Conditions Governing Access
Conditions Governing Reproduction and Use
Preferred Citation
Acquisition Information
Processing History
Sponsor
UCLA Catalog Record ID
Biography
Scope and Content
Organization and Arrangement
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Related Material
Title: Barbara Macdonald papers
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.2159
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
1.8 linear feet
(4 document boxes, 1 shoe box)
Date (inclusive): 1912-2002
Abstract: Barbara Macdonald (1913-2000) was a social worker, lesbian feminist activist and ageism activist. Her work was the inspiration
for the First West Coast Conference of Old Lesbians in 1987. Out of the conference came the creation of Old Lesbians Organizing
for Change, a national organization seeking to end the ageism experienced by old women. This collection contains Macdonald's
published and unpublished talks, drafts, notes, ephemera, promotional material and publisher's correspondence. The collection
also includes materials by and about author and activist Cynthia Rich, Macdonald's partner and coauthor of their book
Look Me in the Eye.
Language of Materials: Materials are in English, with a small amount in Japanese (noted below).
Physical Location: Stored off-site at SRLF. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button
located on this page.
Creator:
MacDonald, Barbara, 1913-2000
Conditions Governing Access
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. All requests to access special collections material must be made in
advance using the request button located on this page.
Conditions Governing Reproduction and Use
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright,
are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright
and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Barbara Macdonald papers (Collection 2159). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research
Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Acquisition Information
Gift of Cynthia Rich, 2013. Gift of Barbara Macdonald.
Processing History
Processed by Stacy Wood, 2013. Description enhanced and further physical processing completed by Sabrina Ponce in 2017.
Sponsor
The
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive at UCLA is an outreach and collection-building partnership between the
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives , the
UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) , and
UCLA Library . These collections expand the pool of primary source materials available to researchers and to the community at large. This
partnership was initiated by CSW and is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to inventory, organize,
preserve, and digitize more than eighty Mazer collections pertaining to lesbian and feminist activism and writings.
UCLA Catalog Record ID
Biography
Barbara Anne (Charles) Macdonald, social worker, lesbian feminist activist, and author, was born on September 11, 1913, to
Emily Lister (Baker) Charles and Fred Henly Charles in Pomona, California. She grew up around La Habra, California. At the
age of fifteen, she left home permanently and began supporting herself as a domestic worker in Long Beach, California. In
1930 Macdonald married Elmo Davis; the marriage lasted five years. She attended Long Beach Junior College (1931-1932), Santa
Ana Junior College (1932-1937) where she was almost expelled for being a lesbian, and the University of California, Berkeley
(1938-1940). She paid for her education by working as a stunt parachute jumper about which she was the subject of numerous
articles in The Santa Ana Register, which called her "intrepid and daring." Macdonald married John Macdonald in 1941; the
marriage was very brief.
After leaving the University of California, Berkeley, Macdonald worked at WPA Vallejo (Calif.) Housing Authority. From 1950
to 1953 she attended the University of Washington where she received a B.A. and a M.S.W. Upon graduation she moved to Wenatchee,
Washington, and worked as a supervisor for Child Welfare Services. In 1957 she moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, and commuted
to the University of Pennsylvania where she worked on a 3rd year certificate in psychiatric social work. Subsequently she
worked as a clinical social worker in pediatrics at the University of Maryland and taught at the medical school. She lived
in Baltimore from 1964 to 1967 and worked as a school social worker in Baltimore public schools. During this time, she took
up sailing and bought the sailboat "Mighty Mouse." In 1967 she moved to Connecticut where she worked as a consultant for the
Bureau of Pupil Personnel and Special Education for the state of Connecticut. Macdonald and her companion Ethel Weeden, also
a social worker, took a year's leave to travel the country in a Volkswagen bus. They followed that with a trip via freighter
to Asia. Macdonald retired in 1974 as a social worker.
That same year, while living in Connecticut, she took a feminist writing workshop at Goddard-Cambridge Graduate School in
Cambridge, Mass. The workshop was taught by Cynthia Rich, who later became Macdonald's domestic partner of 26 years. Over
the next twenty-five years, Macdonald's work appeared frequently in lesbian and feminist publications such as
Equal Times, Lesbian Ethics, Ms., New Directions, New Women's Times, Sinister Wisdom, and Sojourner. She received national recognition for her writings. In 1980, she covered the UN Mid-Decade Conference on Women in Copenhagen
for
Equal Times. In 1983, along with Rich, Macdonald co-authored
Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism. The book, which appeared in two expanded editions (1991, 2001), combined her personal experiences of ageism with ground-breaking
lesbian feminist theory, and was named by
Ms. as one of 35 classics of the second wave of feminism. It also was widely anthologized for women's studies courses and was
translated into Japanese in 1995. Macdonald was a frequent speaker at lesbian and feminist organizations, universities, and
organizations of social workers nationally and internationally, including the UN Conference on Women at Huairou, China, in
1995. She was the keynote speaker at the National Lesbian Conference in Atlanta in 1991 and gave a plenary address at the
National Women's Studies Conference in 1985. Her work was the inspiration for the First West Coast Conference of Old Lesbians
in 1987. She served on its planning committee and gave the keynote address. Out of the conference came the creation of Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change, a national organization seeking to end the ageism experienced by old women. Macdonald died
June 15, 2000, of Alzheimer's disease.
Scope and Content
The collection contains Macdonald's published and unpublished talks, drafts, notes, ephemera, promotional material and publisher's
correspondence. The collection also includes materials by and about author and activist Cynthia Rich, Macdonald's partner
and coauthor of their book
Look Me in the Eye.
Organization and Arrangement
Materials arranged into the following series:
- Series 1: Barbara Macdonald
- Series 2: Cynthia Rich
- Series 3: Barbara Macdonald and Cynthia Rich
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
COLLECTION CONTAINS AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS: Audiovisual materials in this collection will require assessment and possible digitization
for safe access. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Related Material
Subjects and Indexing Terms
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive at UCLA.
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives.
MacDonald, Barbara, 1913-2000 -- Archives.
Rich, Cynthia -- Archives.
Ageism--United States.
Lesbian feminism.
Women authors, American--Archives.