The National Archives has awarded the Pacifica Radio Archives $128,241 to complete its “American Women Making History and Culture” project. Specifically:
“To support a two year project to preserve and make accessible a collection of approximately 1,644 historical radio programs (2,013 reel-to-reel audio recordings) documenting American Women Making History and Culture from 1963-1982.”
This is great news. The Pacifica Archives is a treasure trove of voices of civil rights movement women, feminist women, LGBT women, and anti-war women who made waves and headlines during those years. These include Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and significant cultural figures such as Judy Chicago, Maya Angelou, Lena Horne, and Adrienne Rich.
The collection also contains many less well known individuals—Flo Kennedy, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Marta Acevedo, Monique Wittig, and KPFA’s influential program director, Elsa Knight Thompson. Feminist activists of the 1960s and 1970s were intricately involved in the creation of woman focused programs on the Pacifica stations, including Nanette Rainone and Margot Adler, who eventually moved on to politics or to National Public Radio.
Search for Archives programs here.
“We congratulate our archivist team, Jolene Beiser, Joseph Gallucci and the Pacifica Radio Archives preservation and access coordinator consultant, Adi Gevins for their astounding work,” the PRA press release notes.
