Social Welfare History Project Social Welfare Issues Page 2

Food Assistance in the United States

By Laura Crouch, 2020. In the United States, millions of people face hunger and food insecurity each day. Unable to provide for themselves and their families, they turn to food assistance programs for both short and long term needs. The USDA defines food insecurity as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA, 2019). About 40 million Americans struggle with food insecurity each year.

Celebrating Freedom: Juneteenth and Emancipation Day Commemorations, Richmond, Va.

Celebrating Freedom: Juneteenth and Emancipation Day Commemorations, Richmond, Va. Alice W. Campbell June 18, 2020 On June 16, 2020, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam proposed making June 19, Juneteenth, an official state holiday commemorating the end of slavery in America. On June 19, 2020, by Northam’s executive order, Virginia became the second state to…

Segregation. Color Pattern from the Past–Our Struggle to Wipe it Out. Survey Graphic, January 1947

This item may also be read through the Internet Archive. Materials related to this topic may also be found in the Social Welfare History Image Portal.

Willard State Hospital, New York. Primary Sources

Plans and elevations and a historical sketch of the Willard Asylum for the insane, at Willard, on Seneca-Lake, N.Y. (1887) This report may also be read through the Internet Archive. Annual report of the Trustees of the Willard State Hospital, for the year 1892 This report may also be read through the Internet Archive. Annual…

Influence and Controversy. The Races of Mankind and The Brotherhood of Man

Published on October 35, 1943, The Races of Mankind makes the argument that all the world’s humans are biologically the same. The pamphlet inspired a short training film that aimed to decrease racial tensions, The Brotherhood of Man.

Tenement House Reform

Primary sources related to tenement house reforms in the State of New York and the passage of the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901.

Seventeenth Street Mission, Richmond VA

In 1911, Murray Grey and other students from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (later, Union Presbyterian Seminary) started The Seventeenth Street Mission, a settlement house and urban ministry outreach program in Shockoe Bottom, the most impoverished neighborhood of Richmond, Va.

Immigration and Ethnicity: Documents in United States History

Immigration and Ethnicity: Documents in United States History By Catherine A. Paul January 18, 2018 Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law on May 6, 1882 by President Chester A. Arthur in response to native-born Americans’ belief that unemployment and declining wages were due to Chinese workers. This…

Conversation at Buffalo (1939)

A fictional conversation in which three delegates to the National Conference on Social Work discuss the effects of segregation and racism on African American social workers.

Children Who Labor – film (1912)

“Children Who Labor” was a collaboration between the Edison Company and the National Child Labor Committee, the nonprofit organization founded in 1904 and chartered by Congress to promote the rights of “children and youth as they relate to work and working.”