Manuscripts Collection
Ruth Gage was born in Olivia, Minnesota on February 1, 1899, the first of two daughters born to Lillian E. Knox and George Franklin Gage, an attorney and Renville County probate judge. She graduated from Olivia High School in 1915 and then attended Stanley College, a private women's college in Minneapolis, for one year. She returned to Olivia at the end of the 1916 school year and, along with her sister Lucille, was stricken with polio. Ruth survived, but her sister did not. The following year Ruth and her mother moved to Minneapolis where Ruth enrolled in the University of Minnesota. She graduated in 1919 with a degree in political science and on September 10th of the same year married Woodard L. Colby, a physician with whom she became acquainted when she was hospitalized with polio.
Following their marriage the couple spent two years in Venice where Woodard continued his study of pediatric medicine and where Ruth studied voice and volunteered to help distribute food through the American Friends Service Committee child feeding program. Ruth met Dorothy Detzer, national executive secretary for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1924-1947, in Venice. Detzer was also working with the Quaker famine relief program and it may have been her influence that prompted Ruth to join the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom during its third international conference.
Upon their return to Saint Paul, Woodard joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota and Ruth gave birth in June of 1923 to a son named Gage. Over the next twenty years Ruth lived the life of a prestigious physician's wife. She attended meetings of women's social and literary clubs, formed her own business as an interior decorator and specialized in children's playrooms, supported Hubert H. Humphrey in his mayoral campaigns, served on the board of the Hallie Q. Brown Community House, and was active in the Minnesota branch of Save the Children Federation. She also sustained her membership in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, joined the Minnesota chapter, and rose to positions of leadership within the organization.
During the second world war, Ruth volunteered as the placement officer for the St. Paul Resettlement Committee, an organization that aided Japanese-Americans who were interned in Minnesota. Ruth also opened her own home to several refugees and provided shelter to the children of British author and pacifist Vera Brittain, John Catlin and Shirley Catlin (Shirley Williams).
At the close of the war Ruth and Dorothy Detzer attended the charter conference of the United Nations in San Francisco as non-governmental organization observers who represented the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. That experience deeply engaged Ruth and changed the course of her life. Immediately following the conference she went to New York and spent the remainder of her life devoted to the United Nations, first with UNICEF, then as a press correspondent, and later as program director for the Speakers Research Committee.
Ruth's role as a leader in the peace, disarmament, and human rights movements truly emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. She joined with Women Strike for Peace and participated in their first march in Washington on November 1, 1961 to protest nuclear weapons testing. She also served as the coordinator for the international league of Women Strike for Peace and worked with the Soviet Women's Committee to urge acceptance of the Test Ban Treaty during the Geneva disarmament negotiations. When United States involvement escalated in Vietnam Ruth joined Another Mother for Peace and supported the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Other organizations that Ruth joined and supported included National Organization for Women, Promoting Enduring Peace, National Peace Action Coalition, Arab American Women's Friendship Association, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Conference for New Politics, Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo), and the American Humanist Association. She also remained active with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and served as their U.S. representative to the United Nations during the mid-1970s.
Ruth Gage-Colby died in California on September 25, 1984. She is interred at the city cemetery in Hector, Minnesota.
Biographical information was taken from the collection.
The bulk of the collection documents Gage-Colby's youth and the years preceding her death. Materials that document her youth include three scrapbooks filled with photographs, theater and concert programs, invitations, dance cards, ticket stubs, commencement programs, scattered correspondence, news clippings, and other ephemera that span her high school and college years, as well as the first few years following her marriage. Some of these materials were annotated by Gage-Colby and carry her reflections on people, places, and social engagements. The overall tone of these scrapbooks present the picture of an idyllic, affluent, and educated young woman who enjoyed the best the world could offer.
No papers that could document Gage-Colby's life from the mid-1920s through the mid-1950s as a physician's wife, mother, and emerging volunteer activist are included within the collection. Correspondence dated 1959-1976 and articles, speeches, and notes dated 1964-1975 represent that portion of Gage-Colby's life after she was well established within the United Nations and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Although undoubtedly only a fragmentary portion of the countless pieces of correspondence she wrote and received and of the numerous speeches, lectures, and articles she presented, these papers portray a highly realistic, intelligent, and contemplative woman who was passionately engaged in trying to change the world and, in particular, to change American policy regarding nuclear weaponry, atomic energy, and Vietnamese military involvement.
Papers that document the years preceding Gage-Colby's death include a small amount of correspondence written between 1980 and 1984. Papers documenting this period also include correspondence and notes dated 1981-1988 that were created or compiled by her friend Marion Parks who had watched over Gage-Colby when she fractured her hip in November 1981 and who had intended to write a biography about her. Although some of these materials carry a tragic tone, they also portray Gage-Colby's zeal toward achieving a peaceful world and her determination to live life to the fullest.
Additional manuscript collections at the Minnesota Historical Society document Ruth Gage-Colby's affiliations with war relief and social service agencies and her activities during the period of the Second World War. These collections include the records of the St. Paul Resettlement Committee, an organization that helped Japanese Americans who had been removed from the Pacific Coast and interned in Minnesota, and the Minnesota Branch records of Save the Children, an organization that aided refugee and disadvantaged children. Gage-Colby's long affiliation with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is also reflected in the Society's collection of the records of the Minnesota Branch.
A collection of pamphlets and printed source material regarding women and peace that were compiled by Ruth Gage-Colby are available in the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. The Peace Collection also holds other manuscript collections that can further document Ruth Gage-Colby's role as a leading activist in the world peace movement. These collections include the records of the U.S. section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the records of the Emerging Peace Campaign, the records of Another Mother for Peace, the papers of Helen St�cker, and the papers of Mildred Scott Olmsted.
Ruth Gage-Colby also appears as a correspondent in a great number of manuscript collections held by many other repositories. These include the Vera Brittain Fonds at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario; the records of the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin; the Hugh B. Hester Papers at Clemson University Library in South Carolina; the Rebecca Shelley Papers at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the Helen Boyden Lamp Papers at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Accession number: 14,044; 15,664; 15,809
Processed by: Monica Manny Ralston, April 2002
Catalog ID number: 08-00010041
The Society's collection of Ruth Gage-Colby papers came from a number of sources following Gage-Colby's death. The largest portion of her papers had been turned over to Marion Parks, a former State Department employee and member of the Environmental Forum, who had intended to write a biography of Gage-Colby. Parks and Gage-Colby had formed a friendship through their interest in the Environmental Programme of the United Nations during the 1970s. Parks died in 1990 without completing her biography; however, her notes and correspondences regarding Gage-Colby were transferred to the Minnesota Historical Society and are cataloged with Ruth Gage-Colby's papers.
A June 28, 1986 letter from Marion Parks to Gage-Colby's son notes that Parks had donated Gage-Colby's collection of resource material regarding the Vietnam War and the Middle East to Georgetown University. Parks also donated Gage-Colby's collection of United Nations publications to the sociology department of the Martin Luther King Library in Washington D.C. to supplement their holdings.
A copy of the remarks Gage-Colby made to the Research Speakers Committee for the United Nations on October 28, 1970 titled "Let's Not Blame the United Nations" was acquired from the reprint archives of Promoting Enduring Peace.
Includes a business card showing Gage-Colby as the United Nations
Representative for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom; a
name badge from the 1983 World Conference Against A and H Bombs; an
autobiographical sketch; two sets of typed notes from conversations with Marion
Parks, Verta A. Taylor, and Leila Rupp; a
The correspondence is arranged in chronological order and incudes both outgoing and incoming letters. The file represents only a small sample of the multitude of acquaintances, organizations, causes, and issues with which Gage-Colby was involved. Included are copies of letters she wrote to Hubert H. Humphrey, U Thant, Eslanda Robeson, Ralph Bunche, and Eugene McCarthy. Also included are copies of circular letters that Gage-Colby wrote or signed as a representative of organizations such as Women Strike for Peace, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Versailles Labor Conference, the Student Mobilization Committee Benefit Fund, and the Fort Hood Three Defense Committee.
The file contains incoming correspondence from Hugh B. Hester,
East German women, members of the German Democratic Republic Peace Council
(
The contents of this folder are filed in chronological order and include fragments, notes Gage-Colby made during conferences and meetings, and the text of speeches she gave. Included are notes taken during a 1964 meeting of New York Women Strike for Peace that documents their discussion on disarmament policy; a speech made in Miami in 1973 regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; a speech made in Cairo in 1973 to the Hoda Sharawy Association that addressed the topic of women, peace, and nuclear weaponry; a 1975 article that criticized United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim's views on atomic energy; and a 1975 article that evaluated the relationship of the United States to the United Nations. Fragmentary items include undated notes on women and war and 1975 speech notes regarding the Equal Rights Amendment.
Includes Gage-Colby's 1958 report as program chairman of the Committee and two circular memoranda announcing scheduled programs.
Includes material distributed at the 1967 Chicago conference as well as a memorandum that Gage-Colby drafted to outline a strategy for garnering the support of moderate Republicans to an anti-Vietnam presidential campaign.
Includes material distributed at the conference as well as Gage-Colby's notes regarding the remarks made by speakers, the reactions of delegates, and her own observations and impressions.
Gage-Colby suffered a hip fracture in November 1981 that subsequently led her to move from her New York City apartment to Florida. This file is a combination of the correspondence exchanged between Marion Parks and Irene Dickinson and others regarding the care of Gage-Colby, her last years, and her death. Some of the letters concern Park's efforts to write a biography of Gage-Colby and to secure her papers. These letters include correspondence between Parks and Gage-Colby's son, Gage Colby.
The contents reflect Gage-Colby's life as a student at Olivia High School. Included are photographs of her family, classmates, and teachers; commencement programs; news clippings about school sports, plays, and other social activities; and visiting cards that accompanied gifts given to Gage-Colby upon her graduation. Materials found loose within the scrapbook were removed and placed into a folder.
This scrapbook contains a variety of materials compiled by Gage while a freshman at Stanley College, a private women's college in Minneapolis. The contents include snapshots of faculty and classmates, event memorabilia including church bulletins, theater and concert programs, dance cards, place cards, a few newspaper clippings, invitations, and correspondence. These items are heavily annotated by Gage and include her reactions to plays, concerts, parties, and other social events, as well as a detailed description of her room in Stanley Hall. Materials found loose within the scrapbook were removed and placed into a folder.
This post-bound scrapbook, published as the
Incomplete grade records from the University's Registrar and a treatment pamphlet from the Student Health Service testify to the 1918 influenza epidemic that infected Gage-Colby during the winter of 1918-1919. War-related items include materials from the Northwest Loyalty Convention held in St. Paul and Minneapolis in November of 1917; a Red Cross membership card; and a small "unconditional surrender" banner. Materials pertaining to the Northwest Loyalty Convention include a delegate's ribbon, a printed copy of convention resolutions, a printed copy of an address made by Otto Kahn, and a circular letter written by Gage-Colby's father. Loose materials within this scrapbook remain in place.