Vince

18 May 1994 Press Release by Atiya Lockwood Liberty Press 23 Image Courtesy of the Black Cultural Archives

Press Release on Women's Rights

In the Black Cultural Archives, they handed us huge piles of documents that we could sift through. It felt like I was digging for treasure. The one document that I found was a press release on Women's rights in the 1990s. The materiality of the document is more modern than the documents from either the National British Library or Friends House. Most documents feel like they were printed yesterday. The document felt like it was white printer paper. There was no distinct smell because they are more recent in comparison to some of the other documents that they had. There was a magazine article that seemed more fragile, but stronger compared to the ones we have previously seen in other archives. There was no significant smell to the documents because it was so new. The document that I am working with is an archival press release that is to document human rights violations in the UK. There is a letterhead saying that it was written on 18th May, 1994 but is not for publication until 25th May, 1994. At the time, there was a growing movement towards women's rights and this press release helped amplify and spread the word of the current movement. This document relates back to our Bloomsbury studies because of the belief in Women's rights within Virginia Woolf's ideals. This reminded me of Virginia Woolf's quote from Three Guineas on page 36 where she writes "I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." This quote references the argument Woolf argues that women have historically been excluded from the literary world as well as other spheres. It speaks on the broader issue for women's rights and how they deserve equal treatment in not only literature but other spheres of society. While looking in the archives, I realized that this helped set the stage for what women were doing in the UK to gain more rights. It is often forgotten that women’s rights movements happened not only in the US but in the UK as well. It helped remind me that women’s rights are not a national movement, but a universal movement. I think it is important to note how the development of women’s rights was different in other countries and this document helped support that. This press release of clear guidelines that needed to be considered for women’s rights helped bring to light the importance of media news outlets for the success of this movement. What I enjoyed most about this archive was that the lecture that was given during our visit matched very well with what we were looking through in the documents. Some of the points that were made in the press release matched the inequalities that were mentioned in her lecture. All in all, it was a great experience that I had working in these archives. 

Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Edited by Mark Hussey, First ed., Harcourt, 2006.