Social Welfare History Project Eras in Social Welfare History Page 49

Freedmen’s Bureau

At no time was the federal government more involved with African Americans than during the Civil War and Reconstruction period, when approximately four million slaves became freedmen. No agency epitomized that involvement more than did the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually called the Freedmen’s Bureau.

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.

Great Depression: American Social Policy

One observer pointed out to Franklin D. Roosevelt upon taking office that, given the present crisis, he would be either the worst or greatest president in American history. Roosevelt is said to have responded: “If I fail, I shall be the last one.” By the time Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, the traditional ideologies and institutions of the United States were in a state of upheavel. Americans who had grown up promoting the ideology of the “deserving and undeserving poor” and the stigma of poor relief were now standing in line for relief.

Miss Bailey Says

In the depth of the Great Depression, the March 1933 issue of Survey Midmonthly journal carried the first in a series of columns that would continue for a decade. The subject of the columns — Amelia Bailey — “Miss Bailey” to most people — was a 1930s-style virtual-reality public relief supervisor.

Harry Hopkins and New Deal Policies

The cultural and political currents that shaped American society during the early decades of the twentieth century had a decided effect on the configuration of the American welfare system as it appeared in the 1930s. Social workers, politicians, and reformers carried those currents into the maelstrom of the Great Depression to influence New Deal policy.

Harry Hopkins and Work Relief During the Great Depression

Harry Hopkins’ New Deal work relief and jobs programs, designed to overcome the economic devastation wrought by the Great Depression during the 1930s, included the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA).