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Woman Suffrage: History and Time Line

A resolution calling for woman suffrage had passed, after much debate, at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. In The Declaration of Sentiments, a document based upon the Declaration of Independence, the numerous demands of these early activists were elucidated. The 1848 convention had challenged America to a social revolution that would touch every aspect of life. Early women’s rights leaders believed suffrage to be the most effective means to change an unjust system.

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Roosevelt, Eleanor: The Women’s Movement

Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) became aware of the barriers women faced while working with other women on other social justice issues. Although she did work in a settlement house and joined the National Consumers League before she married, ER’s great introduction to the women’s network occurred in the immediate post World War I period when she worked with the International Congress of Working Women and the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to address the causes of poverty and war.

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Schiff, Philip

As headworker at Madison House during The Great Depression, Schiff, like so many other settlement house workers, tried to cope with the immediate problems of relief, unemployment, and evictions. He established a day care center, introduced venereal disease and tuberculosis control programs, and started a vocational training program for unemployed youth. he was also was a community organizer and helped create a network of Lower East Side social service agencies to advocate for social welfare policies, especially unemployment and housing. In 1936, Philip Schiff ran unsuccessfully on the American Labor Party’s ticket for First Assembly representative to the New York State legislature.

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Women, Settlements and Poverty

Written by Jerry D. Marx, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of New Hampshire, Department of Social Work. This article uses primary source documents from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s to discuss women’s roles in the reconceptualization of poverty in America. It studies the belief drawn from colonial religion that poverty was a result of personal immorality and traces the changing public perception through the turn of the 20th century.

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March on Washington, D.C.: Rev. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people from across the nation came together in Washington, D.C. to peacefully demonstrate their support for the passage of a meaningful civil rights bill, an end to racial segregation in schools and the creation of jobs for the unemployed. It was the largest demonstration ever held in the nation’s capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage. The march is remembered too as the occasion for Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

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National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933

Economists, scholars, politicians, and the public at large were deeply divided as to the underlying causes of the Great Depression and the best means to bring it to an end. In the months following Roosevelt’s inauguration, his advisers, along with members of Congress and representatives from business and labor, drafted the legislation that was introduced in Congress on May 15, 1933, as the National Industrial Recovery Act. The division of opinions about the Depression was reflected in those who drafted NIRA, and the act drew both praise and criticism from across the political spectrum. Nevertheless, the urgency of the economic situation (with unemployment exceeding 30 percent in many parts of the country) pressured Congress to act.

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