A Radcliffe-sponsored photographic exhibit, "Women of Courage," opened last night at the Boston Public Library.

Public Library.

Sponsored by Radcliffe's Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, the exhibit portrays 71 women who participated in the Library's Black Women Oral History Project.

Photographer Judith Sedwick spent the last three years travelling around the country to photograph the subject of the Library's 10-year project. The portraits will be on display in the Public Library for the rest of the month, at which time the exhibit will be moved to Seattle, the first stop on a nationwide tour.

The Oral History project, which was completed this year, is comprised of oral memoirs of a selected group of older Black women who "made significant contributions of varying kinds to American society in the early and middle decades of the 20th century," said Schlesinger Library Director Patricia King.

Participants in the project include Rosa Parks, whose refusal to obey the Jim Crow laws sparked the 1955 Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Ala. Muriel S. Snowden, co-founder and director of Freedom House, a human rights advocacy institution in Roxbury, also took part in the program.

The tapes and transcripts of the project, originally funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, are housed at the Schlesinger Library and have been made available to other interested colleges and educational institutes around the country.