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Melba Windoffer papers, 1933-1990

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Windoffer, Melba, 1910-1993
Title
Melba Windoffer papers
Dates
1933-1990 (inclusive)
1960-1985 (bulk)
Quantity
7.42 cubic feet (8 boxes)
Collection Number
1798 (Accession No. 1798-003)
Summary
Papers of a longtime activist in Pacific Northwest socialist, feminist, and labor organizations
Repository
University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA
98195-2900
Telephone: 2065431929
Fax: 2065431931
speccoll@uw.edu
Access Restrictions

Open to all users

Material stored offsite; advance notice required for use.

Request at UW

Languages
English
Sponsor
Funding for encoding this finding aid was partially provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities
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Biographical Note

Melba Windoffer, born September 24,1910, was a Seattle activist who was involved in several local radical groups. She is best known for her work with Radical Women, a socialist feminist organization that she helped establish in 1967 along with Clara Fraser, Susan Stern and Gloria Martin. Windoffer was also an active member and sometimes secretary of the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) and the Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party (CRSP). Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s she also found time to support other radical Seattle organizations such as Seize the Time for Oppressed People (S.T.O.P.), Seattle Committee Against Registration and the Draft (CARD), Divorce Reform Committee, Coalition for Protective Legislation and the Action Childcare Coalition.

In her later years Windoffer became very active in defending the rights of senior citizens. She was a member of the Gray Panthers of Seattle and the Puget Sound Area Council of the National Council of Senior Citizens, and she continuously wrote letters to politicians and opinion pieces to newspapers to voice her displeasure in what she saw as poor treatment of senior citizens in the United States

A resident of West Seattle, and Windoffer also was active in the Duwamish Peninsula Community Commission and its decades long struggle with the City of Seattle to clean up Longfellow Creek.

Windoffer died in Seattle in 1993.

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Content Description

The Melba Windoffer papers consist of organizational records, position papers and writings, letters, distributed information and other documentation pertaining to various Seattle feminist and/or socialist organizations with which she was affiliated, either as an active member or as a supporter. The collection also reflects her avid interest in radical causes and contains printed materials she collected on a wide variety of topics. The papers span the years 1933-1990, with the bulk concentrated in the years she was most active in socialist organizations and Windoffer's retirement years, 1960-1985.

The Organizations series documents the activities of various Seattle radical organizations between 1954 and the late-1980s. The majority of the series documents the three organizations in which Windoffer actively participated - the Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party (CRSP), the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) and Radical Women. These files include organizational records, financial reports, internal memorandum, distributed information, correspondence, position papers, press releases, clippings, and internal publications.

The remaining items in the series document the activities of a variety of other local organizations during the same time period, and which were committed to issues such as women's rights, cleaning up the Duwamish River, socialism, ending the war in Vietnam, ending discrimination, and advocacy for labor and union rights. These records contain position papers, hand bills for events, press releases and other distributed information available to the general public. Winoffer collected limited internal organizational materials of the Coalition for Protective Legislation, Duwamish Peninsula Community Commission (DPCC), Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Staff Rights Organizing Committee (University of Washington)/United Workers Union-Independent.

The bulk of the Subject files series pertains to labor and and advocacy for the needs and rights of senior citizens. Melba Windoffer's husband was an active member of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Local 19 and Winoffer shared her husband's interest in labor issues. In her later years, Windoffer's main interest was championing the rights of senior citizens. She was active in local senior citizen groups and lobbied state and federal governments on topics pertaining to the elderly. These files contain newspaper clippings, magazine articles pertaining to these issues, as well as writings by Winoffer, in the form of letters to the editor, general correspondence, and position papers. Additionally Winoffer visited Ireland on several occasions and kept memorabilia from the trips, correspondence with people she met, and her writing about her trips and the conflict in Northern Ireland. The remaining subject files contain mostly publically distributed information and magazine and newspaper clippings on a variety of topics such as minority groups and foreign countries.

The Personal papers series contains a limited amount of personal papers such as correspondence, photocopies of jokes and cartoons Winoffer presumably found humorous, drafts and final version of letters to the editor, evidence of disputes in the neighborhood, and a few writings left by her husband Lawrence E. Winoffer. Among the personal correspondence are letters from Myra Tanner Weiss.

The Radical Literature series consists of a wide variety of radical literature collected by Winoffer from 1933 to 1990. The majority of the newspaper and magazine collection was published in the United States, with items ranging from U.S. student radical newspapers to national socialist and labor organization publications. There are also a limited number of international journals published in Ireland, China, Romania, England and the former Soviet Union. The pamphlets contain radical writings that cover many subjects from the 1930s through the 1980s. Topics include socialism, communism, civil rights, labor issues, "Mideast crisis", Cuban revolution, feminism, poverty, Marxism, Trotskyism.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Literary rights have been transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.

Preferred Citation

Melba Winoffer papers. Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, Washington.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Arranged into 4 series:

  • Organizations
  • Subject files
  • Personal papers
  • Radical literature collection

Acquisition Information

Source: Melba Windoffer, 1965, 1967, 1972 and Mary Walker, 1993.

Processing Note

Processed by Molly Hults; processing completed in 2007.

Original accessions 0554-001, 1798-001 and 1798-002 have been merged to create the current accession 1798-003. Additional materials previously accessioned as Radical Women of Seattle records (accessions 1180-001, 1492-001, 1774-001, 1774-002, and 1774-003) were determined to be more appropriately located with Windoffer's other files and were consequently merged into this accession during processing.

The Melba Windoffer files contained a considerable amount of duplicate materials, which were removed during processing. Additionally, newspaper clippings that did not directly pertain to Melba Windhoffer, her family, or the organizations of which she was a member, were removed. Personal materials such as Social Security information and returned checks also were also removed.

Separated Materials

Papers concerning Clara Fraser were removed from this collection and integrated into the Clara Fraser Papers as Accession 3187-002. A significant collection of the Socialist Workers Party Discussion Bulletin was removed for separate cataloging. Also removed were printed materials that didn't relate to major organizations or subjects in which Windoffer took an interest.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

 


2007 (Last modified: 4/19/2018)

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