Biography | Gloria Steinem — The Neilson Reading Room That Holds Her Papers

In 1984 Gloria Steinem began sending her papers to Smith's Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History.

She kept sending them.

The files sit with the papers of other organizers, not in a shrine to one alumna.

On 31 March 2022 the college named the Special Collections reading room on the third floor of the rebuilt Neilson Library for her.

The room is Neilson 307, 7 Neilson Drive, open to anyone who makes an appointment.

The new library, finished after a gut renovation, is not the stack she used as a student. John M. Greene Hall, a short walk across the lawn, is the 1956 graduation pin.

This one is the afterlife of the work.

Researchers sit with the correspondence, the speech drafts, the Ms. files, and the notes from the road.

Steinem argued that keeping the record of grassroots work is itself organizing.

The room is that argument in oak and daylight.

A visitor does not need a Smith ID to read here.

Photo: Neilson Library, Smith College, June 2025, Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Gloria Steinem, 26 September 1975, U.S. News & World Report, Library of Congress, public domain.