ORGANIZATIONS FILES - Commission on Rutgers and the State University

Much of the Lena Anthony Robbins papers is composed of correspondence and news clippings, mostly concerning her activities in the New Jersey Federation of Women's Clubs, the League of Women Voters, and the American Association of University Women. The papers were originally given after her death by her husband, Leonard H. Robbins, who had partly organized them, to the League of Women Voters New Jersey. When the LWVNJ donated its records to Special Collections at Rutgers in 1960, the Lena Anthony Robbins papers were included with them.

With the papers that Leonard H. Robbins labeled "Lena's Rogue Gallery," containing news clippings, obituaries, and other information relating to friends of Robbins most of whom were active in the women's movements of the times, little can be gleaned from this collection about her personal life. Her decades-long interest in the role of women in politics, however, is amply documented, and her views on the place of women in politics and the greater society after suffrage are made clear. She believed that as keepers of the home and women had a special role to play in politics, and that what she saw as their special interest in family and children would make a positive change in the workings of government.

Documents in this collection are very diverse; they include correspondence with other women active in women's clubs, the League of Women Voters, and other organizations in which Robbins played a prominent role, and in other organizations in which women were active. Robbins spent a lot of time lobbying for various causes, and the-collection contains many bills from the State legislature, some of which are annotated with notes in her own hand, and copies of speeches Robbins made to women's organizations. Robbins saved many clippings, both from newspapers and from newsletters and other publications, all related to her current interests. She also saved programs and other publications from meetings and conventions, particularly those from the Women's Centennial Congress held in 1940.

Of particular interest are the notes and results of a questionnaire sent out after a "Get-Out-The-Vote" campaign that Robbins organized in 1925; as a suffragist, Robbins was determined that the newly won franchise be exercised by women. The collection contains just one photograph, undated, that of a friend, Mrs. Elizabeth A Harris, and a small collection of buttons and ribbons apparently worn by Robbins when she served as an official challenger at elections, and when she held committee posts at conventions of Women's Clubs.

The collection originally contained a book, Victory: How Women Won It, A Centennial Symposium 1840-1940 (The National American Woman Suffrage Association. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1540) #264 of a limited edition of 300, which was presented to Robbins by Carrie Chapman Catt on November 26, 1940. This book has been transferred to the rare book collection at Special Collections and University Archives.