Social Welfare History Project Events

Red Summer, Race Riots, and White Supremacist Terror – Sources

As the influenza pandemic of 1918 began to subside, U.S. cities in 1919 saw an explosion of racial violence frequently described as “race riots,” “Negro riots” or “race wars.” Violent events such as those in Elaine, Arkansas, the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Colfax, Louisiana are now named race massacres. It should be noted that, while 1919 was particularly violent, Red Summer was not the only year of terror directed against Black neighborhoods.

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…

Women’s Rights Conventions

September 8 -10, 2002 marked the 150th anniversary of the Third National Women’s Rights Convention, held in Syracuse, New York in 1852 to discuss “woman’s social, civil, and religious rights” and a “plan of operation” to secure them. In celebration of the 1852 Convention, a special exhibit, Declarations of Independence: National Women’s Rights Conventions, 1850-1863 was on display in Women’s Rights National Historical Park Visitor Center from September 7 through October 31, 2002.

Springfield Race Riot of 1908

On the evening of August 14, 1908, a race war broke out in the Illinois capital of Springfield. Angry over reports that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman, a white mob wanted to take a recently arrested suspect from the city jail and kill him….In the early hours of the violence, as many as five thousand white Springfield residents were present, mostly as spectators. Still angry, the rioters minus most of the spectators next methodically destroyed a small black business district downtown, breaking windows and doors, stealing or destroying merchandise, and wrecking furniture and equipment. The mob’s third and last effort that night was to destroy a nearby poor black neighborhood called the Badlands. Most blacks had fled the city, but as the mob swept through the area, they captured and lynched a black barber, Scott Burton, who had stayed behind to protect his home.

Farmville Protests of 1963

Written by Kate Agnelli, MSW. “One of the most well-known Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history, Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. One of the provisions of the decision was that public schools in the United States were to integrate ‘with all deliberate speed,’ but in many places, local and state governments resisted for months and years.”

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938

On May 24, 1937, President Roosevelt sent the bill to Congress with a message that America should be able to give “all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” He continued: “A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling worker’s wages or stretching workers’ hours.”

Bonus March

Following WWI, a pension was promised all returning service men to be administered in 1945. As the Great Depression took shape, many WWI veterans found themselves out of work, and an estimated 17,000 traveled to Washington, D.C. in May 1932 to put pressure on Congress to pay their cash bonus immediately. The former soldiers created camps in the Nation’s capital when they did not receive their bonuses which led to their forcible removal by the Army and the bulldozing of their settlements.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was a cornerstone of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” (McLaughlin, 1975). This law brought education into the forefront of the national assault on poverty and represented a landmark commitment to equal access to quality education.