Stevens, Doris, 1888-1963

Doris Stevens was born Dora Caroline Stevens on October 26, 1888, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Henry Henderbourck Stevens (1859-1930) and Caroline D. Koopman Stevens (1863-1932). Doris had an older sister, Alice Stevens Burns (1885-1954), and two younger brothers, Harry E. Stevens (ca.1892-1943) and Ralph G. Stevens (1895-1968). In December 1921, she married lawyer Dudley Field Malone (1882-1950), keeping her name. She filed for divorce in 1927; it was granted in 1929. In 1935, Stevens married journalist Jonathan Mitchell (1899-1983), with whom she had been involved since 1923.

Stevens graduated from Omaha High School in 1905 and from Oberlin College in 1911. A talented piano and cello player, she taught music lessons to finance her college education. After graduation, she worked as a teacher. She became active in the suffrage movement; in 1913, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became the National Woman's Party, hired her. Stevens was a paid organizer for the National Woman's Party through 1920, at which time she published her book, Jailed for Freedom, which described the imprisonment of women activists in 1917 during the National Woman's Party's radical campaign for suffrage. Stevens continued to be a member of the National Woman's Party for the next thirty years and served the party in various capacities: as a vice president, as chair of the Committee on International Action, and as a member of the National Council. From the mid-1920s until her death, Stevens's main residence was in Croton, New York, among a bohemian colony of artists and activists. From 1928 to 1939, Stevens served as chair of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW), an advisory group created by the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States). After 1939, Stevens turned to lecturing, composing songs about her Nebraska childhood, and organizing her archives and writing about her work with the IACW. She remained active in the Lucy Stone League, another women's rights organization, until her death of a stroke in New York City, on March 22, 1963.