http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/11584079

Elizabeth Olmsted Smith, 1910- papers

The papers of Elizabeth Olmsted Smith pertain primarily to her activities in the peace movement in Buffalo, New York, from 1933 to 1941, and from 1950 to 1975. Also included are personal papers (mostly letters), 1923 to 1940, and materials concerning social work, 1949 to 1957. The papers document a number of local and national peace organizations, as well as some labor and social reform groups, but are strongest in their coverage of anti-war movement in Buffalo, N.Y., particularly the activities of the Buffalo Branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The papers concerning WILPF and the closely related Emergency Peace Campaign as well as the People's Mandate to Governments to End Wars, include correspondence, reports, notes on meetings, membership lists, drafts of speeches, and printed literature. In the early 1930s, she was a member of the Socialist Party local and the League for Industrial Democracy; in 1933 she taught at "Emergency College" on the campus of the State Teachers College (now State University College at Buffalo); and in 1938 she worked as an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Elizabeth Smith was an active member of the Unitarian-Universalist Church, which supported a number of liberal causes, both nationally and locally. The church activities are documented in newsletters, sermons and church announcements, 1954-1974. Personal papers, 1923-1940, consist largely of letters to Miss Elizabeth Olmsted from family and friends before her marriage in 1934. Also included is a journal kept by Miss Olmsted at Smith College and student papers. A portion of the correspondence, 1931-1934, 1937 and 1939, reflects her attempts to find work after graduating from Smith College in the midst of the depression. Also included are course notes and papers from her studies at the School of Social Work at the University of Buffalo, 1949-1954, and papers concerning her casework with the Erie County Board of Social Services and with the Methodist Home for Children.

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