Search Results for: war on poverty

Hopkins, Harry Lloyd

Written by Dr. June Hopkins, Associate Professor, History Dept., Armstrong Atlantic State University. Harry L. Hopkins (1890-1946) — Social Worker, Architect of the New Deal, Public Administrator and Confidant of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Hoey, Jane M.

Jane M. Hoey (1892-1968) — Social Worker, Welfare Administrator, Government Official Introduction: Jane Hoey was a social worker, a welfare administrator and a government official. Her most significant contribution was as the Director of the Bureau of Public Assistance and later the Bureau of Family Services within the U.S. Social Security Administration. She was…

Halbert, Leroy Allen

By John E. Hansan, Ph.D. Leroy Allen Halbert (1875-1958) — Pioneer Social Worker, Director of the Nation’s First Department of Public Welfare, Advocate for the Unemployed, Social Reformer, and Author

Ginsberg, Sadie Dashew

Sadie Dashew Ginsberg (1901–1993): Child Welfare Advocate, Early Childhood Education Teacher and Founder of the Childrens Guild in Baltimore, MD Sadie Dashew Ginsberg was born in East Baltimore in 1901 and reared on Gay Street, the daughter of Russian immigrant parents, Jacob Dashew and Eve Chircus, who came to the city in the late 1890s…

Dix, Dorthea Lynde

Miss Dorothea Dix (1802 – 1887): Teacher, Nurse, Social Reformer and Advocate for the Mentally Ill by Dr. Graham Warder, Keene State College Dorothea Dix was born on April 4, 1802 in the frontier town of Hampden, Maine. Her father was poor, a drifter, and probably an alcoholic. He was also a Methodist minister and…

Day, Dorothy

Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) — Journalist, Social Activist, Pacifist By Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland School of Social Work Dorothy Day’s early life gave little indication of what lay ahead. She was bright, bookish, worked hard, and aspired to be a writer. Religion did not play…

University Settlement of New York City

During the year 1886, in the heart of the Lower East Side, upwards of 3,000 people lived in a single square block. The tenement buildings of the area normally had four apartments on each floor; a typical apartment would consist of one small room that was well-lighted and ventilated, and several others that were wholly dark, and might house a family of five or more, and perhaps a boarder.

Children’s Bureau

Written by Kriste Lindenmeyer, Ph.D., Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The establishment of the U.S. Children’s Bureau in 1912 marked a high point in the effort by many Americans to improve the lives of children.

Temporary Emergency Relief Administration

In 1930, with unemployment rising and jobs becoming increasingly scarce, American citizens began to feel the effects of the economic downturn that began with the Stock Market Crash the previous October. The Great Depression was just beginning. The problem of unemployment in New York State and in its major cities grew increasingly critical, and it was obvious that neither local funding nor privately-supported agencies could handle the crisis. Despite the lack of accurate statistics, all cities had reported that unemployment had reached unprecedented proportions. New York, as the leading industrial state, had an especial need to maintain and develop the wage-earner market. With the support of both labor and business, Frances Perkins, the state industrial commissioner, told Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt that public works projects were “the greatest source of hope for the future,” and she recommended the immediate implementation of local public works programs along with public employment clearinghouses.1

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.