Social Welfare History Project Organizations Page 13

Ovington, Mary White

Mary White Ovington (1865–1951), was a social worker and writer. A white socialist, she was a principal NAACP founder and officer for almost forty years.

Schneiderman, Rose

“Rose Schneiderman, the labor organizer who taught Eleanor Roosevelt everything she ‘knew about trade unionism.’”

The Tennessee Valley Authority: Electricity for All

TVA was one of the most ambitious projects of the New Deal, encompassing many of FDR’s own interests in conservation, public utility regulation, regional planning, agricultural development, and the social and economic improvement of the “Forgotten Americans.”

Niagara Movement (1905-1909)

The Niagara Movement was a civil rights group organized by W.E.B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter in 1905. After being denied admittance to hotels in Buffalo, New York, the group of 29 business owners, teachers, and clergy who comprised the initial meeting gathered at Niagara Falls, from which the group’s name derives.

Harlan: Working under the Gun

Article written by John Dos Passos, The New Republic (1931). “Harlan County in eastern Kentucky, which has been brought out into the spotlight this summer by the violence with which the local Coal Operators’ Association has carried on this attack, is, as far as I can find out, a pretty good medium exhibit of the entire industry: living conditions are better than in Alabama and perhaps a little worse than in the Pittsburgh district.”

WPA Travelling Libraries (1937)

The depression came and county libraries were sorely stricken financially. Rescuing funds from the Federal government through relief agencies came in the nick of time. Numerous employees were being furloughed, others were having their salaries cut for the third or fourth time, book repair and book purchases had ceased, many buildings were sadly in need of repair and service was cut to the bone in the summer of 1933.

New Floors and Ceilings in the Minimum Wage: 1939

“The Wage and Hour Administration Reaches a Second Stage” by Beulah Amidon, an article in Survey Graphic, December, 1939

Turner, Henry McNeal

Henry McNeal Turner (1834 1915): Minister, Chaplin in the Union Army and Advocate for Emigration to Liberia

Lincoln University in Pennsylvania

Lincoln University in Pennsylvania was founded in 1854 by John Miller Dickey, a Presbyterian minister and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson. It claims the title of the first degree-awarding school of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the United States.

Technical Training And Industrial Employment Of The Blind In The United States (1908)

Written by S. M. Green, Superintendent of the Missouri School for the Blind: 1908. Most blind people became blind as adults, but most schools barred adults from attending. Sheltered workshops could employ only a small fraction of blind adults, leaving most without any recourses other than relying on relatives or entering a poorhouse.