GENERAL FILES, 1929-1985

Largely general correspondence, administrative, and programming records of the PAWA. Documents the PAWA's many activities, including sponsoring musical programs, art exhibitions, symposia, language classes, travel, receptions for foreign students, protests, and radio broadcasts, as well as the personal contacts between PAWA members and Latin-American women, and the day-to-day running of the organization. Also includes material about the artists and speakers at PAWA programs. Document types include correspondence, programs, notices of meetings, speeches, resolutions, newsletters, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, brochures, ballots, questionnaires, invitations, mailing lists, and a guest book.

Of particular interest is documentation of PAWA conferences, such as a 1943 conference on the topic "Inter-Racial Understanding: A Key to Inter-American Solidarity," including a speech by Maria Rosa Oliver, Member of the Argentine Committee against Racial Discrimination, who discussed the status of Indian peoples in Argentina, as well as racism in the United States. In the same year, the PAWA, in conjunction with the National Council of Women, sponsored a Pan-American Day Inter-Hemispheric Conference on "How Women of the Americas Can Help Keep their Countries United." Other activities documented are a one-day Inter-American Institute at the Museum of Natural History in 1944, featuring exhibitions of books and teaching materials, and discussion of attitudes toward Latin-America; and the Peoples Congresses, a series of ten weekly meetings on "World Stakes in Latin America," in conjunction with the East and West Association.

Also documents the PAWA's advocacy role, such as petitioning the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women to protect women's rights in the Americas, petitioning the U.N. Commission on Human Rights for an International Bill of Rights in the 1940s, and lobbying for an Inter-American Covenant on the Rights of the Child in 1967. In addition, documents the PAWA's charitable activities, such as raising money for children's centers and educational activities in Latin America, particularly the Milagros kindergarten in Lima, Peru, and donating blankets and money for building materials to victims of the 1970 Peruvian earthquake.

Also of interest are some transcripts of speeches, including an address by Serafino Romualdi of the U.S. Labor Delegation to Argentina about the exploitation of the labor movement by the Perón government; and a speech by Grant herself on Pan-American Day in 1943 entitled "The True Pan-Americanism."

Oversize items stored separately are a program from the PAWA's 25th anniversary dinner, and a citation given to Jacqueline Kennedy from a Bolivian women's group.