Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers, 1850-1988 : Scope & Contents of the Collection

Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers consist of 61.75 linear feet and date from 1850s to 1988. The bulk of the papers date from the 1920s, O'Connor's college years, to 1988 and relate to every aspect of her life, both personal and professional. Types of material include personal and business correspondence; writings; speeches; personal records and memorabilia; printed material; financial and legal records; photographs; biographical material; organization and subject files; miscellaneous notes and lists, and several audiotapes of interviews and music.

While the bulk of these papers are directly related to Jessie Lloyd O'Connor and the causes she worked for and supported, because she was a collector, these are also family papers. Harvey O'Connor is especially well represented here because he and Jessie often collaborated on projects, notably their memoirs, but also their work for the Federated Press and Harvey's books. O'Connor's interest in her family's history is reflected in biographical material about, and writings of, notable relatives such as Henry Demarest Lloyd, Maury Maverick, and Lola Maverick Lloyd in SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL and SERIES III. WRITINGS, respectively. There is biographical material about friends and associates in SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES.

O'Connor's interests were many, her correspondence prodigious, and she was a natural collector. The result is documentation of a wide array of subjects within these papers, some in great depth, others in a more fragmentary fashion. Some of the major subjects addressed throughout the papers are labor; international cooperation and world government; peace and pacifism; civil liberties; communism and U.S. anti-communism; the cooperative movement and other consumer issues; the environment; music, especially of a political bent, and dance; philanthropy; Soviet Union; political prisoners and refugees; political campaigns, especially of the Progressive Party; and housing. O'Connor accumulated material related to organizations with which she was actively involved, such as the League of Women Shoppers, American League Against War and Fascism, Progressive Party, Hull House, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and United World Federalists, as well as those in which she retained a more peripheral interest, receiving mailings and making donations. Some of the organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Woman's Party, are well known and extensively documented in other archival repositories; others are more obscure, and it is likely that material about them is more difficult to locate in other archives. In addition to large social, political, and economic topics covered within the collection, there is a great deal of material, especially in SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE, that addresses more personal subjects, such as marriage, divorce, and family relationships in general; friendship; sexual mores; adoption; the women's college experience; professional collaboration between husband and wife and the ambivalent relationship of career and family in women's lives; and the role of wealthy contributors to radical causes and the contradictions they faced. Similar subject matter and types of material often appear in several of the different series or parts of series and "see also" references have been used liberally in an attempt to alert researchers to at least some of these connections, though they are far from comprehensive.