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West Virginia Colored Orphans Home (1899-1956)

West Virginia Colored Orphans Home (1899-1956) by Sarah H. Shepherd Founding and Early History In the early 1900s, the booming mine and lumber industries in West Virginia drew Black migrants from the South, a foreshadowing of the Great Migration of African Americans to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states. In the dangerous coal regions of West…

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Maclachlan, H. D. C.

H. D. C. Maclachlan Social reformer, community leader and advocate for juvenile courts Alice W. Campbell   Hugh David Cathcart Maclachlan, D. D. (1869-1929) was born March 16, 1869 in Barrhead, Renfrewshire, Scotland. As a young man, he earned A. M. and B. L. degrees from the University of Glasgow. Then, in 1894, Maclachlan came…

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Light, Mattie McNab

During the past twenty-seven years she has been engaged in religious work, especially devoting her time and talents to evangelistic and rescue work among girls and women. Countless numbers have thus found in her an appreciative and sympathizing friend and a guide and help in time of sorest need.

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Virginia Home and Industrial School for Girls

The Virginia Home and Industrial School for Girls opened in Bon Air, Va., in 1910 as a reform school for the “care and training of incorrigible or vicious white girls … without proper restraint and training, between the ages of eight and eighteen years.”

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Third Street Music School Settlement

Founded in 1894, Third Street has helped to establish community arts education in the United States. The School traces its roots to the late 19th century settlement house movement. It was the unique inspiration of Third Street founder Emilie Wagner to make high quality music instruction the centerpiece of a community settlement house that would also provide social services to the immigrant population of the Lower East Side.

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American Youth Congress

The student movements of the Depression era were arguably the most significant mobilizations of youth-based political activity in American history prior to the late 1960s. In 1934 the American Youth Congress (AYC) came together as the national federation and lobbying arm of the movement as a whole.

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Youth Finds Its Own Answers: 1939

The student movements of the Great Depression era were arguably the most significant mobilizations of youth-based political activity in American history prior to the late 1960s. As time passed, many local youth organizations became more organized in their pursuit of progressive government, and in 1934 the American Youth Congress (AYC) came together as the national federation and lobbying arm of the movement as a whole.

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Recreation Movement in the United States

The first playground in the United States to offer recreational opportunity coupled with leadership was in 1885 when a large sandpile was placed in the yards of the Children’s Mission on Parmenter Street in Boston through the efforts of the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association.

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