic environment. Therefore, as a graduate research assistant experience, the triad partnership of myself working with Morna from Special Collections and the women of Feminist Action Alliance represents a novel archival research experience, one that, if given the opportunity, all graduate students interested in archival research and methodologies should find a way to embrace when those opportunities come along. The experience provides researchers not only needed archival training, but also the chance to get to know – really know – the people and organizations they are studying. I’m so grateful Morna offered me the opportunity to go on this journey with her and the wonderful women of ACTION; the experience has been so rewarding in more ways than I can count.