Overview
Recorded material includes televised and live appearances of Kip Tiernan promoting organizations and activities that aid the poor, homeless, and socially oppressed.
Dates
- Creation: 1984-2006
Language of Materials
Materials in English.
Access Restrictions:
Access. Unrestricted. An appointment is necessary to use any audiovisual material.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright. Copyright in the videotapes created by Kip Tiernan is held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College for the Schlesinger Library. Copyright in other audiovisual materials in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns.
Copying. Audiovisual materials may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.
Extent
29 videotapes1 DVDs
Collection includes public service announcements (PSAs), news reports, and promotional pieces about Rosie's Place; also included are several concerning the Poor People's United Fund, the Boston Food Bank and Ruah House, as well as television appearances and recorded lectures by Kip Tiernan.
BIOGRAPHY
Founder of Rosie's Place, Boston Food Bank and the Poor People's United Fund, Kip Tiernan was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1926. She was raised by her grandmother, following the death of both her parents by age eleven. Her grandmother was instrumental in teaching Tiernan to care for the less fortunate and in bringing out Tiernan's artistic and musical talent. Raised as a Catholic, Tiernan attended several parochial schools as well as public and boarding schools, but never graduated. She took various college classes in retail management and music. At age twenty-one, she moved to Boston, Massachusetts. During the 1950s, Tiernan worked in public relations and advertising and was running her own public relations firm by the mid-1960s. In 1968, Tiernan left her public relations business to join the anti-war, civil rights, and anti-poverty work that centered around St. Philip's and Warwick House in Boston's South End. Responding to the growing number of homeless and poor women, she founded Rosie's Place in 1974, the first drop-in emergency shelter for women in the United States. In subsequent years, its focus shifted from simply providing shelter to providing the services needed to help women "dig themselves out of untenable situations." In 1979 Tiernan and Fran Froehlich created the Boston Food Pantry, which was later incorporated as the Boston Food Bank. The following year they founded the Poor People's United Fund (PPUF), which sought to provide financial and advocacy support to grassroots organizations in the greater Boston area. The Ethical Policy Project, an outgrowth of Tiernan's and Froehlich's work as fellows at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, was re-cast as the PPUF in 2002, with its mission to change the public policies that deny access to basic human services to all Massachusetts residents. Tiernan has also testified before the Massachusetts General Court (state legislature) and has received numerous honorary degrees and awards for aiding the poor and oppressed. As of 2010, Tiernan continues to write and lecture widely.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Accession numbers: 2006-M27, 2006-M60
The video collection of Kip Tiernan was given to the Schlesinger Library by Kip Tiernan in 2006.
Related Material:
There is related material at the Schlesinger Library; see Papers of Kip Tiernan, 1944-2008 (MC 639).
Processing Information
Processed: August 2010
By: Melissa Dollman
Genre / Form
- DVD-Video discs
- Interviews
- Lectures
- Television programs
- Television public service announcements
- Videotapes
Topical
- AIDS (Disease)--Massachusetts--Prevention
- Catholic women--Massachusetts
- City clergy
- Homeless women--United States
- Lesbians--Massachusetts
- Political activists--United States
- Poor women--Services for--Massachusetts--Boston
- Shelters for the homeless--Massachusetts--Boston
- Women political activists--Massachusetts
- Women's shelters--Massachusetts--Boston
- Title
- Tiernan, Kip. Video collection of Kip Tiernan, 1984-2006: A Finding Aid
- Author
- Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- sch01307
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.