Overview
Transcripts of interviews with clerical workers, notes, questionnaires, etc., of Jean Tepperman, poet, teacher, writer, and secretary.
Dates
- Creation: 1974-1975
Language of Materials
Materials in English.
Access Restrictions:
Access. The full names of the interviewees have been expunged on the research copies of the interview transcripts. The originals are closed to research until January 1, 2035. Researchers must sign a special form stating that they will not try to identify, find, or contact any person mentioned in an interview, and that they will not use in any publication the correct name or initials of any person mentioned in an interview.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright. Copyright in the papers created by Jean Tepperman is held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College for the Schlesinger Library. Copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns.
Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.
Extent
.63 linear feet (1+1/2 file boxes)This collection consists of 51 transcripts of interviews with office workers conducted by Jean Tepperman during the winter of 1974/1975 in preparation for her book, Not Servants, Not Machines: Office Workers Speak Out (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975); notes on the interviews, notes without transcripts, questionnaires, and leaflets are also included. All the interviewees except #3 and 18 are women; they ranged in age from their twenties to their eighties. Many were working in offices in the Boston area; they were employed in various kinds of companies and institutions, including telecommunications, insurance, and publishing companies, banks, hospitals, universities, and municipalities. The interviews contain descriptions of working conditions, pay inequities, race discrimination, sexual harassment and discrimination, and union organizing efforts.
BIOGRAPHY
Jean Tepperman was born in Syracuse, New York, on May 3, 1945, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1966. While in college she worked with Students for a Democratic Society at the Dudley Street Action Center in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Members of this group went on to form Mothers for Adequate Welfare, an organization that worked for changes in the welfare system. From 1966 to 1968, she was a member of JOIN (Jobs or Income Now) Community Union in Chicago, doing block organizing and other political work. A poet, writer, highschool teacher, parent and secretary, Tepperman was active in the antiVietnamWar movement and a founder of Bread and Roses, one of the early women's liberation groups in Boston. More recently she was editor of the Dorchester Community News (19801984) and worked for the City Wide Educational Coalition Newsletter (CWEC) (19841986). Her poems have appeared in Lion Rampant and The Old Mole, as well as in Sisterhood Is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan (New York: Random House, 1970).
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Accession numbers: 84-M181, 86-M124
These interview transcripts were given to the Schlesinger Library in October 1984 and July 1986 by Jean Tepperman.
CONTAINER LIST
- Box 1: 1-9
- Box 2: 10-14
INDEX TO SELECTED SUBJECTS
The numbers for each entry refer to interview transcripts.
- African-American women #7, 16, 25, 30
- Minorities--Employment #2, 7, 16, 18, 25, 30
- Race discrimination #2, 5, 7, 16, 18, 25, 30
Processing Information
Processed: November 1986
By: Anne Engelhart, Nancy Falk, Elizabeth Wang
Genre / Form
Topical
- Affirmative action programs
- African American women
- Bank employees
- Clerical occupations
- Clerks
- Clerks--Labor unions
- Discrimination in employment
- Hospitals--Employees
- Insurance companies--Employees
- Labor disputes
- Labor unions--Organizing
- Minorities--Employment
- Municipal officials and employees--Labor unions
- Officials and employees--Labor unions
- Organizers--Clerical
- Publishers and publishing--Employees
- Race discrimination
- Secretaries
- Sex discrimination in employment
- Sexual harassment of women
- Universities and colleges--Employees
- Wages--Women
- Women clerks
- Women--Employment
Subject
- Harvard University (Organization)
- Title
- Tepperman, Jean. Papers of Jean Tepperman, 1974-1975: A Finding Aid
- Author
- Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- sch00939
Repository Details
Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository
The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.