Charlotte Towle (1896- 1966): Social Worker, Academic, Author of “Common Human Needs” Introduction: Charlotte Towle’s major accomplishments include her work in creating a generic casework curriculum, her study of the educational process of training social workers and other professionals in human service, and her attempts to link the understanding of human behavior and needs…
Continue Reading »Lea Demarest Taylor (June 4, 1883–December 3,1975) — Settlement House Director and Chairman of the Board of the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers Early Years: Lea Taylor was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of Graham Taylor and Leah Demarest Taylor. Graham Taylor was a fifth-generation Dutch Reform church minister who, at…
Continue Reading »Graham Taylor (May 2, 1851 – September 26, 1938): Minister, Social Reformer, Educator and Founder of Chicago Commons Settlement House Early Years: Graham Taylor was born in Schenectady, New York on May 2, 1851, the second son of Dutch-reformed minister William James Romeyn Taylor and Katherine (nee Cowenhoven) Taylor. Following his mother’s death in…
Continue Reading »Ellen Gates Starr (1859 – 1940) – Co-Founder of Hull-House and Social Reformer Ellen Gates Starr was born in Laona, Illinois, in 1859. Starr was a student at the Rockford Female Seminary (1877-78) where she met Jane Addams. Starr taught for ten years in Chicago before joining Addams in 1888 of a tour of…
Continue Reading »“Gertrude Springer has sprung from Better Times to The Survey. With this issue of the Mid-monthly, she takes over, as associate editor, the Social Practice Department…. ” (15 October 1930, p. 106.) Springer undertook field trips and initiated contacts to determine the lay of the social welfare landscape beyond New York. In pithy writing about social issues, policy, and services across the country, she never neglected to explain how things came down to affecting individuals. “Amelia Bailey,” — “Miss Bailey” to most people — was a 1930s-style virtual-reality public relief supervisor. “Miss Baily Says…” columns dealt with issues such as: “When Your Client Has a Car,” “Are Relief Workers Policemen?,” “How We Behave in Other People’s Houses.”
Continue Reading »Charles Irwin Schottland (1906 – 1995) — Social Welfare Expert, Commissioner of the California Department of Public Welfare, Commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration, Founder and Dean of the Heller School of Social Policy at Brandeis University. Introduction: Charles Irwin Schottland was a recognized expert on social welfare programs. He served as Commissioner…
Continue Reading »Carrie Steele Logan (1829–1900) – Founder of the Carrie Steele Orphan Home in Atlanta, GA
Continue Reading »Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a very prominent proponent of a woman’s legal and social equality during the nineteenth century. In 1848, she and others organized the first national woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. She co-authored that meeting’s Declaration of Sentiments, a document modeled on the Declaration of Independence, and introduced the most radical demand: for womens suffrage.
Continue Reading »Margaret (nee: Higgins) Sanger risked scandal, danger, and imprisonment to challenge the legal and cultural obstacles that made controlling fertility difficult and illegal. Ms. Sanger viewed birth control as a woman’s issue and she was prepared to take on the medical establishment, the churches, the legislatures, and the courts. She was persuasive, tireless, single-minded, and unafraid of a fight. On October 16,1916 she opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn, was arrested, and served thirty days for distributing information about contraceptives. From that experience, Sanger moved on to assume leadership of the struggle for free access to birth control. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League, the precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation, and spent her next three decades campaigning to bring safe and effective birth control into the American mainstream.
Continue Reading »Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858–January 6, 1919): 26th President of the United States, First American to Receive the Nobel Peace Prize and a Progressive In 1886 Roosevelt once more entered into politics. President Harrison, after his election in 1889, appointed Roosevelt as a member of the Civil Service Commission of which he later became…
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