By Deniana Clemente

On the lowest level of Princeton University’s Firestone Library, you don’t gaze upon history through a glass case. You hold it. After washing your hands, of course. Each artifact introduces another unexpected character from women’s history. 

Thick papers, scratched with erratic penmanship and bruised with typewriter clicks, spill from one binder. They are the arrest records and fingerprints of a 29-year-old Judith Arcana. Behind them are a pair of vibrant booklets with block print cover art. On the 1958 June cover of The Ladder, a well-manicured hand reaches out to stroke a bramble of garden leaves, gently grasped within the hand of another — perhaps a friend?

Women make vital change in their communities through defiant journalism and activism, yet many of these stories sit unvisited in archival collections rather than the public memory. 

Judith was a Jane. Or a part of it, rather. Jane was an underground abortion service of over 100 people, operating in Chicago from 1969 to 1973 to provide nearly 11,000 affordable and discreet abortions. Jane functioned as a community network, where volunteers answered phone calls, counseled women, arranged their appointments and performed abortions themselves. On the arrest documents meticulously preserved by Princeton archivists, “Judith H. Pildes” stares defiantly back, pressing her ink-coated fingers into the rigid boxes long before she became Judith Arcana, writer, poet, and educator.

Sara Howard, Librarian for Gender and Sexuality Studies, invited visitors to study the artifacts with their bare hands, signalling that this history is meant to be interacted with. Arcana’s fingerprints capture the high stakes of her mission, and the extent she was willing to go for it. They are tangible evidence of what many women endured for reproductive freedom, highlighting how they showed up for one another — not just in makeshift operating rooms, but in jail cells, too. Arcana’s arrest records sit in archives while debates over reproductive rights return to state legislatures, reminding visitors that the questions surrounding bodily autonomy remain unresolved. 

In addition to reproductive rights being threatened, queer women and individuals have been targeted by recent policies regarding ID documents and parental recognition. A pattern arises where women’s rights that are under threat today have already been defended by generations of activists dating back to the 1950s. The Ladder magazine, which ran from 1956 through 1972, a time of normalized homophobia, was distributed by the Daughters of Bilitis to educate the public about lesbian women and advocate for their acceptance into mainstream society. In a piece titled “Lesbian Marriage” published in The Ladder in August 1958, a commenter going by the pseudonym of “Ms. Gene Damon” writes that lesbian marriage need not be perceived as a “problem.” She argues that lesbian couples face the same challenges and share the same joys as heterosexual couples, pointing out that most domestic problems regardless of sexuality “are almost always overcome if the people involved really are in love.”

This endearing, almost old-fashioned take reminds people today that many queer people have the same goals of marriage and family as others, yet are disregarded at the policymaking table. As inclusive healthcare is actively being shot down and anti-LGBTQ+ bills targeting same-sex couples and trans people are continuously introduced, artifacts like The Ladder help visitors to question lawmakers. They remind the public that laws should be tailored to the needs of every American, and not only to Americans with identities that are viewed as the “default.”

The struggles of today are the same struggles of yesterday, and the work of these women remains to be studied. They remind visitors of a responsibility to fight for their rights and the rights of all women, and that the most empowering and impactful acts are often ones of defiance.