Social Welfare History Project admin Page 28

Big Brother and Big Sister Federation

Early in the twentieth century, men in both Cincinnati, OH and New York City began to serve as so-called volunteer big brothers, or friends and advisers to fatherless boys.

American Seaman’s Friend Society

The ASFS was officially founded in 1828, with trustees from such port cities as Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston and Savannah. The first general agent was Reverend Joshua Leavitt, a temperance lecturer for the American Temperance Society and a revivalist who was an anti-slavery leader and a charter member of the Liberty Party of 1840. The…

American Red Cross

Clara Barton and a circle of acquaintances founded the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 1881. Barton first heard of the Swiss-inspired International Red Cross Movement while visiting Europe following the Civil War. Returning home, she campaigned for an American Red Cross society and for ratification of the Geneva Convention protecting…

American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union (1920-present) The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded in 1920 by Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman and others. The stated goal of ACLU is to “defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person by the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution and laws of the…

American Association of Public Welfare Officials

In 1930, as the financial depression progressed President Herbert Hoover appealed to the association to assist in developing public relief programs in the different states, counties and cities. Thus, the initial project of the new association was to help President Herbert Hoover’s Emergency Committee for Employment (later named the President’s Organization for Unemployment Relief) in gathering information on the need for emergency public relief and to develop plans on how to meet those needs throughout the country.

Conservative Transition in American Social Policy

Although American corporations have blasted off in the application of Internet technology, the research that led to the development of the Internet was done in the government sector of the United States, not the business sector as you might expect

The 1970’s as Policy Watershed

In 1974 the expansive social policy system that had prevailed in the postwar era ended, and a more restrictive system that would characterize the rest of the seventies and the early eighties began to take its place.

Obtaining Civil Rights In Baltimore 1946-1960

Looking at the events as a whole there is no pattern in the changes. The differential pace of overcoming obstruction to change for the better continued even in circumstances where it was ordered by court action. As has been already noted, in 1947 the Baltimore School System received the Hollander award for promoting integration in the schools…

Civil Rights Movement

Although the roots of the civil rights movement go back to the 19th century, the movement peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. African American men and women, along with whites, organized and led the movement at national and local levels. They pursued their goals through legal means, negotiations, petitions, and nonviolent protest demonstrations.

American Social Policy in the 1960’s and 1970’s

As the decade of the 1960s began, the United States had the “highest mass standard of living” in world history.1 The strong American postwar economy of the late 1940s and 1950s continued into the 1960s.