TAUNY is collaborating with Dr. Judith DeGroat (History, St Lawrence University) and the Research and Digital Scholarship team at SLU's ODY Library to collect and share materials related to involvement in the women’s movement in the North Country in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this time, young women from the local intentional communities and universities as well as women in the towns and traditional farms of the area came together in consciousness-raising groups and direct political action to address issues such as domestic violence and environmentalism. This movement brought area newcomers together with locals to address concerns that brought them together even as some of those concerns divided the larger community, just as the country was divided. This important element of our local history deserves to be documented and shared among participants as well as younger generations.

Do you or might someone you know have stories or materials to share, related to this movement? One group, North Country Women, published a newsletter, Women Together. St. Lawrence’s library holds a collection of the issues and some materials to which we hope to add: might someone have a missing issue they would be willing to have scanned and added to the collection? Another element of the project is to collect oral histories from participants whose memories of their lives and work form a crucial part of the story we hope to tell. The overall goal is to make this history available to our community and beyond so that the North Country’s participation in a key part of US history and culture will be more widely known.

If you have anything you would like to share for this project, have any questions about it, or would like to get involved, please contact Judith DeGroat at jdegroat@stlawu.edu.