Subseries G. Stevens's removal from the IACW, 1934-1961 (#124.5-126.4)

Subseries G, Stevens's removal from the IACW, 1934-1961 (#124.5-126.4), contains correspondence, clippings, financial records, and notes relating to the 1939 decision by the U.S. government to appoint Mary Winslow as the official U.S. representative on the IACW. The Roosevelt administration asserted that Stevens had been appointed chair by the Pan American Union, and had never been the official U.S. delegate. Stevens viewed this as a political attack, based on differing views of how to work for women's rights. Stevens and her supporters, under the direction of Gaeta Wold Boyer, mounted a large letter-writing campaign to Congress and the White House and, when this was not successful, subsequently managed to remove most of the IACW records from the office at the Pan American Union building in Washington, DC. Much of the correspondence in this subseries is to Boyer about her fund-raising and letter-writing appeals, and copies of responses sent to individuals by Congresspersons and government officials. Additional letters about Stevens's removal from the IACW can be found in Series V, Subseries A, identifiable by their dates (1939-1940). The Committee to Preserve the Early Records of the IACW was founded by Stevens, Fanny Bunand-Sévastos Chipman, and Laura Berrien in 1957; Stevens had been meticulously keeping track of her IACW-related expenses since 1939 (she created a bank account called "Doris Stevens special" to track these), and part of the committee's purpose was to raise money to reimburse her. The other goal of the group was to ensure that the "correct" IACW history was saved and put forward. This entailed an attempt to account for all relevant IACW records, the compiling of photograph albums of IACW commissioners and conferences, and was possibly the spur for Stevens to begin working in earnest on her memoirs of her time chairing the organization.