Image caption: Photo of Amanda Johnson, Photo of students and visitors explore archival materials at Tulane University’s Newcomb Institute, where a recent exhibit traced Louisiana’s long history of reproductive rights and justice advocacy—from pre-Roe organizing to present-day activism—through newspapers, personal collections, and community records. (Courtesy of Clare Daniel and Amanda Johnson)

By Becky Gipson

When postdoctoral fellow Amanda Johnson set out to explore Louisiana's long history of reproductive rights advocacy, she turned to an online archive and found exactly what she needed, in part thanks to a strategic investment by Tulane Libraries and Newcomb Institute.

Dr. Johnson, a historian at Tulane University's Newcomb Institute whose work has appeared in Ethnohistory and Women and Social Movements, recently co-curated an archival exhibit tracing reproductive rights and justice activism in Louisiana and the broader Gulf South from the 20th century to today. Central to that work was the Ms. Magazine Archive, a resource made available through a collaborative purchase between Tulane Libraries and the Newcomb Institute.

The archive offers searchable, cover-to-cover access to every issue of Ms. from its founding in 1972 to the present, preserving more than five decades of feminist journalism, activism, and cultural history in high-resolution, digitized format. For Johnson's exhibit, it proved invaluable, offering documentary evidence of how Gulf South feminists were shaping national conversations decades ago, and how that history connects to struggles still unfolding today.

"Examples from Ms. magazine showcased how feminists from the Gulf South were making national news," Johnson noted in a recent article co-authored with Dr. Clare Daniel and published by Ms. magazine this spring.

This is exactly the kind of research impact Tulane Libraries aims to support. Securing the Ms. Magazine Archive required cross-departmental collaboration. Social Sciences Librarian Rachel Stein played an instrumental role in facilitating the purchase and reflects a broader commitment to acquiring resources that serve scholars across disciplines, from history and women's studies to public health, law, and the humanities.

The exhibit Johnson helped create, hosted by the Newcomb Institute as part of Tulane's School of Liberal Arts reproductive justice seminar series, drew on the archive alongside physical collections held in Tulane University Special Collections, Newcomb Archives and Vorhoff Collection, and some can be viewed online at Tulane Digital Collections, personal materials from community partners, and student research. Together, these resources allowed scholars and community members to trace an unbroken chain of advocacy, from pre-Roe organizing and interfaith coalitions of the 1990s to present-day groups like Lift Louisiana and Birthmark Doulas.

“That kind of interdisciplinary, community-engaged scholarship depends on libraries that think expansively about what researchers need,” said Courtney Kearney, Director of Scholarly Engagement. “The Ms. Magazine Archive bridges journalism and activism, the personal and the political, the regional and the national. It is the sort of resource that doesn't fit neatly into a single subject area, and that is precisely its strength.”

Johnson's article, now published in a national outlet, demonstrates the real-world reach of library investments. A collaborative purchase, thoughtfully pursued, helped a postdoctoral fellow produce a scholarship that speaks to historians, public health advocates, legal scholars, and general readers alike.

As Tulane Libraries continues to build collections that reflect the full breadth of the university's research mission, stories like Johnson's serve as a reminder of what is possible when librarians, faculty, and academic institutions work together. Resources acquired today become the foundation for the discoveries, exhibits, and publications of tomorrow.

Newcomb Institute will host an event with Ms. magazine on September 18–19, 2026, focused on exploring how educators, researchers, and archivists can use feminist archives in teaching and learning. The event builds on Newcomb Institute’s co-hosting of the official launch of the Ms. Digital Archive with Ms. and ProQuest in Los Angeles in September 2025.

This gathering with Ms. aims to: strengthen community among feminist educators, researchers, and archivists, and develop resources and strategies for incorporating primary sources into research and classroom instruction. Participants will engage with feminist archives of various types and from a range of institutions.

The event will begin with an evening gathering on September 18 (details forthcoming), followed by a full day of interactive programming on September 19. Members of the Tulane community who are interested in participating are encouraged to contact Clare Daniels at cdaniel5@tulane.edu for more information.