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Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, Philadelphia, PA, 1933.
Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, Philadelphia, PA, 1933.
Photo:Library of Congress
Digital ID pa1042

Mental Health 

Although mental health and mental illness are related, they represent different psychological states.

Mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” It is estimated that only about 17% of U.S adults are considered to be in a state of optimal mental health. There is emerging evidence that positive mental health is associated with improved health outcomes.

Mental illness is defined as “collectively all diagnosable mental disorders” or “health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior (or some combination thereof) associated with distress and/or impaired functioning.” Depression is the most common type of mental illness, affecting more than 26% of the U.S. adult population. It has been estimated that by the year 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability throughout the world, trailing only ischemic heart disease. Source: Centers for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/

 

  • "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" - 1932In the song a beggar talks back to the system that stole his job. Jay Gorney said in an interview in 1974 "I didn't want a song to depress people. I wanted to write a song to make people think. It isn't a hand-me-out song of 'give me a dime, I'm starving, I'm bitter', it wasn't that kind of sentimentality". The song asks why the men who built the nation – built the railroads, built the skyscrapers – who fought in the war, who tilled the earth, who did what their nation asked of them should, now that the work is done and their labor no longer necessary, find themselves abandoned and in bread lines.
  • 5,000 Women March for Equality: 1913In a woman's suffrage demonstration to-day the capital saw the greatest parade of women in its history. In the allegory presented on the Treasury steps it saw a wonderful series of dramatic pictures. In the parade over 5,000 women passed down Pennsylvania Avenue. Some were riding, more were afoot. Floats throughout the procession illustrated the progress the woman's suffrage cause had made in the last seventy-five years. Scattered throughout the parade were the standards of nearly every State in the Union. It was an astonishing demonstration.
  • A Chapter on Idiots (1854)The wearing uncertainty of many years succeeds the infancy. The ignorant notions of idiocy that prevailed before we knew even the little that we yet know of the brain, prevent the parents recognizing the state of the case. The old legal accounts of idiocy, and the old suppositions of what it is, are very unlike what they see. The child ought not, according to legal definition, to know his own name, but he certainly does; for when his own plate or cup is declared to be ready, be rushes to it. He ought not to be able, by law, "to know letters;" yet he can read, and even write, perhaps, although nobody can tell how he learned, for he never seemed to attend when taught. It was just as if his fingers and tongue went of themselves, while his mind was in the moon. Again, the law declared any body an idiot "who could not count twenty pence;" whereas this boy seems, in some unaccountable way, to know more about sums (of money and of every thing else) than any body in the family. He does not want to learn figures, his arithmetic is strong without them, and always instantaneously ready...
  • A Discussion of Public Relief: 1940This report was prepared by Anna Kempshall, Director of Family Service, and most likely to have been presented to the Board of Directors of the Community Service Society November 4, 1940. The subject of relief was very timely because a number of the New Deal programs enacted in 1935 created the nation’s first universal social safety net that included federal and state funding for financial grants to poor individuals and families.
  • A Hard Life (1893)And now a pitiful yet inspiring story of another unfortunate child comes to us. She was born in Texas, and when fifteen months old had learned only two words -- mamma and papa. Then she had a serious illness, by which she lost eyesight and hearing, and was doomed to a life of imprisonment, into which no sound or ray of light could penetrate.
  • A Needed Amendment To Restrict Child LaborAn editorial in The Nation, January, 1934. " The chief opposition to curtailing child labor came from a numerically insignificant but politically powerful group of employers who wished to exploit children for purely selfish purposes because they were the cheapest kind of human help."
  • A Synopsis of the Great DepressionLater generations of Americans have no first hand experience of the depths of despair into which the depression, beginning in 1929, had thrust the nation, and the excitement and eagerness with which people greeted the New Deal. You know many critics not only have denied that anything constructive could have come from the New Deal but they have even succeeded in creating the impression in the prosperous years since 1945 that the depression really did not amount to much.
  • Abbott, Edith
  • Abbott, GraceGrace Abbott (1878 - 1939) - Social Work Pioneer, Reformer, Hull House Resident and Chief of the Children's Bureau. Article by John Sorensen, Founding Director of the Abbott Sisters Project
  • Abernathy, Ralph D.Rev. Ralph Abernathy continued to lead SCLC until growing tensions over the direction of the organization forced to his resignation in 1977. Later that year he ran unsuccessfully for Congress. Three years later Abernathy became the most prominent civil rights leader to endorse Ronald Reagan for President.
  • Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves 1807The ten sections of the 1807 act were designed to eliminate all American participation in the international slave trade. Section 1 set the tone. After January 1, 1808, it would "not be lawful to import or bring into the United States or the territories thereof from any foreign kingdom, place, or country, any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, with intent to hold, sell, or dispose of such [person] ... as a slave, to be held to service or labour." The act provided an enormous penalty — up to $20,000 — for anyone building a ship for the trade or fitting out an existing ship to be used in the trade.
  • Acts And Resolves Relating To The Institution For The Blind (1870)A Report from the Thirty-Eighth Annual Report Of The Trustees Of The Perkins Institution And Massachusetts Asylum For The Blind,1870. "These acts and resolves illustrate the changing population and goals of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind during the mid-nineteenth century."
  • Addams, Jane"Jane Addams (1860 – 1935) – Founder of Hull-House, Social Reformer, Women’s Advocate and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize," by John E. Hansan, Ph.D.
  • Address to the Legislature of New York (1854)The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common Sense. His Majesty no longer awes the multitude--his sceptre is broken--his crown is trampled in the dust--the sentence of death is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks and classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the 19th century, we, the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your hands the redness of our grievances--a revision of your state constitution--a new code of laws. Permit us then, as briefly as possible, to call your attention to the legal disabilities under which we labor.
  • AdoptionWritten by Professor Ellen Herman, University of Oregon. "Since ancient times and in all human cultures, children have been transferred from adults who would not or could not be parents to adults who wanted them for love, labor, and property. Adoption’s close association with humanitarianism, upward mobility, and infertility, however, are uniquely modern phenomena."
  • Adoption Project: 1937Modern adoption history has been marked by vigorous reforms dedicated to surrounding child placement with legal and scientific safeguards enforced by trained professionals working under the auspices of certified agencies. In 1917, for instance, Minnesota passed the first state law that required children and adults to be investigated and adoption records to be shielded from public view. By mid-century, virtually all states in the country had revised their laws to incorporate such minimum standards as pre-placement inquiry, post-placement probation, and confidentiality and sealed records. At their best, these standards promoted child welfare. Yet they also reflected eugenic anxieties about the quality of adoptable children and served to make adult tastes and preferences more influential in adoption than children’s needs. The Adoption Project paper is a part of that history.
  • AFL-CIOThe AFL–CIO is a federation of international labor unions. Since its inception as the American Federation of Labor, the AFL–CIO has supported an image of the federation as the "House of Labor"—an all-inclusive, national federation of "all" labor unions.
  • AFL-CIO & Community ServiceThe extent of trade union activity in community affairs is developed and explained during the course of this lecture.
  • African Americans and the Civilian Conservation Corps (1941)The Emergency Conservation Work Act establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps was signed into law by President Roosevelt on March 31, 1933. Under the direction of Robert Fechner, the CCC employed young men between the ages of 17 and 23 in work camps where they were assigned to various conservation projects. Enrollees were paid thirty dollars a month, twenty-five dollars of which was sent home to the enrollee's families. From 1933 to 1942, over three million young men enrolled in the CCC, including 250,000 African Americans who were enrolled in nearly 150 all-black CCC companies.
  • African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) ChurchWritten by Michael Barga. "The vision of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church has remained consistent throughout its existence and is a strongly social and service-oriented spiritual community."
  • African Union SocietyWritten by Michael Barga. "In 1780, The African Union Society (AUS) was created in Newport, Rhode Island. While most blacks from Rhode Island were free by 1807, strong prejudice and oppression were present before and after that date. The AUS developed partly in response to these difficulties, as well as a forum for black cultural discussion. The society is considered one of the first formal organizations founded by free blacks in the United States."
  • AFSC and the Mountaineer's Craftsmen Cooperative AssociationIn 1932, Herbert Hoover asked the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) if it would take money left over from the American Relief Administration Children's Fund and start a feeding program in the mining districts once again. The AFSC agreed to do this, but it soon became apparent that more than just feeding needed to be done. It appeared the mining industry might never fully recover from the economic collapse of the time. Miners were underemployed, if employed at all. Most knew only mining and felt inadequate in attempting any other form of employment. For many reasons miners and their families were reluctant to leave the place where they were born and had lived all their lives.
  • After Care for the Insane: New York State 1906After Care for the Insane was another much needed service that was introduced, organized and came to fruition in 1906 by Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler. When inmates were discharged from the state hospitals, many had no where to go. They had no home, no job, no friends or relatives willing to help them and many had children that had been separated from them during their incarceration. Miss Schuyler and her league of volunteers of The State Charities Aid Association helped these people to re-enter society with a helping hand by working in co-operation with the superintendents of the state hospitals.
  • Agnelli, Kate
  • Aid for the Aged (OAA) 1935Title I of the 1935 Social Security Act created a program, called Old Age Assistance (OAA), which would give cash payments to poor elderly people, regardless of their work record. OAA provided for a federal match of state old-age assistance expenditures. Among other things, OAA is important in the history of long term care because it later spawned the Medicaid program, which has become the primary funding source for long term care today.
  • Aid for the BlindTitle X of the Social Security Act of 1935 authorized federal funds to be distributed to the states for financial assistance to the needy blind residents of their state. The first authorization was for an appropriation of $3,000,000 for the fiscal year ending June 1936; and and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title.
  • Aid To Dependent Children: The Legal HistoryFor its first three decades, AFDC operated much like a private charity, with its case workers given discretion in investigating clients, cutting off benefits to those determined to be unsuitable, and reducing benefits to those found in violation of any of AFDC's myriad regulations. Starting in the mid-1960s the National Welfare Rights Organization, built primarily by African American women and functionally a part of the civil rights movement, began organizing to defend welfare recipients' rights.
  • Alexander Graham Bell and His Role in Oral EducationWritten by Brian H. Greenwald, Ph.D., Gallaudet University. "The promise of a more homogeneous society allowed oralism to emerge as the most attractive option to educate deaf people. Such strategies paralleled the general assimilation movement through the supposed uplifting of the deaf community by halting sign language use, reducing the importance of residential schools, and decreasing intermarriage among deaf partners."
  • Altmeyer, Arthur J.
  • Amana Colonies: A Utopian Community"The Amana Colonies were one of many utopian colonies established on American soil during the 18th and 19th centuries. There were hundreds of communal utopian experiments in the early United States, and the Shakers alone founded around 20 settlements. While great differences existed between the various utopian communities or colonies, each society shared a common bond in a vision of communal living in a utopian society."
  • American Association of Public Welfare OfficialsIn 1930, as the financial depression progressed President Herbert Hoover appealed to the association to assist in developing public relief programs in the different states, counties and cities. Thus, the initial project of the new association was to help President Herbert Hoover’s Emergency Committee for Employment (later named the President's Organization for Unemployment Relief) in gathering information on the need for emergency public relief and to develop plans on how to meet those needs throughout the country.
  • American Association of Public Welfare Officials: Annual Meeting, June 18, 1931Minutes of Annual Meeting of American Association of Public Welfare Officials. “Your committee hands you herewith its reports, recommending the establishment of a central office with a paid staff. We recommend further that the Executive Committee, with power to act, be authorized to raise the necessary budget, employ a director or executive secretary, and establish the office is such a place as it deems wise.”
  • American Association of Public Welfare Officials: Executive Committee Meeting-January 1931Minutes of Joint Meeting of Committee of Division IX National Conference of Social Work and Executive Committee American Association of Public Welfare Officials. "The chairman read a memorandum prepared by him on a proposed survey in the field of public social work. He called attention to the great scope of the field and the other organizations now occupying part of the field."
  • American Association of Public Welfare Officials: Executive Committee Mtg., June 15, 1931Mr. Croxton stated that with reference to the resolution which had been adopted at the luncheon meeting authorizing a committee to cooperate with the President's Committee for employment and other organizations, he wished to point out that there were four aspects of the problem which required attention, as follows: (1) Information (2) Organization of local resources (3) Maintaining or developing standards (4) Developing resources
  • American Association of Public Welfare Officials: Its Founding - June 12, 1930Minutes of a Special Meeting of Division IX of the National Conference of Social Work. It was moved and seconded that those present proceed to form a new association to be known as the American Association of Public Welfare Officials and that a president be elected.
  • American Association of Public Welfare Officials: Luncheon Meeting, June 15, 1931Minutes of the American Association of Public Welfare Officials Luncheon Meeting. “That the President of the American Association of Public Welfare Officials appoint a committee to cooperate with the President's Emergency Committee for Employment and other organizations in promoting public appreciation of the need for public relief during the unemployment emergency and developing plans for more effective public welfare organization are improved administrative standards.”
  • American Association of Public Welfare Officials: Program Committee Meeting, February 7, 1931Minutes of Meeting of Special Committee of Association of Public Welfare Officials to Consider the Program of the Association. "The Chairman explained that the purpose of the meeting was to consider the future program and budget and staff of the Association."
  • American Association of Social Workers
  • American Civil Liberties Union
  • American Foundation for the BlindThe American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is a national nonprofit organization that expands possibilities for the more than 25 million people with vision loss in the U.S. AFB's priorities include broadening access to technology; elevating the quality of information and tools for the professionals who serve people with vision loss; and promoting independent and healthy living for people with vision loss by providing them and their families with relevant and timely resources.
  • American Friends Service CommitteeThe American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action. Drawing on continuing spiritual insights and working with people of many backgrounds, we nurture the seeds of change and respect for human life that transform social relations and systems.
  • American Immigration and Citizenship ConferenceThe American Immigration and Citizenship Conference (AICC) and its predecessors, the National Council on Naturalization and Citizenship (NCNC) and the American Immigration Conference (AIC), shared information with and coordinated the activities of organizations and agencies concerned with a more humane, nondiscriminatory immigration and naturalization policy. The National Council on Naturalization and Citizenship was formed in 1930 as an association of organizations and individuals who sought to reform naturalization laws and regulations. The Council advocated policies and procedures that were humane, uniform, and simple. Among its prominent leaders were Ruth Z. Murphy, Read Lewis, Abram Orlow, and Frank Orlow.
  • American Labor Party: 1936The American Labor Party of New York State enters the campaign of 1936 with a three-fold purpose, discussed in this article.
  • American Prison Association: ConstitutionThe American Correctional Association has championed the cause of corrections and correctional effectiveness for over 140 years. Founded in 1870 as the National Prison Association, ACA is the oldest association developed specifically for practitioners in the correctional profession. During the first organizational meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, the assembly elected then-Ohio Governor and future President Rutherford B. Hayes as the first President of the Association.
  • American Public Welfare AssociationBy John E. Hansan, Ph.D. At the 1929 annual meeting of the National Conference of Social Work in San Francisco a delegation of public agency representatives voted to organize a national membership organization open to all levels of government...Initially, the organization was named the American Association of Public Welfare Officials and its mission was to help and improve the activities of public welfare organizations throughout the nation. The name was changed in May 1932 to the American Public Welfare Association (APWA).
  • American Red Cross
  • American Seaman’s Friend Society
  • American Social Health AssociationIn 1913, several organizations dedicated to fighting prostitution and venereal disease joined together to form the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA).
  • American Social Hygiene Association (1946)"The American Social Hygiene Association: Some notes on the historical background, development, and future opportunities of the National Voluntary Organization for Social Hygiene in the United States." Written by William F. Snow, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Directors, 1946.
  • American Social Hygiene Association History and a Forecast This entry is an extensive history of the early years of the American Social Hygiene Association. The exact date of the report is not known; however, it is sometime immediately after World War I.
  • American Social Hygiene Association Posters for BoysImages from the "Keep Fit" posters designed to educate young males on physical and moral fitness.
  • American Social Hygiene Association Posters for GirlsThe “Youth and Life” posters were designed to educate teenage girls and young women about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and urge them to embrace moral and physical fitness. It was adapted in 1922 by the American Social Hygiene Association from “Keeping Fit,” a similar series for boys and young men.
  • American Social Hygiene Association Relationship to Community Welfare"The American Social Hygiene Association...extends its service to individuals and to private and public organizations interested in any phase of social hygiene work. For practical administration, it is divided into five departments: legal measures, medical measures, protective measures, recreational measures, educational measures, and public information."
  • American Social Hygiene Association: Keeping Fit Posters I (1919)"Keeping Fit" was a 48-poster series produced by the American Social Hygiene Association in collaboration with the U.S. Public Health Service and the YMCA in 1919. It was designed to educate teenage boys and young men about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and urged them to embrace moral and physical fitness. A parallel series, "Youth and Life" was designed for girls and young women.
  • American Social Hygiene Association: Keeping Fit Posters II (1919)"Keeping Fit" was a 48-poster series produced by the American Social Hygiene Association in collaboration with the U.S. Public Health Service and the YMCA in 1919. It was designed to educate teenage boys and young men about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and urged them to embrace moral and physical fitness. A parallel series, "Youth and Life" was designed for girls and young women.
  • American Social Hygiene Association: Youth and Life Posters (1922)The “Youth and Life” posters were designed to educate teenage girls and young women about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and urge them to embrace moral and physical fitness. It was adapted in 1922 by the American Social Hygiene Association from “Keeping Fit,” a similar series for boys and young men.
  • American Social Policy in the 1960's and 1970'sAs 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.
  • American Women in the War (1944)Besides those in uniform, over 2,300,000 of our women have gone into war industries; 1,900,000 of them are doing regular factory work. Many of these workers feel they are not being allowed to produce as much as they could. I think their dissatisfaction would be remedied if we had labor-management committees in all war industries throughout the country, so that their ideas and grievances could obtain a hearing. Some of the married women workers are not doing their best because we haven't taken into consideration their personal problems. Their homes must still go on. Their children must be cared for. Day nurseries are now being established, but they are not always properly organized. Sometimes they are not located conveniently for the mothers—I was told of one nursery which was five blocks from a bus stop, which meant that a woman had to walk 20 blocks every day. To a tired woman carrying a child, those blocks seem very long.
  • American Youth CongressThe 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.
  • AmericanizationUntil the start of the 20th century, Americans typically believed in the power of the “melting pot” to create a common culture out of the various groups coming to America. However, this surge in immigration led to the creation of Americanization programs.
  • Americanization - selected publications
  • Anderson, Christopher J.
  • Anderson, Delwin M.
  • Anderson, Joseph P.
  • Anderson, Linnea
  • Anderson, MaryMary Anderson (1872-1964): Advocate for Working Women, Labor Organizer and First Director of the Women’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Labor.
  • Andrews, John Bertram
  • Anne Sullivan's Valedictory Address To The Perkins Institution (1886)We have spent years in the endeavor to acquire the moral and intellectual discipline, by which we are enabled to distinguish truth from falsehood, receive higher and broader views of duty, and apply general principles to the diversified details of life. And now we are going out into the busy world, to take our share in life’s burdens, and do our little to make that world better, wiser and happier....
  • Annual Report Of The Trustees Of The New-England Institution For The Education Of The Blind, 1834Annual reports to state legislatures were one of the key methods by which trustees and superintendents of schools for disabled children argued for additional government funding. In this report, the trustees of the New-England Institution for the Education of the Blind tried to appeal to legislators’ sympathies by stating that the asylum served primarily poor children, documenting the school’s extensive public support, and describing the ways in which pupils were prepared to support themselves after graduation.
  • Anthony, Susan B.
  • Apology For Going To College (1905)At times Helen Keller found her college experience frustrating and exhausting, but she gloried in the knowledge she gained. Perhaps even more satisfying to Keller were the new social roles claimed by college-educated women. In this excerpt, Keller discusses the benefits of attending college—an opportunity that had only recently become available to women.
  • Are We Checking the Great Plague?Article written by R. A. Vonderlehr, M.D., appearing in Survey Graphic, 1940. "A little less than four years ago Surgeon General Thomas Parran launched the present campaign against syphilis...The battle has since been waged continuously with the cooperation of the medical profession, health officers, and voluntary agencies all over the country. It is of interest to pause briefly and take stock."
  • Are We Overlooking the Pursuit of Happiness? (1936)"...For the old people who have lived so long a life of independence, how bitter it must be to come for everything they need to the youngsters who once turned to them! From every point of view, it seems to me that the old age pension for people who so obviously could not lay aside enough during their working years to live on adequately through their old age, is a national responsibility and one that must be faced when we are planning for a better future. Unemployment insurance in many homes is all that stands between many a family and starvation. Given a breathing spell, a man or woman may be able to get another job or to re-educate himself in some new line of work, but few people live with such a wide margin that they have enough laid aside to face several months of idleness...."
  • Are We Retarding The Retarded? (1960)In striking contrast to the vigorous and determined leadership of the early pioneers of our movement who pursued their course of action in the face of seemingly unconquerable odds, there is too much readiness in our midst today to accept the limitations others set to our work, and indeed increasingly one hears the comments "We are tired" and "We do the best we can." Surely a vital organization should not be tired after just ten years of existence. And just as our early leaders were not content when officials or agencies assured them in those days that they did "the best they could do," but demanded the best possible for the retarded, we, as local, state, and national association, must apply the same measuring stick to our own present efforts.
  • Art Becomes Public Works (1934)The public now owns, at a cost of less than a million and a half dollars, about fifteen thousand new works of art. These range from prints, which can be issued in some quantity, to what seems to be the most ambitious of the undertakings, the decoration of the Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, in which forty-four artists and their assistants were engaged. Actually 3671 men and women were employed, for varying periods of time, in the less than five months' duration of the Public Works of Art Project. Except where sketches for special pieces of work had to be passed on in advance, the artists worked with complete freedom. The general assignment was the American scene.
  • Assistance for the Disabled (1931)"Program of Assistance for the Crippled:" Radio address by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1931. "I want to talk, of course, about the big human side of relieving distress and helping people to get on their feet, but at the same time I think there is another phase of the broad question of looking after cripples to which some people have never given much thought--the financial side."
  • Asylum for the Deaf and DumbWritten by John Crowley/ The Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, the first permanent school for deaf Americans, opened in 1817. At that time, “dumb” meant only “unable to speak” but in early America almost all those who were born deaf never learned to communicate with others except by home-made signs, and deaf people were often regarded as cognitively impaired as well.
  • Auto Workers Strike (1933)Article by Walter Reuther, one of the most prominent labor movement figures of the 20th century, in The Student Outlook, March, 1933. "The challenge to organize the production workers was taken up by the Auto Workers Union, which is organized on a broad industrial basis and is founded on the principle of the class struggle."
  • Baden St. Settlement Constitution 1901"The objects of this Association are: To provide a centre for higher civic and social life in the city of Rochester and to institute and maintain therein educational and philanthropic enterprises."
  • Baden Street Settlement 1901-1951A History of Baden St. Settlement in Rochester, New York: 1901-1951. The document describes the origin, the programs established and the how the settlement house responded to the needs of the area residents even as the racial and economic composition of the neighborhood changed.
  • Baker, Edith M.
  • Baker, JosephineS. Josephine Baker (1873 – 1945) — Public health pioneer, administrator and advocate for the poor and sick in New York City
  • Balch, Emily Greene
  • Ball, Robert M.
  • Baltimore Settlements: Lawrence House and Warner HouseThese entries about Lawrence House and Warner House are taken from the "Handbook of Settlements," a national survey of settlements published in 1911 by The Russell Sage Foundation of New York. This collection of detailed information about settlements throughout the nation and operating circa 1910 was collected, organized and written by two settlement pioneers: Robert Archey Woods and Albert J. Kennedy.
  • Barga, Michael J.
  • Barnard, Kate
  • Barnett, Samuel A.
  • Barrett, Janie Porter (1865 - 1948)Janie Porter Barrett (1865 -1948): Founder of the Locust Street Social Settlement (1890) and the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls (1915)
  • Barrett, Kate Waller
  • Barton, Clara
  • Beauty Of Silence: by Helen Keller (1935)...However that may be, I know that silence is essential to the happy development of the human being. In the Montessori schools the period of quiet is a part of the curriculum. Every child sits tranquilly at his task for a certain length of time. When they become obstreperous and interfere with each other's orderly conduct, they are isolated until they regain their composure.
  • Because A Father Cared (1960)Article by Margaret McDonald, appearing in The Rotarian, 1956. "But when this fine couple -- this Rotary couple, as you would call them -- found that their pretty little girl would never develop mentally, they felt that their heartache was unique, and they soon discovered that few can fathom the grief of those whose loved ones are condemned to the land of the living dead."
  • Beck, Bertram M.
  • Beckerman, Dr. Aaron
  • Beers, Clifford WhittinghamThis entry is about Clifford Whittingham Beers, the founder of Mental Health America and a pioneer in advocating for improved treatment of mental illness. It was excerpted from the booklet “Clifford W. Beers: The Founding of Mental Health 1908-1935” produced by The Human Spirit Initiative, an organization with a mission to inspire people to desire to make a difference and then act on it. Note: Michael Gray, working with Ted Deutsch, Deutsch Communications Group authored the narrative from which this entry is taken.
  • Berkowitz, Edward, Ph. D.
  • Berl, Fred
  • Berry Picking and Relief (1935)By Katherine Blair, August, 1935. "Public relief affords no real security. The family on relief cannot meet its actual minimum needs. If private employment can offer more, we send it men. But we can hardly abandon our people to industry or agriculture which offers them less than relief. Employers will have no difficulty in getting or keeping labor if they can guarantee a certain and adequate wage and decent conditions. The relief client and his family are not lolling on the fat of the land on $7.50 a week."
  • Berry, Margaret E.Her leadership years at both NFS and NCSW came at the time when social welfare organizations faced some of their most profound challenges, in particular surrounding the relationship of race and civil rights to welfare and social work. Berry also served on the U.S. Committee of the International Conference of Social Work from 1972 to 1979 and again from 1987 to 1990.
  • Bethune, Mary McLeodAn educator, organizer, and policy advocate, Bethune became one of the leading civil rights activists of her era. She led a group of African American women to vote after the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution (giving women the right to vote).
  • Big Brother and Big Sister FederationEarly in the twentieth century, men in both Cincinnati, OH and New York City began to serve as so-called volunteer big brothers, or friends and advisers to fatherless boys.
  • Big Brothers Big Sisters of AmericaWith more than 360 affiliates throughout the nation, Big Brothers Big Sisters’ mission is to provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring professionally supported one-to-one mentoring relationships that change the lives of the youth for the better, forever.
  • Big Morgue (1939)What happens to a steel town, and to steel workers, when modern technology sweeps old methods aside? Whatever the long range gain through efficiency, the first effect, according to this researcher, is a lot of dead jobs, gone forever in the big new continuous production mills.
  • Billikopf, Jacob
  • Birth Control Wins (1937)Two events which occurred at the end of 1936 may signify a turning-point in the birth-control movement in America. Together they denote the closing of one era—the era of pioneering, of preparation, of laying the foundation—and the beginning of another—an era of extensive research and clinical accomplishments.
  • Black Richmond, VA (1934)Significant straws in the wind point to social changes in Black Richmond. The findings of the Negro Welfare Survey, of which Mrs. Guild was director, the new Negro Welfare Council and the coming in of federal relief are outstanding factors in new racial attitudes in this colored city within a city. During 1928 and 1929 a Negro welfare survey was conducted in Richmond by a bi-racial committee, employing a Negro and white staff, under the auspices of the Council of Social Agencies. In itself this was an accomplishment in racial progress, if it be remembered that we are talking about the Capital of the Confederacy. The survey was not the result of sudden realization on the part of the community that almost a third of its population was miserably handicapped in every department of life and holding back the other two thirds. The survey simply represented the vision of a few social workers who needed a practical answer to a perplexing question: What are the priorities in the social problems pressing for attention in Black Richmond?
  • Black Studies in the Department of Labor, 1897-1907By Jonathan Grossman. "At the dawn of the 20th century, when 8.5 million blacks constituted about 12 percent of the population of the United States...not a single first‑grade college in America undertook to give any considerable scientific attention to the American Negro."
  • Black, Allida, Ph.D.
  • Blackey, Eileen
  • Blackwell, Elizabeth (1821-1910)At the age of 24, Elizabeth Blackwell had a revelation that changed her life, taking her far from her tiny Cincinnati schoolroom where she was teaching. She had gone to see Mary Donaldson, a family friend dying of what was probably uterine cancer. "My friend," Blackwell later recalled, "died of a painful disease, the delicate nature of which made the methods of treatment a constant suffering to her." A "lady doctor," Donaldson told her young visitor, would have spared her the embarrassment of having male physicians examine her. Indeed, Blackwell believed, had a female physician been available, Donaldson might have sought treatment in time to save her life. For the idealistic Blackwell, moved by her friend's plight, the idea of becoming a doctor "gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle."
  • Bloomer, AmeliaOriginally, The Lily was to be for “home distribution” among members of the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society, which had formed in 1848. Like most local endeavors, the paper encountered several obstacles early on, and the Society’s enthusiasm died out. Bloomer felt a commitment to publish and assumed full responsibility for editing and publishing the paper. Originally, the title page had the legend “Published by a committee of ladies.” But after 1850 – only Bloomer’s name appeared on the masthead.
  • Bly, Nellie (1864-1922)The year was eighteen eighty-seven. The place was New York City. A young woman, Elizabeth Cochrane, wanted a job at a large newspaper. The editor agreed, if she would investigate a hospital for people who were mentally sick and then write about it. She decided to become a patient in the hospital herself. She used the name Nellie Brown so no one would discover her or her purpose. Newspaper officials said they would get her released after a while. To prepare, Nellie put on old clothes and stopped washing. She went to a temporary home for women. She acted as if she had severe mental problems. She cried and screamed and stayed awake all night. The police were called. She was examined by doctors. Most said she was insane.
  • Board of Pardons and ParoleIn 1908, shortly after Jacob Billikopf moved to Kansas City to head up the Federation of Jewish Charities, he became involved in a variety of non-sectarian civic projects and philanthropies. Due to the deplorable conditions in penal institutions, the Mayor of Kansas City, Thomas Crittenden, asked Billikopf to serve as Chairman of a Commission and undertake a study of the area’s correctional institutions and submit to him a list of recommendations on ways to improve conditions.
  • Boarding System For Neglected Children (1894)Presentation by Miss C. H. Pemberton, Acting Superintendent of The Children’s Aid Society of Pennsylvania at the Twenty-First Annual Session of the National Conference of Charities And Correction, 1894. This is one of three presentations by distinguished leaders of the era in a section of the meeting on “Child-Saving.” Together, the three entries describe the institutions, deplorable conditions and efforts to reform and improve the care of vulnerable children.
  • Boehm, Werner W.Mr. Boehm is known as a social work educator whose pioneering work was in curriculum development in the U.S. and social work in Canada. He taught at the University of Minnesota from 1958 to 1963. He also taught at the Graduate School of Social Work at Rutgers University and was the dean from 1963 to 1972. Dr. Boehm enjoyed a varied and highly respected career as a practitioner, academic administrator, and scholar, and for almost half a century he provided leadership to Social Work education. He is best known for having directed a landmark study on Social Work curriculum development for the Council on Social Work Education from 1955-1960.
  • Bondy Appointed Director of ARC Disaster Relief 1931During his period of service, Mr. Bondy has, at different times, represented the Red Cross in liaison with the Veterans’ Bureau, the American Legion, the National Council of Social Work and its constituent agencies, and numerous other organizations. He was Director of Reconstruction in Red Cross relief work following the disastrous flood of 1927, frequently serving as aid to Mr. Herbert Hoover and Vice Chairman Fieser in their joint direction of Mississippi flood relief work. During the past year he directed drouth relief work in the Eastern Area. These experiences, together with his work in connection with numerous lesser relief operations during the past ten years, give him an acquaintance with recent disaster methods and procedures possessed by few Red Cross executives.
  • Bondy, Robert E.Volunteers “are the phalanx for a changed public attitude.”1 These words best characterize the career and contribution to volunteerism made by Robert E. Bondy (1895-1990). Bondy spent the majority of his career with the American Red Cross, overseeing disaster relief efforts together with implementing programs and services to deal with returning U.S. veterans who served in the two world wars. Bondy ended his illustrious career as director of the National Social Welfare Assembly and, finally, as chairman of the Health and Welfare Advisory Council of the AFL-CIO.
  • Bonus MarchFollowing 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.
  • Book Relief in MississippiArticle by Beatrice Sawyer Rossell, Editor, Bulletin of the American Library Association, appearing in The Survey, 1935. "'The people are book hungry,' said one of the librarians who has a reading-room in her home. 'A little boy knocked at my door at six o'clock in the morning to borrow The Dutch Twins. I passed a house the other day where a little girl was sitting on the porch reading aloud to her family of five people, not one of whom could read. An old man who was once a school teacher and a young girl who loves reading are each walking miles carrying books to share with people who otherwise would be without them.'"
  • Booth, Ballington
  • Booth, Maud Ballington
  • Boy's Town
  • Boyd, Neva Leona
  • Boys & Girls ClubsThis entry is about the history and contributions of Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
  • Brace, Charles Loring
  • Brackett, Jeffrey Richardson (1860 - 1949)In 1904, Bracket was called upon by the presidents of Harvard University and Simmons College to head the Boston School for Social Workers (later the Simmons College School of Social Work), the first academically affiliated school of social work in the United States. He was named Instructor in Charity, Public Aid, and Corrections at Harvard and Professor of Theory and Practice of Philanthropic Work at Simmons College.
  • Breckenridge, Sophonisba Preston
  • Bresette, Linna EleanorLinna Eleanor Bresette: Teacher, Advocate for Women Laborers, Catholic Social Reformer (1882-1960). By Michael Barga
  • Brick, Christopher
  • Bridgman, Laura DeweyHalf a century before Helen Keller, the "Original Helen Keller," Laura Dewey Bridgman, became the first deaf and blind person to learn a language. By the time that Helen Keller became famous in the early twentieth century, Bridgman's story had faded and been forgotten -- but like Keller, Bridgman moved souls around the world by triumphing over her multiple disabilities.
  • Bridgman, Laura: Early EducationSamuel Gridley Howe had multiple goals for his work with Laura Bridgman. On the one hand, he wanted to provide her with a thorough education. On the other hand, he hoped to use her as a means of revealing the process of human development and the true nature of humanity. Howe thought that because he could control much of Bridgman's sensory input, he would be able to better understand how people learned language, developed religious sensibilities, and other characteristic human abilities....
  • Brief History of Government Charity in New York (1603 - 1900)This entry describes the history of legislative actions taken by the New York State Government for the poor in New York State from 1603 to 1900. Derived from the research of Linda S. Stuhler.
  • Brigham, AmariahIn the summer of 1842, Dr. Brigham was appointed Superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, at Utica. The institution was opened on the 16th of January, 1843. From this time, until the period of his death, he was unceasing in his devotion to the great cause of humanity in which he was engaged....Dr. Brigham was not only desirous of establishing an institution which should be creditable to the State, but, in order that our citizens should avail themselves of its advantages, he labored to diffuse a more extended knowledge of the subject of insanity. This he did by popular lectures, and by embodying in his reports details of the causes, the early symptoms, and means of prevention.
  • Brinkerhoff, RoeliffIn 1873, upon the organization of the Mansfield savings bank, Brinkerhoff became its vice-president. In 1878 be was appointed a member of the Ohio Board of State Charities. He became an active member of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, and in 1880 he was elected its president. Brinkerhoff became vice-president of the National Prison Congress from its re-organization, and was elected its president in 1893. He was one of the founders of the Mansfield lyceum and library, of the Mansfield public park, of the soldiers' and sailors' memorial library, and of the Ohio archeological and historical society, which was organized under his institution, and of which he became president in 1893.
  • British Reforms and Colonial Resistance (1763-1766)British leaders also felt the need to tighten control over their empire. To be sure, laws regulating imperial trade and navigation had been on the books for generations, but American colonists were notorious for evading these regulations. They were even known to have traded with the French during the recently ended war. From the British point of view, it was only right that American colonists should pay their fair share of the costs for their own defense. If additional revenue could also be realized through stricter control of navigation and trade, so much the better. Thus the British began their attempts to reform the imperial system.
  • Brockway, Zebulon ReedZebulon Reed Brockway (April 28, 1827 – October 21, 1920) — Progressive penologist and originator of the indeterminate sentence and parole system.
  • Brotherhood of Sleeping Car PortersArticle by Edward Berman, The Nation, 1935. The Pullman Porters organized and founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925. The BSCP was the very first African-American labor union to sign a collective bargaining agreement with a major U.S. corporation.
  • Brown Fellowship SocietyMutual aid societies were maintained by blacks throughout the United States. The goal of the groups was to provide much needed benefits to their communities that whites controlled and often withheld. In the south, it was particularly difficult to sustain a black organization of any kind since assemblies of non-whites were considered dangerous. Still, some southern cities, including Charleston, SC, stratified individuals by three race descriptions: white, black, and mulatto. Those considered mulattoes were sometimes able to avoid the most severe oppressive measures carried out by whites while having to adhere in the majority of ways. The Brown Fellowship Society (BFS) was a response to this three-race cultural environment of Charleston and came together in 1790. Those who joined usually considered themselves mulatto...
  • Brown, Angelique
  • Brown, JohnJohn Brown was a controversial figure who played a major role in leading the United States to civil war. He was a devout Christian and lifelong abolitionist who tried to eradicate slavery from the United States through increasingly radical means. Unlike most abolitionists, Brown was not a pacifist and he came to believe that violence was necessary to dislodge slavery. He engaged in violent battles with pro-slavery citizens in Kansas and Missouri, and led a raid on the federal munitions depot at Harper’s Ferry.
  • Brown, Mary E. (1865 — 1948)In January, 1919, Mary E. Brown was one of the suffragists who picketed the White House during President Woodrow Wilson’s Administration. She was arrested for her efforts advocating for the 19th Amendment designed to allow women the right to vote. Mrs. Brown was subsequently sentenced and spent five days in the District of Columbia’s jail.
  • Brown, William WellsBy 1843 Brown was lecturing regularly on his experiences in slavery for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society. By that time he also became deeply committed to lecturing on behalf of women’s rights and temperance laws. It was this involvement as a prominent speaker that many historians and scholars suggest provided the trajectory for his later career as a writer.
  • Brown, William Wells (1814-1884)
  • Bruno, Frank J.
  • Buell, Bradley
  • Bukach, Nadia
  • Bureau of Vocations for Women (1921)
  • Bureau of Vocations for Women, September 1915. (Woman's Occupational Bureau)
  • Burns, EvelineAs a staff member of the Presidential Committee on Economic Security in 1934, she helped formulate the specifics of the Social Security Act as it was eventually passed by Congress. She was later director of research for the Committee on Long-Range Work and Relief Policies of the National Resources Planning Board. The committee's report published in 1942, shaped the public assistance and work programs as they developed throughout the 1940's. Through her teaching at Columbia of comparative social security systems, she helped educate a generation of scholars in the United States who carried on important research in the 1950's and 1960's. Among the honors received by Dr. Burns, was a Florina Lasker Social Work Award in 1964 contributions "as an outstanding authority on social security systems throughout the world."
  • Burns, Lucy
  • Bush, Erin N., Ph. D.
  • But the Children Are Earning: 1935Miss Bailey Says... We have to park our principles sometimes in the face of the realities of family situations where the only cash is what children earn. What can a worker do, for instance, about: A ten-year-old boy who peddles pencils downtown at night to get money for movies, roller-skates and hot dogs? A family that bare-facedly lies about the ages of children too young to work but whose earnings are desperately needed? A boy of seventeen, oldest of a turbulent flock who gets his first job, and a pretty good one, and leaves home to live on his own? A docile girl of eighteen, oldest of six and only one working, who gives her father, for family purposes, every penny of her meager weekly wage??
  • C.C. Carstens (1865-1939)C. C. Carstens: Interpreter of the Needs of Dependent Children (1865-1939). Written by: Emma Octavia Lundberg.
  • Campbell, Alice W.
  • Can Intelligence Be Measured? (1922)We are told that there is a mental quality known as "natural intelligence" and that it is possible to develop mental reflexes which are called "acquired intelligence." The sum of the two is intellectual power. Here an interesting question enters: Do psychologists measure intelligence or something else ? Added to this is a practical question: Is it wise to proclaim broadcast that this mental quality is intelligence? Is it common sense to say that there is such a thing as natural intelligence and another thing known as acquired intelligence?
  • Cannon, Ida Maude
  • Caraway, Hattie Wyatt (1878 - 1950)Hattie Wyatt Caraway served for 14 years in the U.S. Senate and established a number of "firsts," including her 1932 feat of winning election to the upper chamber of Congress in her own right. Drawing principally from the power of the widow's mandate and the personal relationships she cultivated with a wide cross–section of her constituency, "Silent Hattie" was a faithful, if staid, supporter of New Deal reforms, which aided her largely agricultural state.
  • Care And Training Of Feeble-Minded Children (1887)The superintendents of American institutions for feeble-minded persons, in their session of I878, submitted the following: "Idiocy and imbecility are conditions in which there is a want of natural or harmonious development of the mental, active, and moral powers of the individual affected, usually associated with some visible defect or infirmity of the physical organization or with functional anomalies, expressed in various forms and degrees of disordered vital action. There is frequently defect or absence of one or more of the special senses, always irregular or uncertain volition, and dulness or absence of sensibility and perception."
  • Care of the Aged Poor (1926)The remedy for the real evil which the commission's report shows (such extreme dread of poverty as still remains) is, I believe, to be found in a continuance of our progress in making relief both sufficient and humane. We must entirely abolish the old idea, already largely abolished, of treating a dependent person as a pauper. The old practice, the old words, the old attitude, all constitute the evil which modern measures try to abolish. For the last six years I have stricken the word "pauper" from every one of our hundreds of departmental forms which has come up for reprinting. We need an amendment to our statutes which will entirely eliminate the word "pauper." It is an obsolete word except in the law.
  • Care of the Filthy Cases of Insane: 1885Written by Stephen Smith, M.D., State Commissioner of Lunacy, New York City. "The care of these patients is all that can be desired. Each of these hospitals has a regular day and night service, so organized that the filthy are trained, if possible, to habits of personal care and cleanliness. They are not only promptly changed when found to be soiled; but, as far as practicable, their necessities are anticipated, and they are required to protect and care for themselves."
  • Care Of The Insane In New York (1736 - 1912)Written by Linda S. Stuhler. "...the hospital was an institution of great public utility and humanity, and that the general interests of the state required that fit and adequate provision be made for the support of an infirmary for sick and insane persons."
  • Caring for Paupers (1881)The class which suffers at all our almshouses is the class for whom almshouses are presumed to be maintained, the unfortunate and self-respecting poor. A more horrible existence than a modest woman must endure at very many of our almshouses it is impossible to imagine. She lives amid unclean disorder and constant bickering; she is always hearing oaths and vile talk, the ravings of madmen and the uncouth gibberings of idiots; she is always seeing scarred and blotched faces and distorted limbs, hideous shapes such as one encounters in the narrow streets of Italian towns, but which, here, we hide in our almshouses. She is exposed to a hundred petty wrongs; Mrs. Jens's case, already described, may give the reader an inkling of their nature. Often she is treated with absolute cruelty; in some almshouses she cannot protect herself from the grossest insults.
  • Carrots from California (1939)"How much is stoop labor paid in a day?" "Almost everything is piece rate here. A Mex, working ten hours, can make $2 at pulling and tying carrots, but he has to go like hell. In the pea fields it's a penny a pound. A white man is good if he can pick more than two hundred pounds a day. Other wages are about the same.
  • Carry On: Magazine on the Reconstruction of Disabled Soldiers and Sailors"In the first number of this magazine, June 1918, Surgeon General Gorgas promised that 'the Medical Department of the Army will 'Carry On' in the medical and training treatment of the disabled soldier until he is cured or as nearly cured as his disabilities permit.'"
  • Carstens, Carl ChristianCarl Christian Carstens (April 2, 1865 – July 4, 1939): First Executive Director Child Welfare League of America. Written by Emma Octavia Lundberg
  • Carver, George WashingtonAt Tuskegee, Carver launched a campaign aimed at lifting black farmers out of the desperate poverty in which most of them lived. Though his campaign ultimately failed in its aim, Carver adapted what he had learned in Ames in such a way as to put the application of its principles within reach of impoverished tenant farmers. In so doing, he anticipated the rise of organic farming and the push for the application of “appropriate technology.”
  • Case Work in the Administration of Public Relief: 1935 In your citation from the Mayor’s Committee on Unemployment Relief the statement occurs – “The one million men and women who are unemployed today in New York City as a result of the depression cannot be regarded as maladjusted individuals in need of case work.” This is another version of the old “worthy” and “unworthy” concept, which holds that ordinary poor are to be regarded as just maladjusted people who may be subjected to an unpleasant discipline called case work; but the new or worthy poor, or the poor “through no fault of their own” must be protected against this case work.
  • Catholic Charities USA"Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) is a national association of local and diocesan Catholic charitable agencies founded as the National Conference of Catholic Charities (NCCC) on the campus of The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C. in 1910. The organization, which became CCUSA in 1986, has grown into one of the largest social welfare associations in the nation, and currently has 1,735 branches throughout the United States." Written by Jack Hansan
  • Catholic Community Service Organizations in War Time"American Catholics supported the nation’s efforts in the First World War by founding the National Catholic War Council (NCWC) in 1917."
  • Catt, Carrie ChapmanA dynamic speaker and tenacious organizer, Carrie Chapman Catt was a powerful force in the woman suffrage movement. Her relentless campaigning won President Woodrow Wilson’s respect and support, and ultimately led to passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote.
  • Celebrating Freedom: Juneteenth and Emancipation Day Commemorations, Richmond, Va.
  • Chaiklin, Harris, Ph.D.
  • Chambers, Clarke A.
  • Chapin, John B., M.D., LL.D.John Chapin, M.D., LL.D. (1829 – 1918) — Advocate for the Chronic Insane of New York, and the Removal of All Insane Persons from the County Almshouse. This 1918 Obit was copied with permission and derived from the blog researched and developed by Linda S. Stuhler.
  • Charity Organization Societies: 1877-1893The industrial growth that followed the Civil War created crowded urban areas and led to poverty on a scale never before witnessed in the United States. Cities were filled with rural and immigrant poor families required to live in unsanitary and unsafe housing and work in dangerous factories. Then, in 1873, an economic depression in Europe combined with the turbulence of the post-Civil War years, led to a collapse of the American economy and what is known as “The Long Depression.” Banks and businesses failed, unemployment rose to 14% and those who retained their jobs saw wages cut to as little as one dollar per day.
  • Charity Organization Society of New York CityThis entry is composed of transcribed pages from two documents, both produced by the Charity Organization Society of New York City. The primary source is the “History,” written by Lilian Brandt for the organization’s 25th Anniversary in 1907. The second source is from “A Reference Book of Social Service In or Available for Greater New York” by Lina D. Miller in 1922.
  • Chicago Child Care Society
  • Chicago CommonsChicago Commons was established in the fall of 1894 and modeled on Hull House.
  • Chicago Orphan Asylum
  • Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses Heritage"The Heritage from Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses: 1967," by Louis C. Wade. "The contrast between progress and poverty in American life was obvious in the 1880s and glaring by the 1890s. Violent confrontations like the Haymarket riot and the Homestead and Pullman strikes served to illuminate the dangerous chasm, which separated the very rich from the very poor."
  • Child Abuse & NeglectChild abuse and neglect as defined in federal law
  • Child Growth and Development: A Report (1954)Excerpt from Recorder’s Report, Institute on Child Growth and Development, Harvard School of Public Health, 1954. "Rights are derived from basic needs which must be met to insure optimal opportunity for growth and development into healthy individuals and thereby into a healthy, effective society."
  • Child Labor"Historically, 'child labor' is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. However, not all work done by children should be classified as child labor. Children or adolescents’ participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling is generally regarded as being something positive."
  • Child Labor in New York CityWritten by Mary Van Kleeck, 1908. "The following brief report gives the results of a joint investigation made during the months from October, 1906, to April, 1907, into the labor of children in manufacture in tenement houses in New York City. The National Consumers' League and the Consumers' League of New York City, the National and New York Child Labor Committees, and the College Settlements Association co-operated in the undertaking."
  • Child Labor Photographs by Lewis Hine"Lewis Hine, a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, believed that a picture could tell a powerful story. He felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. Hine traveled around the country photographing the working conditions of children in all types of industries."
  • Child Labor Reform and the U.S. Labor MovementA timeline of child labor reform
  • Child Labor: Children at Work: 1932Article by Gertrude Folks Zimand, Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee. "One of the many tragic aspects of the industrial exploitation of children is the army of boys and girls who, at the outset of their industrial careers, fall victims to the machine. Each year, in the sixteen states which take the trouble to find out what is happening to their young workers, no less than a thousand children under eighteen years are permanently disabled and another hundred are killed."
  • Child Study Association of America - Statement of Purpose 1913Written by Jack Hansan. "The Child Study Association of America (CSAA) grew out of the Society for the Study of Child Nature, which was formed in 1888. In 1908, the society was renamed the Federation for Child Study and began to more actively disseminate child development information."
  • Child Study Association: History 1928"The Last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed the beginning of educational experimentation based on an awakening interest in child psychology. Gradually invasions were made in the old academic curricula as the needs and nature of childhood became more evident."
  • Child Welfare
  • Child Welfare League History 1915-1920Written by Jack Hansan. "The League had its beginning at the time of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (later known as the National Conference of Social Work) in Baltimore in 1915, when a group of executives from approximately 25 children's agencies met together for the purpose of exchanging information and discussing the needs of the child-caring field."
  • Child Welfare League History 1919-1977The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) grew out of child welfare advocates’ demands for better communication and regulation among agencies and institutions serving children.
  • Child Welfare League of America"Formally established January 2, 1921, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) has been one of the most important national organizations in the history of American child welfare. The creation of the CWLA coincided with the end of the progressive era and the beginning of another: an era dedicated to establishing national policies and standards combined with developing and disseminating program materials and practices to affiliate members thereby raising the quality of child caring services throughout the nation."
  • Child Welfare: A 1934 Report on Security for ChildrenFinal report prepared by Katharine F. Lenroot and Dr. Martha M. Eliot. "The chief aim of social security is the protection of the family life of wage earners, and the prime factor in family life is the protection and development of children. Child welfare, in fact, has been called the 'Spearhead of Social Security.'"
  • Children Hurt at Work: 1932Article written by Gertrude Folks Zimand, Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee, appearing in The Survey. "One of the many tragic aspects of the industrial exploitation of children is the army of boys and girls who, at the outset of their industrial careers, fall victims to the machine. Each year, in the sixteen states which take the trouble to find out what is happening to their young workers, no less than a thousand children under eighteen years are permanently disabled and another hundred are killed."
  • Children of Circumstance: Part I
  • Children of Circumstance: Part II
  • Children of Circumstance: Part III
  • Children on StrikeArticle written by Paul Comly French, appearing in The Nation, 1933. "Shocking conditions in the sweatshops of Pennsylvania, where 200,000 men, women, and children work long hours for starvation wages, became front-page news through the efforts of the "baby strikers" of the Lehigh Valley."
  • Children WantedWritten by Beulah Amidon, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1937. "Nineteen state legislatures are meeting this year. Twenty-four states have ratified the child labor amendment; if twelve more act—and act favorably—the amendment will be a part of the Constitution, conferring upon Congress the power, which the Supreme Court has ruled it now lacks, to safeguard young workers."
  • Children Who Labor - film (1912)"Children Who Labor" was a collaboration between the Edison Company and the National Child Labor Committee, the nonprofit organization founded in 1904 and chartered by Congress to promote the rights of “children and youth as they relate to work and working.”
  • Children's Aid Society of New York
  • Children's Aid Society of PennsylvaniaWritten by Michael Barga. The Children’s Aid Society of Pennsylvania (CAS of PA) was formed in 1882 and was one of the first organizations dedicated to the care of children. The organization’s work has combined policy and direct service over the years, and the Society’s responsiveness to communal needs is especially highlighted through their efforts in times of war, depression, and social discord.
  • Children's Bureau - A Brief History & ResourcesWritten by Angelique Brown, MSW. The early 1900’s was a time in which the United States was attempting to change it stance on child labor and end abusive child labor practices. As more advocates started to address the issue, they recognized that the federal government was not yet fully engaged in addressing the physical or mental well-being needs of children
  • Children's Bureau: Part IWritten by Dorothy E. Bradbury, Assistant Director, Division of Reports Children's Bureau. "This is the story of the Children's Bureau of the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from the idea in 1903 to its founding in 1912 and on through the years to the present time."
  • Children's Bureau: Part IIWritten by: Dorothy E. Bradbury, Assistant Director, Division of Reports Children’s Bureau. "In getting underway–and in carrying out the three children’s pro-grams for which it was given responsibility under the Social Security Act–the Bureau in characteristic fashion turned to advisory groups for advice and guidance. Advisory groups were immediately set up for each of the programs. For the most part, these were professional people concerned with the technical aspects of the program."
  • Children’s BureauWritten 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.
  • Christ Child SocietyWritten by Michael Barga. "The Christ Child Society was founded in Mary Virginia Merrick’s home at the end of the 19th century as a small relief organization which sewed clothes for local underprivileged children."
  • Christodora Settlement HouseWritten by Dr. June Hopkins, this article presents a well-documented history of an early settlement house serving immigrant families living in the crowded slums of the Lower East Side of New York City. It is an especially important part of American social we
  • Christodora Settlement House, 1897-1939Written by June Hopkins, Ph. D., History Department, Armstrong Atlantic State University. "Almost one hundred years ago, when Christina Isobel MacColl and her friend Sarah Carson founded Christodora Settlement House in the slums of New York City's Lower East Side...these two indomitable women, inspired by such social activists as Jane Addams and Lillian Wald, intended to settle in the slums and form bonds of "love and loyalty" with their immigrant neighbors while helping them adjust to the mean streets and squalid tenements of urban America."
  • Church of All Nations, New York City"A Long History of Community Service at the Church of All Nations," by Cristina Vignone. "...the Church of All Nations 'was always a community-oriented building…[cutting] across ethnic boundaries.'"
  • Citizenship Survey (1914)"A Citizenship Survey in Chicago," by Philip L. Seman for the Chicago Hebrew Institute (1914). "In accordance with the original suggestion made two years ago at the Baltimore conference, the Chicago Hebrew Institute began a house-to-house survey, the object being to ascertain the citizenship status of the residents as well as their literacy, particularly with reference to English."
  • City Diets and DemocracyThe proportion of our children who are found in families without adequate nutrition should be a matter of grave concern to all of us. A Bureau of Labor Statistics' study of employed wage earners and clerical workers shows that more than 40 percent of the children in this relatively favored group live in families whose incomes are below the level necessary to provide adequate food, as well as suitable housing, clothing, medical care, personal care, union dues, carfare, newspapers, and the other sorts of recreation for which city families must pay in dollars and cents.
  • City Diets and Democracy: 1941In developing an educational program for improving nutrition, it is important to keep in mind the importance of custom in our food habits. The Labor Department's recent studies of food consumption show the remarkable persistence of the food preferences of earlier generations in the localities studied. The tables of New Orleans still remind one of the fish, the chicken, the salads, and the greens of the French; the Bostonians still eat more beans and drink more tea than families in most other cities. In Cleveland and Milwaukee they eat more rye bread and cheese and apples and coffee. A national nutrition policy should plan to change food consumption habits only insofar as it is absolutely necessary to do so to provide all the nutrients necessary for health, efficiency, and the full enjoyment of life.
  • Civil Liberties--The Individual and the Community (1940)I think I will tell you a little story that brought home to me how important it was that in every community there should be someone to whom people could turn, who were in doubt as to what were their rights under the law, when they couldn't understand what was happening to them. I happen to go every now and then to a certain mining community and in that mining community there are a number of people who came to this country many years ago. They have been here so many years that they have no other country. This is their country. Their children have been born here. They work here. They have created great wealth for this country, but they came over at a time when there was not very much feeling of social responsibility about giving them the opportunity to learn the language of the country to which they had come, or telling them how to become citizens, or teaching about the government of this country....
  • Civil Rights Act of 1875"Senator Charles Sumner introduced the Civil Rights Act in 1870... The bill guaranteed all citizens, regardless of color, access to accommodations, theatres, public schools, churches, and cemeteries. The bill further forbid the barring of any person from jury service on account of race, and provided that all lawsuits brought under the new law would be tried in federal, not state, courts."
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964In the 1960s, Americans who knew only the potential of "equal protection of the laws" expected the president, the Congress, and the courts to fulfill the promise of the 14th Amendment. In response, all three branches of the federal government--as well as the public at large--debated a fundamental constitutional question: Does the Constitution's prohibition of denying equal protection always ban the use of racial, ethnic, or gender criteria in an attempt to bring social justice and social benefits?
  • Civil Rights MovementAlthough 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.
  • Civilian Conservation CorpsThe Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the most successful New Deal programs of the Great Depression. It existed for fewer than 10 years, but left a legacy of strong, handsome roads, bridges, and buildings throughout the United States.
  • Civilian Conservation Corps Accomplishments: 1939"My Hopes for the CCC" by Robert Fechner, Director, The Civilian Conservation Corps. This article appeared in American Forests: The Magazine of The American Forestry Association, Washington, D. C. (January, 1939).
  • Claiborne, Virginia Spotswood McKenney
  • Classifications Of Idiocy (1877)It should be borne in mind that the essential fact of idiocy is the mental deficiency. That the point of interest for us is the degree to which this condition can be obviated. Furthermore, it is dependent upon physical conditions, whether physiological or pathological, that are chronic or organic, -- slowly produced structural changes, when pathological, -- and so, as a rule, beyond the reach of remedial means. The sphere of these, when used in the treatment, is almost exclusively confined to ameliorating the accessory maladies.
  • Clerc, Monsieur LaurentThomas Gallaudet had come to England to learn about education for the deaf in hopes of setting up a school in Connecticut. At Sicard's invitation, Gallaudet accompanied the Frenchmen back to Paris, where he spent some months at the Institution. When he grew homesick for Hartford, Laurent Clerc agreed to return with him and help him set up a school and be its first teacher.
  • Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy: 1913From its inception, the Cleveland-area volunteers were the first in the country to set up a volunteer-driven system to study human care needs, to allocate funds, and monitor their use. The new organization added budgeting to the single campaign concept, i.e., funds were allocated to agencies on the basis of demonstrated need rather than on hopes for as much money as possible. This "citizen review process" became the model for United Way organizations across the country.
  • Cohen, Wilbur J.
  • Cohen, Wilbur J. : A PerspectiveWilbur Cohen bounded off the plane and down the jet way at Logan Airport. Unlike the other passengers, who were somewhat tentative as they faced the uncertainties of a new city, he did not measure his step. He walked, with determined energy, straight ahead.
  • Cohen, Wilbur J.: Correspondence...I have not answered your telegram of July 31 because I have very uncertain as to the general direction our work will take and the staff we will need. The time element is so short that we can not engage in any extensive research work...
  • Cohen, Wilbur J.: Mental Retardation LegislationOn mental retardation legislation, the second major sustained effort of the Kennedy years, Cohen operated as the servant of others. Cohen worked hard on this matter, and that was because Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was an extraordinarily driven and dedicated woman, wanted him to do so.
  • Coit, Stanton
  • Colcord, Joanna Carver
  • Colonial Expansion Heads SouthIn 1619, a Dutch ship brought some Africans to Jamestown. They had been kidnapped from their homes by African traders and sold to the ship's captain. He sold them to the Virginia settlers. Those first blacks may have been treated like indentured servants. Later, however, colonists decided to keep them as slaves so they would not have to continue paying for workers. Indians did not make good slaves because they could run away. Blacks could not. They had no place to go. Slowly, laws were approved in Virginia that made it legal to keep black people as slaves. By 1750, there were more Africans in Virginia than any other group.
  • Colony For Epileptics (1914)"From the inception of public care of the insane in New York State epileptics were undoubtedly provided for from time to time, but no special provision was existent beyond a separate ward in the various hospitals. In 1873 Dr. Ordroneaux mentioned special provision for the epileptic on Blackwell’s Island." This entry was copied with permission and derived from the blog researched and developed by Linda S. Stuhler.
  • Colored Conventions MovementFrom Colored Conventions Project, 2022. Starting in 1830 and continuing until well after the Civil War, free, freed and self-emancipated Blacks came together in state and national political conventions. Tens of thousands of Black men and women from different walks of life traveled to attend meetings publicly advertised as “Colored Conventions.” where they strategized about how they might achieve educational, labor, and legal justice.
  • Committee Of The Connecticut Asylum For The Education And Instruction Of Deaf And Dumb Persons (1817)The founders of the Connecticut Asylum—like most educators of the deaf during the antebellum years—saw their primary goal as saving the souls of deaf children. This goal reflected the influence of the Second Great Awakening and, in particular, religious reformers’ hope that social reforms would help to bring about the Millennium. This is an Abridged Text of the Report.
  • Committee on Economic Security - 1934The President's Committee on Economic Security (CES) was formed in June 1934 and was given the task of devising "recommendations concerning proposals which in its judgment will promote greater economic security." In a message to Congress two weeks earlier President Roosevelt spelled-out what he expected the CES to achieve. ". . . I am looking for a sound means which I can recommend to provide at once security against several of the great disturbing factors in life--especially those which relate to unemployment and old age."
  • Committee On Youth Councils Of The Welfare Council Of New York City: A Report -- 1949As a result of the growing conviction about the necessity for active participation by youth in their own and community affairs, the Welfare Council of New York and the Civilian Defense Volunteer Office included two hundred young people as participants in the Youth Conference sponsored by those organizations and held at City Hall on January 13, 1945.
  • Commons, John R.John R. Commons (1862-1945) – Economist, Progressive, Labor Advocate, Professor and Author
  • Community Chest Movement: An Interpretation 1924"Rich and poor, the various religious denominations, the great forces, social, commercial, and religious, should be willing to join hands for common ideals, to make a better city for the living of human life, better health for all, better educational opportunities for young and old, moral conditions that strengthen character, better laws, less legal restrictions, and better standards of living. The community chest is a factor in this great work, and if organized and carried on in the proper spirit will contribute substantially to the realization of this high aim." By C. M. Bookman, Executive Secretary, Community Chest and Council of Social Agencies, 1924.
  • Community Chest Spending Circa 1941
  • Community Chests Contributions To Community Welfare Planning: 1928
  • Community Councils: What Have They Done And What Is Their Future? (1919)Presentation by John Collier, Director, Training School for Community Workers at the National Conference Of Social Work Annual Meeting in 1919. "I want to insist at once that Community Councils are independent, self -operating neighborhood organizations...As such they remain, now that the war is over, to help in the work of reconstruction and in the upbuilding of a useful and beautiful leisure life."
  • Community Federation: A Model Constitution and PlanThe community federation, regardless of the way it has been established, must not attempt to be an overlord administering the affairs of the constituent agencies. The federation should be the machinery by means of which the agencies and their social workers function together. When new standards of work are being developed, the federated agencies interested in those standards should help formulate them. The federation can safely exercise administrative direction, but should not exercise administrative control. From this it clearly follows that a social service federation should be entirely representative of the agencies, having only such powers as the co-operating agencies delegate to it.
  • Community Organization Movement (1919)In this presentation immediately following WWI, Wm. Norton presents his views on why community organization is essential. In one part he said: "The intention of the new community organization therefore is not to supplant the old but to strengthen and to supplement it. It aims to gather all of these specialized agencies with their different approaches and conflicting personalities together into a single community-wide co-operative society, with the purposes of creating a feeling of comradeship among them, of eliminating waste, of reducing friction, of strengthening them all, of planning new ventures in the light of the organized information held by all, of swinging them in a solid front in one attack after another upon the pressing and urgent needs of the hours. It says to a Protestant, "We know you are a Protestant and have a right to be one. That man there is a Catholic and has a right to be one. And that man there is a Jew and has a right to be proud of that. Stick to the points in your work where race and religion tell you to differ from others but admit the others' right to do the same and remember always that you are all of one clay, American citizens in this American community, and wherever you can do it without sacrifice of principle, work and plan as one."
  • Community Organization: Its Meaning 1939Though the community organization processes are varied, they all center upon the organizing act and subsequent nurture. Implementation is implied in the latter term. As preliminary and supplementary stages in the process several other activities are often necessary -- research (to get a clear picture of the fundamental facts), planning (to develop a wise program of action, publicity (to make the findings known to possible Supporters), and promotion (to organize and apply the support effectively).
  • Community Service Society of New York City
  • Company Towns: 1880s to 1935In the 1890s, in remote locations such as railroad construction sites, lumber camps, turpentine camps, or coal mines, jobs often existed far from established towns. As a pragmatic solution, the employer sometimes developed a company town, where an individual company owned all the buildings and businesses.
  • Company Unions and the American Federation of Labor (AFL)Article by Louis Adamic, The Nation, 1934. "In brief, the A. F. of L. union skates are utilizing, exploiting the workers' hate for company unions, stirring and intensifying it, focusing their thoughts and feelings on the company-union evil, exaggerating the power of company unionism, in order to keep them blind to the faults and shortcomings of the A. F. of L. organizations."
  • Congress of Racial EqualityThe Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pioneered direct nonviolent action in the 1940s before playing a major part in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Founded by an interracial group of pacifists at the University of Chicago in 1942, CORE used nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation in Northern cities during the 1940s. Members staged sit-ins at Chicago area restaurants and challenged restrictive housing covenants. Early expansion beyond the University of Chicago brought students from across the Midwest into the organization, and whites made up a majority of the membership into the early 1960s.
  • Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)The Congress of Racial Equality pioneered direct nonviolent action in the 1940s before playing a major part in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Founded by an interracial group of pacifists at the University of Chicago in 1942, CORE used nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation in Northern cities during the 1940s.
  • Conner, G. Jasper
  • Conscientious Objectors: World War IIby Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day Column," June 20,1944
  • Conservative Transition in American Social PolicyAlthough 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
  • Contemporary Housing IssuesBy Catherine A. Paul, 2018. Housing has been an issue throughout American history, from urbanization to overcrowding. While this article does not provide an exhaustive list or analysis of all of America's issues related to this topic, gentrification, affordable housing, eviction, and homelessness are all issues that have risen to prominence in recent years.
  • Contract Between Thomas Gallaudet And Laurent Clerc (1816)Thomas Gallaudet, a Congregationalist minister, and Laurent Clerc, a French Roman Catholic, formed a partnership to establish an institution of deaf education. This partnership was formalized in the following contract, written before Clerc traversed the Atlantic with Gallaudet. One important aspect of their contract pertained to their religious differences.
  • Conversation at Buffalo (1939)A fictional conversation in which three delegates to the National Conference on Social Work discuss the effects of segregation and racism on African American social workers.
  • Coolidge, John Calvin, Jr. - 30th President of the U.S. (1923-1929)Coolidge was "distinguished for character more than for heroic achievement," wrote a Democratic admirer, Alfred E. Smith. "His great task was to restore the dignity and prestige of the Presidency when it had reached the lowest ebb in our history ... in a time of extravagance and waste...."
  • Corrections: Part I -- Penal and Prison ReformReport given at the Seventh Annual Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1880. Read By Henry W. Lord, Chairman of The Committee. "Not the slightest idea of organized reformatory measures as connected with prisoners, ever entered into the hearts of men until almost within the memory of persons now living; and the first thought of systematized prison labor as an element of discipline was an American idea, reduced to practice in the early part of the present century."
  • Corrections: Part II - Background and Jails 1878Presentations and reports of standing committees at the annual meetings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction during the late 19th century reveal that social welfare leaders and progressives were actively involved in efforts to reform the nation’s criminal justice system.
  • Corrections: Part III -- A Model Prison System 1878Prison Discipline In General: The Elmira System - A letter From Z. B. Brockway of Elmira, N.Y., To F. B. Sanborn of Concord, Mass. Presented at the Fifth Annual Conference of Charities, 1878. "Labor for prisoners lies at the very foundation of their reformation; and I hope to see, before I die, the great army of idle prisoners, congregated in the common jails of our land, brought together in workhouses, where they shall be wisely and profitably employed, and held in such custody as shall protect society from their crimes, or the burden of their support as paupers, -- held until they give evidence to experts of cure or reformation."
  • Corrections: Part IV - Reformation As An End In Prison Discipline"Reformation as an End in Prison Discipline: Report of The Standing Committee," by F. H. Wines, Chairman. ,A presentation at the Fifteenth Annual Session of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1888. "We assert, therefore, that there can be no recognition of reformation as an end in prison discipline in any prison where the warden or superintendent is not, by his education, habits of thought, personal character, and conviction of duty, qualified to administer to convicts the moral treatment which they require."
  • Corrections: Part V - Progress: 1873-1893"The Prison Question: Progress Over Twenty Years, 1873-93," by General R. Brinkerhoff, Chairman, Committee on the History of Prisons. "In a resume of progress for twenty years in so large a country as the United States, of course only a brief outline..."
  • Corrections: Part VI - The Treatment of The Criminal: 1904By F. H. Wines, LL. D., Chairman of Committee on Treatment of Criminals. "The subject assigned to this committee is the treatment of the criminal, a subordinate phase of the larger problem of the treatment of crime. The criminal is the concrete embodiment of the abstract conception of crime. Crime is an act, while the criminal is the agent of the act; but there can be no act without an actor, and it is through the criminal that the law strikes at crime, which it is the aim of the law to prevent or to suppress, caring little for the criminal actor, but much for the victim of his deed."
  • Corrections: Part VII - Trends In Criminology - 1924Presentation given by S. Sheldon Glueck, Instructor, Criminology and Penology, Department of Social Ethics, Harvard University, at the Proceedings Of The National Conference Of Social Work Fifty-First Annual Session, 1924. "These conditions make it clear that we must first deal with the traditional need for definite, legislative prescriptions in advance, of the length of service attached to each offense, so that the power to deprive of liberty may not be abused; and secondly, we have to deal with the associated problem of lack of co-ordination of effort between the courts, the penal institutions, the parole officers, and social agencies and workers."
  • Corrections: Part VIII - Racial and Migratory Causes of Crime -- 1924Presentation by J. E. Hagerty, Dean, College of Commerce and Journalism, Ohio State University, at The National Conference Of Social Work Fifty-First Annual Session, 1924. "I am not in sympathy with the notion that the immigrant should forget and lose the language and the customs and traditions of the country from which he came...The foreigner, however, should learn the language of the country and the laws of the country. Much of the immigrant's crime has been committed through ignorance, from the lack of knowledge of what he can do and what he cannot do."
  • Coughlin, Father CharlesFather Coughlin's influence on Depression-era America was enormous. In the early 1930s, Coughlin was, arguably, one of the most influential men in America. Millions of Americans listened to his weekly radio broadcast. At the height of his popularity, one-third of the nation was tuned into his weekly broadcasts.
  • Council Of Social Agencies: Fundamental Objectives 1928
  • Council on Social Work Education: Dr. Kendall's Appointment
  • Coxey, Jacob S.
  • Coyle, Grace
  • Cretins And Idiots (1858)Of those not affected by epilepsy, who are brought under instruction in childhood, from one third to one fourth may be so far improved as to become capable of performing the ordinary duties of life with tolerable fidelity and ability. They may acquire sufficient knowledge to be able to read, to write, to understand the elementary facts of geography, history, and arithmetic; they may be capable of writing a passable letter; they may acquire a sufficient knowledge of farming, or of the mechanic arts, to be able to work well and faithfully under appropriate supervision; they may attain a sufficient knowledge of the government and laws under which they live, to be qualified to exercise the electoral franchise quite as well as many of those who do exercise it; they may make such advances in morals, as to act with justice and honor toward their fellow-men, and exhibit the influence of Christianity in changing their degraded and wayward natures to purity, chastity, and holiness.
  • Crittenton, Charles Nelson
  • Crouch, Laura
  • Cruikshank, Nelson HaleNelson Hale Cruikshank (1902-1986): Minister, Labor Leader and a Leader for Social Security and Medicare
  • Crushing Out Our Children's Lives (1931)Written by Helen Keller, an Article in Home Magazine, 1931. "I WONDER how many of you have Miss Abbott's annual report of the Children's Bureau. The part relating to child labor is distressing. Miss Abbott tells us that there was a steady increase in child labor during the three years preceding the present period of depression and unemployment. According to reports from sixty cities in thirty-three states, 220,000 full-time working certificates were issued to children between fourteen and eighteen years of age in 1929, as against 150,000 in 1928."
  • Cunningham, Willnette
  • Current Issues and Programs in Social WelfareAmerican social welfare, thanks to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Social Security Act of 1935, is furthered currently by two major categories of cash support programs: social insurances? and public assistance. Social insurances are based on the prior earnings and payroll contributions of an individual, while public assistance, commonly known as “welfare,” is based on the financial need of an individual.
  • Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare: 2001 - 2017Note: This entry is an update to Dr. Marx's previous article, "Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare." George W. Bush took office as the 43rd President of the United States in 2001. It was only the second time that the son of an American president had later also become president. Bush, a Republican like his father, had defeated Democratic candidate Al Gore from Tennessee in one of the closest and most contested presidential elections in U.S. history.
  • Current Social Frontiers Benjamin Youngdahl, throughout his career, was an active leader in many social work organizations, thus exercising a decisive influence on the profession of social work and social work education. From 1947 to 1948, he was president of the American Association of Schools of Social Work. Three years later, from 1951 to 1953, he became president of the American Association of Social Workers.
  • Cutler, Vilona Phillippi (1890-1970)In her role as YWCA Executive Secretary she fought against white privilege social norms and Jim Crow segregation laws that presented multiple indignities for Black Americans. Early in her tenure as YWCA director she recognized that Oklahoma African-American girls and women had the same needs as their white counterparts in Great Britain that gave purpose to the founding of the first YWCA in 1898. In 1941 she worked to establish a small “YWCA Branch” to serve the Black community. In 1945 she was instrumental in convincing her YWCA board of directors to create a multiracial committee for purpose of raising funds to secure a permanent building to house the branch serving the Black community. Her original fund raising idea was to use Black artists for a concert. It is assumed several Black committee members were ministers and that is how idea of using Black church choirs took hold.
  • Daniel Coit Gilman's Contributions to Social WorkThis article brings the reader some evidence of social work history that has at the very least been neglected. Most people when asked who are the founders of social work were will mention Jane Addams, Mary Richmond, the Abbotts and maybe Ida Cannon, Charles Loring Brace and S. Humphreys Gurteen. The name of Daniel Coit Gilman is never included in the list of the greats. The case I shall make to you today is that his contributions to helping create the profession were at least as great as those still listed.
  • Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De PaulWritten by Michael Barga. "Originally founded in France, a congregation of sisters was started in Emmitsburg, Maryland in 1809 by Elizabeth Ann Seton which would later become associated with the Daughters of Charity in 1850. The congregation, dedicated to work in social ministry and education, was the first sisterhood founded in the United States."
  • Day, Dorothy
  • de Schweinitz, Elizabeth McCord
  • de Schweinitz, Karl
  • Declaration of Sentiments - July 1848In 1848, a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious conditions and rights of women was convened in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention was organized and run by women who later became influential in the women's suffrage movement. In the Declaration of Sentiments, the organizers demanded government reform and changes in male roles and behaviors that promoted inequality for women.
  • Defective Classes (1891)I propose the following classification of the defective classes, depending upon the three divisions of the mental faculties which are generally accepted by psychologists. Insanity and idiocy are different forms of defective intellect. Crime and vice are caused by defect of the emotions or passions. And pauperism is caused by defect of the will. Blindness and deaf-mutism are defects of the senses, requiring special forms of education, but are not defects of the mind any more than the loss of an arm or a leg. Blind or deaf people properly educated are not a burden or a danger to society, as are criminals, insane persons, or paupers. Their defects are physical, not mental, and they should not be classed with persons who have these mental defects.
  • Defense Housing: 1942Speech by C.F. Palmer, Coordinator of Defense Housing. "In the twelve months ending next June 30th, we expect that an enormous army of two to three million men, women, and children will have been involved in the essential migration required by war industry and military concentration. The arrival of these millions of people in defense areas is creating a complexity of problems, in which the largest is the supply of shelter."
  • Defining CommunityUntil the Civil War to be oriented to the community as a social reference was in conflict with Individualism which was the dominant American philosophy. The way these ideas played against each other illuminates an important part of the American experience, one that continues to be active today.
  • Deportation of the Insane Aliens: 1907The present course taken by the United States Government in deporting insane aliens who have been in this country for some time is characterized by unnecessary harshness and even injustice. The purpose of deportation is to save this country the expense of maintaining a dependent person. The great majority of the aliens who are deported are persons who entered the country in perfectly good faith, with the intention and desire of earning a living, and in the vigor of youth, the average age of those deported being thirty years. It is not altogether their own fault that such aliens find themselves surrounded by economic and social conditions so unfavorable to their mental and physical health that they break down under the strain of competing with those who are better adapted to the conditions of life in this country.
  • Detroit Digs In (1937)Article by Edward Levinson, The Nation, 1937. "General Motors must have known it was making an offer which the union could not consider without inviting a repetition of the collapse of the 1934 strike. While talking peace to Governor Murphy it has thrown up breastworks for a fight to the end."
  • Developing Patterns For Aid To The Aging Retarded And Their Families (1960)It is important to note in the context of our discussion here that, notwithstanding this marked trend, in most of our institutions residents of all ages are still referred to as "boys" and "girls." Yet one of the most important of the "Developing Patterns for Aid to the Aging Retarded and Their Families" I am to discuss with you tonight is the beginning recognition that the older retardate is entitled to adult status. This new insight, stemming largely from the more progressive work in community facilities for the retarded, reflects a rejection of the old cliche which termed a twenty-year-old mongoloid with an I.Q. of 40 as a "child at heart." Today we recognize that such a person is an adult with a severe mental handicap, but one who may well be capable of performing tasks of reasoning and expressing feelings considerably beyond those of the child whose "mental age" he presumably possesses....
  • Devine, Edward T.
  • Dewey, John (1859 - 1952): Educator, Social Reformer, PhilosopherJohn Dewey was the most significant educational thinker of his era and, many would argue, of the 20th century. As a philosopher, social reformer and educator, he changed fundamental approaches to teaching and learning. His ideas about education sprang from a philosophy of pragmatism and were central to the Progressive Movement in schooling.
  • Dewitt, Larry W.
  • Dewson, Mary
  • Dickinson, Anna (1842-1932)Anna Dickenson began her activism even earlier, when she was thirteen years old, by writing an essay for William Lloyd Garrison’s famed newspaper, The Liberator. She also was friendly with Lucretia Mott, who preached against slavery in Quaker meetinghouses for decades. Unlike others of the era’s religions, Quakers encouraged women to speak in public, and under Mott’s leadership, some eight hundred Philadelphians bought tickets for Dickinson’s first major speech early in 1861, “The Rights and Wrongs of Women.”
  • Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American HistoryNot only has disability justified the inequality of disabled people but of other groups as well. In the three great citizenship debates of the 19th century and early 20th centuries: women’s suffrage, African American freedom, and immigration restriction, disability played a substantive role.
  • Disability Rights & Universal DesignDisability rights originated in Boston, Massachusetts in 1846 with Samuel Gridley Howe. Howe was an advocate for education of the blind, and a supporter of the "feeble-minded."
  • Disaster Relief Experiences of the American Red CrossEverywhere emergency care was promptly and effectively given. At Pittsburgh the Chapter performed an admirable service of caring for sixty thousand refugees – feeding, sheltering, clothing and giving medical and nursing attention at over 150 centers. At Greensboro, North Carolina, one of the many recorded acts of unselfishness and devotion to duty by a Chapter officer was reported when the Chairman of the disaster committee hardly paused at his own tornado-wrecked business to take charge of Red Cross relief at great personal sacrifice. At Gainesville, Georgia, so completely devastated by the storm, the Atlanta and other nearby Chapters virtually took charge of emergency aid. At Wilkes-Barre, as at many other points, the Chapter gave a wonderful service of rescue to thousands from flooded homes without a single casualty – aided by the courageous and skilled men of the U.S. Coast Guard to whom my hat is always off in tribute for an endless procession of service of rescue. And so it went in Chapter after Chapter.
  • Disease of Mendicancy (1877)Leprosy is not more incurable than mendicancy. When the disease has once fastened itself upon a man, -- when, through long months or years, he has willingly and gladly lived on the industry of others, and roamed around without a home, -- he becomes a hopeless case, and nothing but the strong arm of the law can make him a self-supporting man.
  • Dix, Dorthea Lynde
  • Douglass, FrederickDouglass’s life spanned important decades of American history in which the contradictions of race, class and gender were debated. Douglass played a crucial role in those debates. He spoke out against Northern race prejudice as well as Southern slavery. He challenged segregated Sabbaths--either white or black and criticized the race prejudice of immigrant labor organizations which excluded black freemen. Douglass once remarked that his son could more easily become an apprentice in a Boston law firm than in any workingman’s organization.
  • DuBois, W.E.B. (1868-1963)Du Bois was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — the largest and oldest civil rights organization in America. Throughout his life Du Bois fought discrimination and racism. He made significant contributions to debates about race, politics, and history in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, primarily through his writing and impassioned speaking on race relations.
  • Dunham, Arthur
  • Dunn, Loula FriendMiss Dunn played a key role in bringing together social welfare leaders from all over the country to help study and draft legislation establishing many federally funded social work welfare programs. She influenced many, and during her long career she maintained close associations with such public figures as Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Nelson Rockefeller.
  • Duty Of The States Toward Their Insane Poor: 1874Presentation by Dr. J. B. Chapin of the Willard Asylum for the insane on "The Duty of the States toward their Insane Poor."
  • Earhart, Amelia
  • Early History of Group WorkGroup work began to be accepted as a dimension of social work in America when it was given "Section" status by the organizers of the National Conference of Social Work (NCSW) in 1934....There existed considerable debate about what group work was – and where it belonged in the social work profession. Although group work methodology was developed primarily within recreation and informal education agencies it was increasingly being used in social work-oriented agencies, for example, within settings such as children’s institutions, hospitals, and churches. Influential social workers, such as Gertrude Wilson argued that group work was a core method of social work and not a field, movement, or agency.
  • East Side House, New York CityEast Side House, founded in 1891, has served the Mott Haven section of the Bronx since 1963
  • Economic Inequality: An IntroductionBy Steve Greenlaw, Ph. D., 2020. Brought up on the Declaration of Independence and the idea that all people are created equal, Americans have traditionally described themselves as living in a classless society. This classless society meant that individual effort and talent contributed to one's place in society. The vast majority of Americans, it has been believed, are middle class. Looking at the data, however, it's clear that economic inequality exists. But what is it? Economic inequality is the unequal distribution of income (earnings) or wealth (net worth or savings) in a society.
  • Economic Security: Part I
  • Economic Security: Part II
  • Economic Security: Part III
  • Edelman, Marian WrightMarian Wright Edelman has been recognized and celebrated for her talents and tireless advocacy on behalf of children and families. Edelman was founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF).
  • Education For Community Mental Health Practice: Problems And ProspectsThe problem of professional education for community mental health practice is one that poses a number of intricate questions for both educators and practitioners. The complexity and size of the mental health problem and the growing support for mental health programs throughout the country together indicate that the field of social work must make a major effort to relate soundly to the educational needs in this field. The work of the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Mental Health clearly indicates the need for useful data on which to assess and evaluate the current and future directions of mental health programs. There is a strong feeling among those who have some awareness of where we now stand that current efforts in mental health fall far short of meeting the vast needs. There is continued questioning of the nature and content of service available and there is a high degree of curiosity about the effectiveness of current services. We now face the disconcerting fact that we may not really be meeting these needs just by increasing the number of known and existing services; rather the implication of present-day thinking is that we need to bring about some radical changes in our working philosophy and in our practice if we are to make any realistic impression on mental health problems.
  • Education of Deaf and Blind African Americans in Virginia, 1909-2008History of Virginia's first school for African American deaf and blind children.
  • Education Of The Blind (1833)"It has long been to us a matter of surprise that the blind have been so much neglected. Our age, compared with those that have passed away, is truly a humane one; never has more attention been paid to individual man than now; never has the imperative duty of society to provide for the wants of those whom nature or accident has thrown upon its charity, been more deeply felt, or more conscientiously discharged...."
  • Education Of The Deaf (1912)I was about six years old before any of the specialists whom my parents consulted was brave enough to tell them that I should never see or hear. It was Doctor Chisholm of Baltimore who told them my true condition. "But," said he, "she can be educated," and he advised my father to take me to Washington and consult Doctor Alexander Graham Bell as to the best method of having me taught. Doctor Chisholm did exactly the right thing. My father followed his advice at once, and within a month I had a teacher, and my education was begun. From that intelligent doctor's office I passed from darkness to light, from isolation to friendship, companionship, knowledge. The parent who brings his child to your office, to your hospitals, should find in you, not a teacher, perhaps, but one who understands how far it is possible to right the disaster of deafness....
  • Educational Alliance"Educational Alliance: A History of a Lower East Side Settlement House," by EJ Sampson. "The Educational Alliance...balanced the growing professionalization of settlement house work by becoming community-based, and kept its emphasis on encouraging public civic culture even as in other ways it aligned with a social service “agency” model. And it kept it eyes on its Jewish origins not only in its neighborhood work, but in negotiating its internal ethos. "
  • Edwards, Thyra J. (1897 - 1953)Thyra J. Edwards (1897 – 1953) – Social Worker, Child Welfare Advocate, Labor Organizer
  • Effect of Economic Conditions Upon the Living Standards of Negroes (1928)Presentation by Forrester B. Washington, Director, Atlanta School of Social Work, given at the 55th Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare, 1928. "The problems which I will discuss are health, education, delinquency, crime and family disorganization. They follow logically those discussed by Mr. Thomas. In addition, I will attempt to summarize his paper and my own and present our combined recommendations."
  • Egypt, Ophelia Settle (1903-1984)In the late 1920s, Ophelia Settle Egypt conducted some of the first and finest interviews with former slaves, setting the stage for the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) massive project ten years later. Born Ophelia Settle in 1903, she was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a researcher for the black sociologist Charles Johnson at Fisk University in Nashville.
  • Eifert, MadelenaMadelena Eifert holds a Masters in Public Health (M.P.H.) with a focus on epidemiological methods and research.
  • Eighth Report Of The Directors Of The American Asylum For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf And Dumb (1824)"During the first half of the nineteenth century, deaf educators saw their primary goal as ensuring that deaf students learned the Christian gospel. Like educators of blind children and those labeled as idiotic, teachers of deaf children had several other goals, including teaching basic academic skills and providing vocational training. This report also discusses some of the challenges faced by educators of deaf children and their counterparts at schools for blind and idiotic children..."
  • Eileen Blackey: Pathfinder for the ProfessionIn Blackey’s view a school of social work had many constituencies—the university, the profession, the communities and clients served, cooperating agencies, and the general public. With all of them Blackey urged the maintenance of meaningful ties and a leadership role that in large measure remains elusive. She hoped that schools of social work would have a stronger presence within their universities; she envisaged greater involvement of the schools in formulating social policy and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable groups in society; and she wanted agencies to be more open to experimental approaches to practice. These are goals still to be achieved.
  • Elderly Homeless Crisis: History and OriginsThe growing number of elderly persons experiencing homelessness requires an extensive overhaul of the welfare systems originally designed to assist houseless individuals. Elderly persons are more likely to need medical assistance, supportive housing, and disability assistance, services that the U.S. government is straining to accommodate. 
  • Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965The 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.
  • Elements of Community OrganizationThis original January 1939 document is a significant early step in attempting to define Community Organization as a method of social work.
  • Eliot, Thomas H.
  • Elliot, John Lovejoy
  • Emancipation ProclamationThis document gave the states of the Confederacy until January 1, 1863 to lay down their arms and peaceably reenter the Union, if these states continued their rebellion all slaves in those seceding states were declared free.
  • Emancipation Proclamation: January 1st, 1863Although January 1st, 1863, is the date most Americans identify as the day the Emancipation Proclamation officially took effect, the ideals of the Proclamation had been carefully contemplated by President Lincoln many months before.
  • Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932 President Herbert Hoover said: "I expect to sign the relief bill on Tuesday. I do wish to express the appreciation which I have and I know that the country has to those leaders of both political parties who have cooperated to put the bill into effective shape and to eliminate the destructive proposals which were from time to time injected into it.
  • Employee Assistance ProgramsEmployee Assistance Programs (EAPs) were developed from two sources Occupational Social Work and Occupational Alcoholism. Although Occupational Social Work had its beginnings in the early 20th century (Masi, 1982; Maiden, 2001), it has now evolved into EAPs as a practice model. Social Work schools continue to call specializations Occupational or Industrial Social Work.
  • Employment Services: A Brief HistoryPresident Warren Harding called a Conference on Unemployment in 1921. This Conference, of which Mr. Herbert Hoover (at that time Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce) was chairman...In commenting on the need for such a service, Secretary Hoover said, "One of the causes of ill will that weighs heavily upon the community is the whole problem of unemployment. I know of nothing [more important] than the necessity to develop further remedy, first, for the vast calamities of unemployment in the cyclic periods of depression, and, second, some assurance to the individual of reasonable economic security--to remove the fear of total family disaster in loss of the job. . . . I am not one who regards these matters as incalculable. . . There is a solution somewhere and its working out will be the greatest blessing yet given to our economic system, both to the employer and the employee."
  • English Poor Laws
  • Epstein, Abraham
  • Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda (1921)We have come to the conclusion, based on widespread investigation and experience, that this education for parenthood must be based upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the submerged masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes in the mores of the people. Such systems have in the past revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world has today drifted.
  • Experiencing Aging: A Social Group Worker’s Self-ReflectionThe concept “experiencing aging” is different than ‘’aging’. It is a proactive state of being. It is not theory. Rather it is what exists uniquely in the mind and heart of each elderly member. Group workers are ever seeking to find it in their group members and to help the members find it in themselves and in each other.
  • Exploiting the Child (1934)An editorial in The Nation, May, 1934. The Child Labor amendment discussed in this entry was proposed in 1924 following rulings by the Supreme Court in 1918 and 1922 that federal laws regulating and taxing goods produced by employees under the ages of 14 and 16 were unconstitutional. By the mid-1930’s the majority of state governments had ratified the amendment; however, according to Article V of the Constitution, three quarters of the states are required to ratify it before it is adopted. The issue became mute when in 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act, allowing federal regulation of child labor, was enacted. In 1941, the Supreme Court approved the law.
  • Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938On 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."
  • Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938Written by Jonathan Grossman. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 applied to industries whose combined employment represented only about one-fifth of the labor force. In these industries, it banned oppressive child labor and set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.
  • Falck, Hans Siegfried (1923 - 2014)Author of Social Work: The Membership Perspective, Dr. Falck's greatest contribution to the field was his development of the "Membership Theory" and his study of its implications and consequences for social work practice.
  • Family Life Of The Negro In The Small Town-- 1926Even the briefest account of the family life of the Negro must include a consideration of the history back of the present Negro family. This history naturally divides itself into three periods: Africa, slavery, and freedom. While the African period, it must be remembered, does not claim our attention because an unbroken social tradition still affects the present formation of the Negro family -although traces of the African tradition were detected in marriage ceremonies near the opening of the present century —it is necessary to call attention to this period because of subsequent events. In Africa the Negro lived under regulated sex relations which were adapted to his social and physical environment. It was through the destruction in America of these institutionalized sex relations that slavery was able to bring about complete subordination.
  • Family Service Association of America: Part I
  • Family Service Association of America: Part II
  • Family Service During War TimeMany mothers have come to us in conflict as to whether or not to go to work. The motives may be patriotic, or desire for a more adequate income, or deeper personal urges for greater independence and release from home care. Since the absence of the mother from the home often creates serious problems of childcare, the decision is particularly crucial. We believe firmly that a mother’s care of her children is in itself an “essential industry”, but, if we are to be realistic, we know that it will not for every woman take priority over other “essential industries”. Our efforts have been to engage in a sort of “screening process”, to try to determine as promptly and soundly as possible the best solution for all concerned, to help the woman who should not work accept her homemaking role as a dignified and contributing one, and to help the mother who should work maintain all possible security for herself and her children.
  • Family Service In The Charity Organization Society, 1935This article was written by Anna Kempshall, a nationally renowned social worker. "Two general principles that are basic in casework philosophy help in differentiating the specialized service of a caseworking agency: (1) that individuals react differently to the problem of need and dependency (2) that casework services have not been limited to persons in economic difficulty."
  • Family Service of PhiladelphiaAt the latter end of the depression, the Quaker community had begun working with professionals in hopes of better organizing their aid to the disadvantaged. In 1879, the contact between the groups culminated in the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicancy (SOC), which later became known as Family Service of Philadelphia. Within two years, SOC had 9,000 contributors.
  • Family Service: Community Service Society 1940A report to the board of directors of the Community Service Society of New York, 1940, by Anna Kempshall, Director of Family Service. "The realization that there is nothing more precious than the life of a child places upon our caseworkers a grave responsibility. To understand the impact of, the currents and cross currents of the environment upon the delicate and elusive mechanism of a child's mind and heart is a challenge to science, religion, education, and social work."
  • Family Social Service During War TimePart of essential manpower is essential mother power. It is true that women are needed in war production, and they must go into it in great numbers, and we cannot let down for an instant. But it is also true that the production and raising of healthy children is a priority in war as in peace. It is hard to get the various programs into effective balance. We launch drives to get women, including mothers, to work in war plants, and then we launch drives to control delinquency -- and all the while we know that the one strongest factor in the prevention of delinquency is the stable home. There is no doubt of the values of supervised recreation of wholesome sorts, vocational guidance, and other activities for young people, but we who are closest to families know that without strong family life you have a chronic deficiency which is difficult to overcome. It is better for children to have good parents than any vitamins we know of today. Insofar as we cannot have this, there are effective substitutes, but we need to conserve our mother power very, very carefully.
  • Family Welfare Association of America
  • Farmville Protests of 1963Written 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."
  • Father's Voice: 1935The Father’s Voice, was the first newspaper produced by the Father’s Club of Madison House Settlement, March 31, 1935.
  • FDR's Essentials for Unemployment Relief: 1933One of the obstacles to creating unemployment relief programs as part of the President's New Deal was the widespread feeling that in this land of opportunity, any individual could find some way to maintain himself and his dependents without relief if only he would exert the necessary initiative and effort. Therefore, it was with only the greatest reluctance that the American public in general and legislative bodies in particular came gradually to accept that fact that as a result of the Great Depression there were actually too few jobs to go around.
  • FDR's Statement on Signing the Social Security Act“Social Security” is the term commonly used to describe the federal retirement benefit program created by Title II of the Social Security Act of 1935. Title II, labeled FEDERAL OLD-AGE BENEFITS, created a “universal contributory social insurance” program designed to protect workers and their families against loss of income due to retirement or the death of a wage earner. Initially, to be eligible for Social Security a wage earner must have worked in covered employment, earned at least $2,000 and attained the age of 65. (Note: Initially, “covered employment” was very narrowly defined, limited mainly to paid work in manufacturing and commerce. As described in Section 210 below, large segments of the working population were exempt from coverage.)
  • Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933Text from the The Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933
  • Federal Government and Negro Workers Under Woodrow Wilson - J. MacLauryPaper written by Judson MacLaury, U.S. Department of Labor Historian, and delivered at the Annual Meeting for the Society for History in the Federal Government. It reflects another step in the evolution of the civil rights movement and a graphic description of some of the political and governmental obstacles the African-American community faced in becoming an integral part of American society.
  • Federal-State Public Welfare ProgramsBy John E. Hansan, Ph. D., 2012. The Social Security Act of 1935 initially authorized federal financial participation in three state administered cash assistance programs: Title I: Grants to States for Old-Age Assistance (OAA); Title IV: Grants to States for Aid to Dependent Children (ADC); and Title X: Grants to States for Aid for the Blind (AB). The framers of the Act also recognized that certain groups of people had needs for particular services which cash assistance alone could not or should not provide. To meet these needs small formula grants for the states were authorized in relation to: Maternal and Child Health, Crippled Children, Child Welfare, and medical assistance for the aged. A fourth program of public assistance -- Aid to the Disabled (AD) -- was added in 1950.
  • Fellowship of Reconciliation USAThe Fellowship of Reconciliation USA (FOR-USA) was founded in 1915 by pacifists opposed to U.S. entry into World War I. Open to men, women, and people of all classes and races, its membership would include Jane Addams, Bishop Paul Jones, Grace Hutchins, A. J. Muste, and Bayard Rustin.
  • Field Work And Social Work Training -- 1915Assuming, then, that field work of this sort is an essential part of the social worker's training, numerous questions of organization arise that present many difficulties, not only to the schools, but to our long-suffering friends, the representatives of the social agencies of our respective communities. How much of the student's time is to be given to field work, and how can the practical problem of the distribution of the student's time be arranged? To what agencies shall the time of students in training be entrusted. and how shall their work be supervised? How much time is to be given to any one agency? And what is the relation of field work to classroom work, lectures and conferences?
  • First Annual Report Of The Trustees Of (Mass.) State Lunatic Hospital: 1833Other institutions, both in Europe and America, which have exhibited the most remarkable proportion of cures, have discriminated in their admissions, receiving the more hopeful cases only. The inmates at Worcester have been a more select class than were ever before assembled together; but unfortunately for success in regard to cures, it has been a selection of the most deplorable cases in the whole community. Of the one hundred and sixty-four individuals received, considerably more than one half came from jails, almshouses and houses of correction, and about one third of the whole number had suffered confinement for periods varying from ten to thirty-two years.
  • First Methodist Parsonage in the United StatesWritten by Christopher J. Anderson, Head of Special Collections, Archives, and Methodist Librarian @ Drew University Library.
  • Fizdale, Ruth
  • Flanagan, Father Edward J.
  • Flint Faces Civil War: 1937Article by Charles R. Walker, The Nation, 1937. "'We'll stay in till they carry us out on stretchers,' is the message sent out by the sitdowners in Fisher 2. 'We'd rather die than give up.'"
  • Flint Sit-Down Strike (1936-1937)By Catherine A. Paul, 2017. The Flint Sit-Down Strike is known as the most important strike in American history because it changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated individuals into a major union, ultimately leading to the unionization of the United States automobile industry.
  • Florence Crittenton Homes: A HistoryThe purposes of this home were to reform “fallen women” and preach salvation and hope to and provide shelter for unmarried, pregnant women and girls. With the success of the Bleeker Street mission, Crittenton became a traveling evangelist, preaching in particular to prostitutes and the unwed mothers. As a result of his efforts, “Crittenton Homes” that provided rescue services and shelter to unwed mothers in an atmosphere permeated by Christian evangelism were established throughout the United States beginning in 1892.
  • Florence Crittenton MissionIn addition to the history of the Crittenton Movement, this entry includes a history of the “Mother House” the first facility of the Florence Crittenton Mission, a poem entitled: “The Soliloquy of a Florence Crittenton Girl” and the Florence Crittenton Homes Association (FCHA) that was established in 1950.
  • Folks, Homer
  • Follett, Mary Parker
  • Food Assistance in the United StatesBy Laura Crouch, 2020. In the United States, millions of people face hunger and food insecurity each day. Unable to provide for themselves and their families, they turn to food assistance programs for both short and long term needs. The USDA defines food insecurity as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA, 2019). About 40 million Americans struggle with food insecurity each year.
  • Food, Farmers, and Fundamentals: 1941Thanks to the ever-normal granary and the efficiency of modern farm production, we can approach the problem of nutrition more constructively than during the last war. There seems little likelihood that we shall have meatless days, or days without sugar. The problem today is to use our soil, our farmers, our processors, our distributors, and our knowledge to produce the maximum of abounding health and spirits—a broad foundation on which we can build all the rest of our hemispheric defense.
  • Forms Created to Combat "Social Evils"Among the Board of Public Welfare departments is the Recreation Department of the board which maintains supervision over all public dances in the city. Licenses must be secured for all such dances, and an inspector is present to see that dance hall rules are complied with. These rules bar the sale of liquor, provide that dance halls be properly lighted, forbid "shadow" and "moonlight" dancing, stipulate that all dances must close at twelve o'clock unless a special permit is secured, and provide that no girls under seventeen shall attend public dances unless attended by parent or guardian. Failure to comply with these rules results in a revocation of the dance permit. During the first year of inspection. more than 300 young girls were sent from dance halls and their parents notified. That inspection has resulted in raising the standard of the dances is attested by the owners of dance halls themselves. It has also increased instead of diminished the attendance at these dances. Similar permits were required for carnivals, pool halls and theaters.
  • Foster, Abigail Kelley - (1811-1887)Abby Kelley spoke at the 1838 Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia, breaking the cultural rules of her time by addressing a mixed audience of men and women. The meeting was highly controversial, and after it ended, protestors burned the newly built facility to the ground. Two years later, at the 1840 American Anti-Slavery Society's annual meeting, she broke another cultural rule and effectively split the anti-slavery movement by asserting woman's equality. Male abolitionists demonstrated their conservatism on women’s rights: when William Lloyd Garrison appointed Kelley to the society business committee, about half of the members resigned and formed their own rival group .
  • Framing the Future Social Security DebateHaving recently completed work on a documentary history of the Social Security program1, several insights suggest themselves which might be useful in framing the (inevitable) future debates over Social Security policy. The first and most salient realization is that to a remarkable degree the policy debates in Social Security seem to contain some hardy perennials.
  • Frankfurter, Felix
  • Franklin Pierce's 1854 VetoThe legislation advocated by Dorothea Dix -- and passed by the House and Senate -- was not unprecedented. At a time when there was no federal income tax, public land represented the largest potential financial resource available to the federal government. Federal lands had already been used to promote the construction of railroads, and there were discussions in 1854 of a homestead act that would provide free land to settlers who were willing to move to the West.
  • Franklin Pierce's Veto Is ChallengedWilliam Seward was one of the most powerful statesmen of the 1850s. Under Abraham Lincoln, with whom he vied for the 1860 Republican Presidential nomination, he was Secretary of State. In 1854, as a Senator from New York, he was a supporter of the Dorthea Dix bill that passed both the House and Senate. Here he provided his rationale for opposing the veto message given by President Pierce. The effort to override the veto failed.
  • Frazier, Edward FranklinEdward Franklin Frazier (September 24, 1894 – May 17, 1962) — Advocate for social justice, administrator, author and social work educator. Written by Angelique Brown, MSW
  • Fred Berl And The Spirit Of Social CaseworkThe few people who were lucky enough and plucky enough to escape the horror that Hitlerism and Stalinism brought to this world made great contributions to America. While much of this history has been written for social scientists, the same cannot be said for social workers (Boyers, 1972). I knew some of them.
  • Frederick Douglass on Woman Suffrage: 1888Frederick Douglass was one of the few men present at the pioneer woman’s rights convention held at Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. His support of women’s rights never wavered although in 1869 he publicly disagreed with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who called for women’s suffrage simultaneously with voting rights for black men, arguing that prejudice and violence against black men made their need for the franchise more pressing. Nonetheless, Douglass remained a constant champion of the right of women to vote.
  • Freedmen’s BureauAt 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.
  • Freedom: Promise or Fact: 1943In a comparatively short period of time the slaves have become free men—free men, that is, as far as a proclamation can make them so. There now remains much work to be done to see that freedom becomes a fact and not just a promise for my people. Eleanor Roosevelt, an article in the Negro Digest, 1943.
  • Friedan, Betty -- (1921-2006)In 1966, Betty Friedan helped establish NOW, the National Organization for Women. She served as its first president. She led campaigns to end unfair treatment of women seeking jobs. Friedan also worked on other issues. She wanted women to have the choice to end their pregnancies. She wanted to create child-care centers for working parents. She wanted women to take part in social and political change. Betty Friedan once spoke about her great hopes for women in the 1970s: "Liberating ourselves, we will then become a major political force, perhaps the biggest political force for basic social and political change in America in the seventies."
  • Friendly Visiting, 1884
  • Friendly Visiting, 1887
  • Friendly Visitors, 1887
  • Friends (Quakers) in Prison ReformThis entry was in the files of Charles Richmond Henderson (1848 – 1915), a notable sociologist and prison reformer. The new note that it struck was its emphasis upon the fact that all the interests of society were affected by the existence of the depraved and unfortunate classes, and that therefore the work in their behalf was a social task which must be shared by the whole community.
  • From Bohemia: Ma and Pa Karas (1940)Two years ago Louis Adamic, author of "My America" and editor of Common Ground, undertook one of the most ambitious writing projects of our time—an analysis of America's great melting-pot experiment, based upon 9,500 questionnaires, 20,000 letters of inquiry, 38,000 miles of travel, with the assistance of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. This chapter, abridged from the resultant book, "From Many Lands" (to be brought out by Harper & Brothers) affords a wholesome sidelight upon the traditional American resolution of some of Europe's individual minority problems of a generation ago.
  • From the Ground Up (1936)An informal description of demonstration projects of the Resettlement Administration on the West Coast during the Great Depression.
  • Fugitive Slave Act of 1850Of all the bills that made up the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was the most controversial. It required citizens to assist in the recovery of fugitive slaves. It denied a fugitive's right to a jury trial. The act called for changes in filing for a claim, making the process easier for slave-owners. Also, according to the act, there would be more federal officials responsible for enforcing the law.
  • Functions and Services of the Kansas City Board of Public Welfare: 1910-1911This Article appeared in The Survey, December 16, 1911. The article describes the growth and development of the first public welfare department in the U.S. during its first two years of operation. At the time of its creation, Kansas City was among the nation's twenty largest cities with a population of 248,000 residents.
  • Furfey, Monsignor Paul Hanly
  • Gage, Matilda (nee, Joslyn) (1826- 1898)One of the most radical, far-sighted and articulate early feminists, Matilda Joslyn Gage was deliberately written out of history after her death in 1898 by an increasingly conservative suffrage movement. Equal in importance to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gage is all but unknown today. (Source: Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation)
  • Gallaudet University
  • Gallaudet, Rev. Thomas Gallaudet met a young deaf girl named Alice Cogswell, the daughter of his neighbor, an eminent surgeon named Mason Fitch Cogswell. Gallaudet attempted to teach Alice to read, but his limited success was frustrating. Alice's father was actively trying to establish a school in Connecticut for deaf children. The best-known educators of deaf people at the time were the Braidwood family, who had schools in London and Edinburgh, where they charged high fees for their instruction. A small number of well-to-do American children had gone to England to study with the Braidwoods, and Cogswell persuaded Gallaudet to go to Britain and investigate their educational methods
  • Garrett, Mary Elizabeth (1854 - 1915)Mary Garrett and the “Friday Evening” group next turned their attention on ways to provide opportunities for women at the Johns Hopkins University. The women of the “Friday Evening” formed the Women’s Medical School Fund Committee in response to a nation-wide appeal for philanthropic assistance initiated by University president D.C. Gilman. Proposing to raise $100,000 for the endowment of the medical school if the trustees would agree to admit women on the same terms as men, the committee embarked upon a major public relations effort to promote medical education for women. When they finished, the Johns Hopkins University—and medical education in the United States—would never be the same.
  • Garrison, William Lloyd
  • Garvey, MarcusMarcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), one of the most influential 20th Century black nationalist and Pan-Africanist leaders, was born on August 17, 1887 in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. Greatly influenced by Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery, Garvey began to support industrial education, economic separatism, and social segregation as strategies that would enable the assent of the “black race.” In 1914, Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Kingston, Jamaica, adopting Washington’s inspirational phrase “Up, you mighty race; you can conquer what you will.”
  • Garvin, Charles
  • George Bush and the Americans with Disabilities ActThe acceptance of the ADA by President George Bush and his administration was far from grudging. It fit a long pattern of Republican support for disability policy that emphasized independence in the labor force over dependence on the welfare rolls.
  • Gilman, Daniel CoitDaniel Coit Gilman is most known for his contributions to American higher education. This paper presents information which shows that he developed practice principles that are still valid, opened Johns Hopkins University to a wide range of social welfare education and activities, and educated several of the most important founders of professional social work.
  • Gilman, Daniel Coit (1831 - 1908): Part TwoDaniel Coit Gilman is best known for his contributions to American university and medical education. Much less well known are his activities in contributing to the foundation for American professional social work education and his personal social welfare activities. This paper reviews his history in these areas and argues that greater attention should be given to his social welfare educational and practice accomplishments.
  • Ginsberg, Sadie Dashew
  • Girl Problem Grows - Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 5, 1913. Juvenile Court and Juvenile Protective Society, Richmond, VA
  • Glenn, Mary WilcoxMrs. Glenn’s move to New York coincided with the growing awareness for the need for professional training for charity workers and the importance of trained caseworkers. It was also a time when social welfare advocates and charity workers were beginning to realize the necessity for more efficient organizations of “good will” and better means for dealing with the conditions of a society where large numbers of able-bodied workers were being compelled to seek handouts, depend on breadlines and soup kitchens. Mrs. Glenn became an active participant in discussions about the possibilities of a larger, national movement that would bring together local agencies and advocates into some form of national organization.
  • Goldberg, Arthur JosephArthur J. Goldberg (1908-1990) – Legal Strategist and Adviser to the American Labor Movement
  • Good Citizenship: The Purpose of Education (1930)Article by Eleanor Roosevelt, appearing in Pictorial Review, 1930. "But there still remains a vast amount to be done before we accomplish our first objective—informed and intelligent citizens, and, secondly, bring about the realization that we are all responsible for the trend of thought and the action of our times."
  • Gordon, Linda Ph.D.
  • Gosney Research FundIn 1928 Mr. Ezra Seymour Gosney founded and endowed a non-profit organization, known as the Human Betterment Foundation, for the purpose of fostering and aiding constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family. In collaboration vith Dr. Paul Popence and other scientists Mr. Gosney carried on an extensive study in the field of eugenic sterilization, including particularly its medical, legal and social aspects. In 1929 and 1930 an exhaustive study was made of 6000 cases of sterilization of eugenically unfit. Eight years later a second similar critical study of 10,000 cases was made.
  • Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in AmericaBlacks who were interested in starting their own branch of the Odd Fellows had discussions with whites in these unincorporated lodges. While these efforts were unsuccessful, they were able to secure incorporation with the Order through a lodge in England. They officially started activities in 1843, and the early membership drew from two established black groups who lacked mutual benefit components: the Philomethan Literary Society and the Philadelphia Company and Debating Society. One of the key players in the development of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in America was Peter Ogden. He reportedly swayed American blacks interested in the Odd Fellows to focus their attention on gaining affiliation with an English lodge rather than lodges in the United States. Ogden presented the admission application in person to the appropriate committee during one of his voyages while in England.
  • Granger, Lester B.Lester Blackwell Granger introduced civil rights to the social work agenda as a national and international issue. He focused attention and advocacy energy on the goal of equal opportunity and justice for all people of color, even while focusing on the condition of black people in the United States. He is credited with leading the development of unions among black workers as well as integrating white unions. He led the integration of black workers in defense industries and the beginnings of racial integration in the military services during World War II.
  • Grant, Irene
  • Great Depression: American Social PolicyOne 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.
  • Greenlaw, Steve, Ph.D.
  • Greenstein, Harry
  • Greenwich House, New York City"A settlement aims to get things done for a given neighborhood. It proposes to be the guardian of that neighborhood’s interests, and through identification of the interests of the settlement group with local interests, it forms a steadying and permanent element in a community which is more or less wavering and influx."
  • Group Approach with Physicians Working in a Medical Intensive Care Unit in a Public HospitalIn the fall of 1979, under the leadership of Jerome Lowenstein, M.D., a Humanistic Medicine program was initiated at New York University Medical School. The purpose of the program was to provide medical students and physicians an opportunity to discuss and examine the non-medical aspects of medical education...
  • Guggenheimer, Elinor Coleman
  • Halbert, Leroy AllenBy 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
  • Hall, Helen
  • Hamilton Madison HouseMadison House was founded by two young German Jews in 1898 to fight some of the serious problems of the day. Hamilton House was established in 1902 to help the new Italian immigrants who were suffering from Tuberculosis
  • Hamilton, Alice, M.D.
  • Hamilton, Amy Gordon (1892 - 1967)While teaching at NYSSW, Hamilton also sought social work practice opportunities in local and national agencies. She became associate director of social service and adviser on research at Presbyterian Hospital in NYC (1925–32). From this experience came her first book: Medical School Terminology (1927). During the Great Depression, Hamilton worked with federal relief agencies and helped establish the 1st Federal Emergency Relief Administration training program. For the years 1935 and 1936, Hamilton took a leave of absence from NYSSW in order to serve as social services director of the New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. After World War II, Hamilton became involved in international social welfare. She worked with the Church World Services and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration from 1944 until 1952. She also worked as a research consultant at the Jewish Board of Guardians, in New York City from 1947-1950.
  • Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler
  • Hamilton-Madison House: Reaching the Hard Core of Poverty This entry was copied from the original document. It is both a history of settlement work on the Lower East Side of New York City and an excellent example of community organization in a racially diverse neighborhood. This proposal was written in the first year that Community Action grants were being awarded as part of the War on Poverty.
  • Hammond, Dr. William A.In 1878 a bill was submitted to Congress authorizing the President to review the proceedings of the court-martial which convicted Dr. Hammond, and, if justice demanded, to reinstate him. This measure was passed almost unanimously by the House and Senate. In August, 1879, it was approved by President Hayes, and, after inquiry, he restored Dr. Hammond to his place on the rolls of the army as Surgeon General and Brigadier General on the retired list.
  • Hansan, John E., Ph.D.
  • Harding, Warren G., 29th President of the U.S. (1921-1923)Behind the facade, not all of Harding's Administration was so impressive. Word began to reach the President that some of his friends were using their official positions for their own enrichment. Alarmed, he complained, "My...friends...they're the ones that keep me walking the floors nights!"....Looking wan and depressed, Harding journeyed westward in the summer of 1923, taking with him his upright Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. "If you knew of a great scandal in our administration," he asked Hoover, "would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?" Hoover urged publishing it, but Harding feared the political repercussions.
  • Harlan: Working under the GunArticle 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."
  • Harlem: Dark Weather-Vane (1936)The Harlem riot of 1935, now the subject of a comprehensive report, demonstrated that "the Negro is not merely the man who shouldn't be forgotten; he is the man who cannot safely be ignored." Alain Locke, early interpreter of the New Harlem in a special issue of Survey Graphic, here pictures the Harlem of hard times
  • Harmony Society: A Utopian CommunityThe Harmony Society, also called the Rappites, were similar to the Shakers in certain beliefs. Named after their founder, Johann Georg Rapp, the Rappites immigrated from Württemburg, Germany, to the United States in 1803, seeking religious freedom. Establishing a colony in Butler County, Pennsylvania, called Harmony, the Rappites held that the Bible was humanity's sole authority.
  • Harper's Ferry Raid, 1859On October 16, 1859 in the town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) John Brown, an ardent abolitionist, and 21 other men raided a West Virginia armory to seize weapons for a planned slavery insurrection.
  • Harry Hopkins and New Deal PoliciesThe 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 DepressionHarry 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).
  • Hart, Hastings H.
  • Hartley House SettlementAccording to the Association, Hartley House was to be a small “homemaking” school, where poor girls could be taught to make and keep a home neat, tidy, and attractive, not for their own good merely, but for the good also of their families and husbands, brothers, and friends."
  • Harty, Justin, Ph.D.
  • Harvest and Relief: 1935"No work, no eat" has been the slogan in many communities as fruit and grain ripened for harvest and relief clients held back from farm jobs. In other areas, shortage of domestic help has been reported. What is the workers' side of the story? The taxpayers'? What is the policy of federal and state relief officials? Here an informed Washington writer goes behind the headlines to kind the facts and what they mean.
  • Hatcher, Orie Latham
  • Hathway, Marion
  • Haynes, Elizabeth RossIn the early twentieth century Progressive era reformers largely ignored the needs of African American women. Lacking settlement houses and other resources African American reformers such as Elizabeth Ross Haynes turned to one of the few institutions available to them, the YWCA.
  • Haynes, George Edmund (1880 - 1960)Southern segregation policies were granted legitimacy by the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. The alternatives for former slaves were limited. They could work for white farmers as tenants or sharecroppers, barely a step above slavery, or they could leave the South. Many opted to migrate and moved north to find a better life. Two people stepped forward at this time to provide leadership and help build an organization dedicated to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream – one Negro, one white; one man, one woman – and together, they founded the National Urban League.
  • Haywood, William "Big Bill" DudleyWilliam D. "Big Bill" Haywood ranks as one of the foremost and perhaps most feared of America's labor radicals. Physically imposing with a thunderous voice and almost total disrespect for law, Haywood mobilized unionists, intimidated company bosses, and repeatedly found himself facing prosecution.
  • Health Conservation and the WPAThe Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created by Executive Order #7034 on May 6, 1935. President Roosevelt had the authority for this Executive Order via the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. The WPA was created to offer direct government employment to the jobless. The unemployment rate was about 20% at the time the WPA was created. The WPA lasted until June 30, 1943. The unemployment rate then was possibly below 2%, with many Americans working in the armed services, defense industries, etc. The WPA–during it’s 8 years of existence–employed over 8.5 million different Americans, and reached peak employment of over 3.3 million in late 1938.
  • Health Conservation and WPA (1939)The following address was delivered by Mrs. Florence Kerr, Assistant Commissioner, Work Projects Administration. "In our WPA project work, we have come to grips with the problem of public health on a number of important fronts...we are not just talking about the need for better sanitation the need for more medical, dental and nursing service, the need of school children for hot, well-balanced lunches, the need of home visits to underprivileged families in time of illness...We're...doing something about them."
  • Health Work For Negro Children (1925)There are too many deaths among Negro children today, for the good of the Negro race and for the good of the country as a whole. The Negro race needs a stronger and more healthy younger generation to help it combat successfully the many obstacles which it must meet. In addition to the normal struggle for existence, the black man in America must endure a number of handicaps. He must make his living by means of the lowest-paid and most unhealthful jobs in industry, though this condition is improving somewhat in certain sections of the country. He must struggle for life itself against unfavorable environments in the form of the least healthful neighborhoods and the oldest and most unsanitary houses.
  • Healy, Bishop James Augustine (1830-1900)James Augustine Healy: The First African American To Be Ordained a Roman Catholic Priest
  • Height, Dorothy IreneDr. Height held many positions in government and social service organizations, but she is best known for her leadership roles in the Young Womens Christian Association (YWCA), and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW).
  • Helen Keller. A Second Laura Bridgman (1888)Michael Anagnos, the superintendent of the Perkins Institution and Samuel Gridley Howe’s son-in-law, played a major role in turning Hellen Keller and Anne Sullivan into celebrities. In this annual report from the Perkins Institution, Anagnos reflects on Bridgman’s education and compares her work with Keller’s startlingly quick progress under Sullivan’s tutelage.
  • Henderson, Charles Richmond
  • Henry Street Settlement (1910)This description of Henry Street Settlement in 1910-1911 is largely copied from the "Handbook of Settlements" written by two settlement house pioneers: Robert Archey Woods and Albert J. Kennedy. The handbook included the findings of a national survey of all the known settlements in existence in 1910 and was published by The Russell Sage Foundation of New York in 1911.
  • Henry Street Settlement Pioneers: Lillian Wald and Helen HallFor its first 74 years Henry Street had but two directors, one served 40 years, the other 34. Our current executive director, Bertram M. Beck, follows the tradition of Lillian Wald and Helen Hall by living in the House at 265 Henry Street.
  • Henry Street Settlement: Certificate of IncorporationThe 1903 official document authorizing the name of the proposed corporation: Henry Street Settlement
  • Henry Street Settlement: Fortieth Anniversary ProgramHistory reveals that humane progress is made and nobility of life created by the march of men and women who have had faith in an ideal of a more complete, more wholesome life, who have been courageous in expressing their beliefs and have consecrated their lives to engendering the realization of their vision.
  • Heritage from Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses (1967)Article by Louise C. Wade. "Close cooperation with neighborhood people, scientific studies of the causes of poverty and dependence, communication of the facts to the public, and persistent pressure for reforms that would “socialize democracy”—these were the objectives of the most vigorous American settlements. According to one worker, the three R’s of the movement were residence, research, and reform."
  • Herman, Ellen, Ph.D.
  • Higgins, Monsignor GeorgeWritten by Michael Barga. Monsignor George Higgins “The Labor Priest” (1916-2002): Worker’s Rights Advocate, Journalist
  • Hill, Joe (1879-1915) - Labor Folk HeroJoe Hill (1879-1915): Songwriter, Itinerant Laborer, Union Organizer and Labor Folk Hero
  • Hill-Billies Come to Detroit (1934)Article by Louis Adamic, The Nation, 1934. "In recent months, with production increasing, it has been necessary for the companies to bring in tens of thousands of people from outside, principally from the South, and put them to work in the busy plants. For months now the companies have been sending their labor agents to recruit hill-billies from Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama."
  • Hillman, Arthur J.
  • Hillman, Sidney - (1887-1946)Sidney Hillman, the founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (now UNITE!) and its president from 1914 to 1946, invented trade unionism as we know it today.
  • Hindrances To The Welfare And Progress Of State Institutions (1883)Presentation at the Ninth Annual Conference of Charities and Corrections 1883 by Michael Anagnos. "...public institutions for the poor and the perverse, the halt and the criminals, the blind and the deaf, the idiots and the insane, are established by law, and are supported by means raised by general taxation. This policy, admirable and beneficial as it evidently is in most respects, is not free from grave disadvantages and certain dangers..."
  • History of Child Care in the U.S.
  • History of Social Work Education and the Profession's StructureAn examination of the profession’s history, especially the development of education can help in understanding current issues related to its unity and what is the most appropriate role for the social worker. It won’t solve them, that will take a strong resolve by the current profession.
  • History of the Veterans Affairs Caregiver Support ProgramThe U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is charged with fulfilling the nation's promise to care for those who have served in our nation’s military, and for their families, caregivers, and survivors. In fulfillment of one aspect of that promise, the Department has developed and administers a program of caregiver support for caregivers of eligible veterans. The program’s mission is "to promote the health and well-being of family caregivers who care for our Nation’s Veterans, through education, resources, support, and services." This article presents a history of the programs origins and expansion through 2023.
  • Hodder, Jessie DonaldsonJessie Donaldson Hodder (1867-1931) was a pioneering reformer in the areas of child welfare, medical social service, and criminal justice. She is best known for her innovative contributions to the welfare of incarcerated girls and women as superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women (1911-1931). Written by Laura J. Praglin, Ph.D., LMSW.
  • Hoehler, Fred K.Fred K. Hoehler (1893-1969) — Executive Director of the American Public Welfare Association, International Social Work
  • Hoey, Jane M.
  • Home Missionary Society of PhiladelphiaWhile some children required long-term placement, assistance was often temporary. One worker describes a case below which particularly displays the “uplift” mentality of the Society: "After a meeting, I called on a widow with four children. She is sick. To secure daily bread, her boy, twelve years of age, sells papers. He called to see me, asking for a situation in the city, whereby he might help his mother. I knew a man of business who wanted a boy, took him with me and secured the place. He has been with him three weeks, and gives such good satisfaction that his wages have been raised, and he is promised permanent employment with a knowledge of the trade. When the mother had sufficiently recovered she came to thank me for the interest I had taken in her son. In this case it was not the money given which called forth her gratitude, but the fact that I had helped the family to help themselves."
  • Homesteaders—New StyleFarm Security Administration's experiment in resettling southern tenants on land of their own, here described by a recent visitor to several projects, demonstrates that, given a boost by government, America's poorest pioneers can rise from relief to self-support.
  • Hoover, Herbert, 31st U.S. President: 1929-1933 Before serving as America's 31st President from 1929 to 1933, Herbert Hoover had achieved international success as a mining engineer and worldwide gratitude as "The Great Humanitarian" who fed war-torn Europe during and after World War I. Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an engineer, administrator, and humanitarian.
  • Hoover, Herbert: Another View of His CareerHe was elected thirty-first President of the United States in a 1928 landslide, but within a few short months he had become a scapegoat in his own land. Even today, Herbert Hoover remains indelibly linked to an economic crisis that put millions of Americans out of work in the 1930s. His 1932 defeat left Hoover's once-bright reputation in shambles. But Herbert Hoover refused to fade away. In one of history's most remarkable comebacks, he returned to public service at the end of World War II to help avert global famine and to reorganize the executive branch of government....By the time of his death in October 1964, Hoover had regained much of the luster once attached to his name. The Quaker theologian who eulogized him at his funeral did not exaggerate when he said of Hoover, "The story is a good one and a great one. . . . It is essentially triumphant."
  • Hopkins, Harry LloydWritten 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
  • Hopkins, June, Ph.D.
  • Hopkirk, Howard W.
  • Horace Mann And The Creation Of The Common SchoolHorace Mann (1796-1859), “The Father of the Common School Movement,” was the foremost proponent of education reform in antebellum America. An ardent member of the Whig Party, Mann argued that the common school, a free, universal, non-sectarian, and public institution, was the best means of achieving the moral and socioeconomic uplift of all Americans.
  • Hot Lunches for a Million School Children (1937)One million undernourished children have benefited by the Works Progress Administration's school lunch program. In the past year and a half 80,000,000 hot well-balanced meals have been served at the rate of 500,000 daily in 10,000 schools throughout the country.
  • Housing and Politics (1940)Article written by Charles Abrams, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1940. "Low rent housing, resettlement, rural relief, soil conservation and reclamation, all these stand at the political crossroads today. The next few months may be decisive. What chance is there that public sentiment can lift these measures from their present position as experiments and stop-gaps into a realistic and adequate long range program?"
  • Housing In The Depression: A Speech by Senator Robert F. Wagner 1936Address of the Honorable Robert F. Wagner, U.S. Senator, at the National Public Housing Conference, 1936. "They reflect our desire as a practical people to get at the essential. It is curious that our search for the essential has taken so many years to reach even the threshold of the housing problem. It has long been known that many of the evils confronting philanthropy and education are rooted in bad living conditions."
  • How A Settlement House Functions"An Insider’s View of How a Settlement House Serves Its Neighborhood," comments by Ruth Tefferteller, Program Director, Henry Street Settlement House, New York City
  • How To Interest Women In Voting"...Of course, no one woman has the right to say what the mass of women want to accomplish with their vote, but I can at least say what I hope the Democratic women wish to achieve. First: Honest, clean administration in party organizations, coupled with a real desire to have the people understand fundamental issues. The trouble is the means for knowing the truth are very few, and I consider that it is one of the real duties of political parties to state clearly and plainly their belief and the things for which they stand...."
  • Howard University School of Social Work
  • Howe, Julia Ward (1819 - 1910)Julia Ward Howe was inspired to write “ The Battle Hymn of the Republic” after she and her husband visited Washington, D.C. and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House in November 1861. During the trip, her friend James Freeman Clarke suggested she write new words to the song “John Brown’s Body,” which she did on November 19.‪ The song was set to William Steffe’s already-existing music and Howe's version was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the American Civil War.
  • Howe, Samuel Gridley...In 1831, the trustees of Massachusett’s newly chartered school for the blind, the first of its kind in the nation, appointed Howe as their director. Not long thereafter Howe sailed to Europe to observe schools for the blind, returning in 1832 to open the blind school in Boston. First gaining regional fame by exhibiting his educated pupils throughout New England, Howe extended his own notoriety and that of his school to a worldwide audience after a blind and deaf girl, Laura Bridgman, entered the school in 1837. Under his direction, Laura learned to communicate through finger spelling and writing. The 1842 observations of Charles Dickens that he recorded in his American Notes only added to Bridgman’s fame and to the fame of her educator. Before long, the Perkins Institution, the name that the blind school acquired after a bequest from the Boston merchant, Thomas H. Perkins, became a place that thousands of Americans and Europeans were likely to visit.
  • Hoyt, Dr. Charles S.Dr. Charles S. Hoyt (1822-1898): Superintendent of New York State and Alien Poor, in the Service of the State Board of Charities. This 1898 Memorial to Dr. Charles S. Hoyt was copied with permission and derived from the blog researched and developed by Linda S. Stuhler.
  • Hubert, James H.
  • Hudson GuildWritten by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. "The Hudson Guild is a community-based social services organization rooted in and primarily focused on the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City."
  • Hughes, LangstonHughes deeply believed that black art should represent the experiences and culture of the black “folk.” Images of rural and urban working-class African Americans filled his poetry and prose and his writing celebrated blues and jazz culture. Some of his more famous writing associated with the Harlem Renaissance include the collections of poems, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927); the novel Not Without Laughter (1930); and the essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926).
  • Hull HouseJane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in 1889 on the South side of Chicago, Illinois after being inspired by visiting Toynbee Hall in London.
  • Hull House - circ. 1910"Hull-House endeavors to make social intercourse express the growing sense of the economic unity of society and may be described as an effort to add the social function to democracy."
  • Hull House as a Sociological Laboratory (1894)The following is "Instruction in Sociology in Institutions of Learning," a presentation by the chairman of the committee, Mr. Daniel Fulcomer, of the University of Chicago. Miss Julia C. Lathrop had been invited to speak of Hull House as a sociological laboratory.
  • Hunter, Jane EdnaJane Edna Hunter (1882-1971) – Social Worker, Advocate for Women and Founder of the Phillis Wheatley Association
  • Hunter, Robert
  • I Visit a Housing Project: 1940Article written by Dorothy Canfield, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1940. "I don't know anything about housing problems, but I know what I like. What I wanted to find out was how I'd like it if the circumstances of my life should put me into one of these brand-new, queer-shaped, rather stark-looking, low cost housing projects, about which we all read more or less in the newspapers, and at which we crane our necks as we drive by and are told: "Look, that's one of the new federal building projects."
  • Immigration and Ethnicity: Documents in United States History
  • Immigration: A Report in 1875Mr. Kapp has tersely stated the rule which governs the movement of emigration to the United States: " Bad times in Europe regularly increase and bad times in America invariably diminish immigration." In the present instance, certainly, there can be no doubt that "' bad times in America " have led to the diminished numbers. However serious the great failures of the autumn of 1873, and the general depression of trade throughout the country subsequently, have been felt to be by those at home, they have seemed much.
  • Impressions of Great BritainDrawn together by their common dangers, the people of Britain have discovered that they have problems common to all classes. This discovery, together with the sharing of suffering, has tended to lessen somewhat the gaps between rich and poor, nobleman and commoner. The British are centering much of their thinking, too, on how to provide full employment and adequate housing when war has ended. The principal recommendations included in Sir William Beveridge's Report on “Social Insurance and Allied Services” are being enacted into law to give Great Britain full social insurance coverage under a system far more complete than that now in operation in this country. A Ministry of National Insurance, incorporating the present Assistance Board, has been formed to administer the new plan which will provide for everyone without exception against sickness, unemployment, accident disability, maternity, old age, and even death. Included in the plan also is a system of family allowances whereby every family, regardless of need or station in life, will receive five shillings or one dollar weekly for each child, after the first, until the children become wage-earners.
  • Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the WorldFounded in 1898 in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Arthur J. Riggs (1855-1936) and Benjamin Franklin Howard (1860-1918), the Improved Benevolent Protective Order of Elks of the World (I.B.P.O.E.W) is an African American fraternal organization that supports its members and fights for their social, economic, and civic equality. Fraternal organizations provided unmeasurable aid, both financial and social, to their members throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Historical Black fraternal organizations were especially vital in providing access to services and opportunities withheld from African Americans in American society.
  • Increase of Insanity (1895)It is within the observation of most physicians who have the care of the insane that the insanity of physical degeneration, resulting from syphilis, paralysis, intemperance, under-feeding, epilepsy, etc., is growing more and more common. These are the least hopeful forms of insanity; and it is their prevalence which seems to have caused a diminution in the rate of recoveries, almost everywhere noticed within the last twenty years. Cases really acute, and not complicated with these forms of disease and degeneracy, recover as easily and as fast as ever; and there is even a tendency to virtual recoveries of the chronic insane, which was not so much noted until recent years.
  • Indian Policy In Its Relations To Crime And Pauperism (1892)Failure to recognize rights which belong to the Indians, and white rapacity and villany, are largely responsible both for pauperism and crime among the Indians. Here in Colorado, with the eloquent grave of the author of "Ramona," so near to the place where we meet, it can hardly be necessary to revive the incidents recited in her remarkable book entitled "The Century of Dishonor," some of them incidents of which this very State has been a witness. Nor should it be needful to condemn in a more enlightened day the barbarisms of which white men have been found capable in the past. And yet what will not avarice do in the way of stifling the sentiments of Christian humanity? The depravity of the human heart is unfathomable....Many, perhaps most, of the barbarities and wars and massacres lie at the doors of white reprobates, whose responsibility is heightened by the Christian lessons of their childhood. The most barbarous of the Indians have not been more savagely cruel than some men of our own race.
  • Indians At Work (1934)And suddenly the Navajos have been faced with a crisis which in some aspects is nothing less than a head-on collision between immediate advantages, sentiments, beliefs, affections and previously accepted preachments, as one colliding mass, and physical and statistical facts as the other....The crisis consists in the fact that the soil of the Navajo reservation is hurriedly being washed away into the Colorado river. The collision consists in the fact that the entire complex and momentum of Navajo life must be radically and swiftly changed to a new direction and in part must be totally reversed. ...And the changes must be made—if made at all—through the choice of the Navajos themselves; a choice requiring to be renewed through months and years, with increasing sacrifices for necessarily remote and hypothetical returns, and with a hundred difficult technical applications.
  • Indoor And Outdoor Relief (1890)A Report of the Committee by F. B. Sanborn, Chairman, at the Seventeenth Annual Session of the National Conference of Charities And Correction, 1890. "Both indoor relief...and family aid, or outdoor relief, as properly practiced, are both indispensable in any comprehensive plan of public charity. Wherever and whenever one of these methods has been wholly given up, accidentally or purposely, evils have followed which only the introduction of the omitted method could wholly remove."
  • Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Local 8 (1913-1928?)Also called the Wobblies, the IWW believed in equal treatment for African Americans. Article I, Section I of the IWW Constitution declared that all workers, regardless of color or creed, could join the IWW. The IWW believed that all wage workers, regardless of their ethnic, national, or racial heritage, should identify as workers in opposition to their employers, with whom workers shared “nothing in common.”
  • Influence and Controversy. The Races of Mankind and The Brotherhood of ManPublished on October 35, 1943, The Races of Mankind makes the argument that all the world's humans are biologically the same. The pamphlet inspired a short training film that aimed to decrease racial tensions, The Brotherhood of Man.
  • Influence Of The Medical Setting On Social Case Work Services 1940The great complexity of the modern medical institution, the extreme development of specialization, the multiple details required by clinic and ward administration, all combine to create a certain inevitable amount of confusion, overlapping, and delay. Where there are several professions working together, there are unavoidable duplications, gaps, and conflicts. Division of labor in the hospital has been carried to a degree where many of the activities have assumed an impersonal character, until the patient as an individual is lost to sight. Mechanical procedures and rigidities may develop until the very concept of the hospital's purpose itself becomes narrowed. This means that it is at the same time both more important and more difficult for social case work to find and hold its own purpose in such a setting.
  • Insanity in the Middle States: 1876This entry is from the Proceedings of the third Conference of Charities held at Saratoga, New York, September 6, 1876. by Mr. Sanborn. "Insanity is, in the middle states, as in the other states, increasing disproportionately to the increase of population..."
  • Insley, Virginia
  • Institute of Family Service, C.O.S.Written by Anna Kempshall, Director of the Institute of Family Service. "The recent period of social and economic change has affected the programs and functions of many social agencies in the community. The Institute of Family Service has constantly adjusted its program in relation to the total community situation, making such revisions of practice and procedure at various times as seemed indicated."
  • Instruction Of Idiots (1849)This article written by J. G. W. appeared in a Philadelphia Quaker periodical as efforts to educate children with cognitive disabilities first started in the United States.
  • International Ladies Garment Workers UnionAt the height of its power during the 1930s and 1940s, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was one of the most important and progressive unions in the United States
  • Interview With Paul W. Keve, Corrections AuthorityAn interview with Paul W. Keve published in Executive Intelligence Review (1994). He was interviewed by Marianna Wertz. Keve is a leading authority on corrections administration. He retired in 1993 from the Virginia Commonwealth University, where he taught corrections administration, and before that worked in every area of corrections administration, from probation and parole, to prisons and juvenile institutions.
  • Is Social Work A Profession? (1915)Early in his presentation, Abraham Flexner said: "...However, I have not been asked to decide whether social work is a full-time or a part-time occupation, whether, in a word, it is a professional or an amateur occupation. I assume that every difficult occupation requires the entire time of those who take it seriously, though of course work can also be found for volunteers with something less than all their time or strength to offer. The question put to me is a more technical one. The term profession, strictly used, as opposed to business or handicraft, is a title of peculiar distinction, coveted by many activities. Thus far it has been pretty indiscriminately used. Almost any occupation not obviously a business is apt to classify itself as a profession. Doctors, lawyers, preachers, musicians, engineers, journalists, trained nurses, trapeze and dancing masters, equestrians, and chiropodists-all speak of their profession.
  • Jacobs, Jane -- 1916 - 2006Jane Jacobs: An American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist known for her influence on urban studies and cities.
  • Jane Addams and the 1894 Pullman StrikeChapter 13 from the book: "Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy" by Louise W. Knight. "The strike was a public crisis. Its eruption raised difficult questions for Addams about the ethics of the industrial relationship. What were George Pullman’s obligations to his employees? And what were his employees’ to him? ...Who had betrayed whom? Where did the moral responsibility lie?"
  • Jane Addams and Wilbur J. CohenIt is one of the ironies of social welfare history that Jane Addams died in 1935, the same year that the Social Security Act was passed. It is tempting to see that year as an important watershed.
  • Jane Addams on the Subtle Problems of Charity (1899)"The Subtle Problems of Charity," an article written by Jane Addams, Founder of Hull House in Chicago, The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 83, Issue 496, February 1899
  • Jane Addams' and Rev. Edgar Murphy's Views on Child Labor Reform in 1903
  • Jean E. Lokerson (1937-2016)Jean E. Lokerson, Ph.D. was an influential educator who devoted her life to the field of learning disabilities. Lokerson began her career in the 1960s, at a critical moment in the disability rights movement in the US. She became deeply involved in multiple organizations lobbying for improved education for children with learning disabilities.
  • Jennings, Annette M.
  • Jewish Community Council of Washington, DC"Early History of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington (1938 – 1942)," compiled by Mrs. Henry Gichner. "The Jewish Community Council of Washington grew out of a desire on the part of many citizens for the creation of a body composed of representatives of all Jewish agencies and organizations authorized to speak for the Jewish community on matters of common concern. In 1938 the community was faced with a specific problem, that of the refugees, on which no one agency wished to set policy. "
  • Jewish Social Service Agency of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.The Jewish Social Service Agency of Metropolitan Washington has its origins in two different agencies. The United Hebrew Charities was incorporated in 1893 "…to assist in relief of needy Hebrews" in Northwest Washington; the Hebrew Relief Society of the District of Columbia was organized to "…provide relief for needy Orthodox Hebrews" in Southeast Washington. The two agencies merged and incorporated in 1921 as the United Hebrew Relief Society of D.C.
  • Jim Crow Laws and Racial SegregationFollowing the end of the Civil War and adoption of the 13th Amendment, many white southerners were dismayed by the prospect of living or working equally with Blacks, whom they considered inferior. In an effort to maintain the status quo, the majority of states and local communities passed “Jim Crow” laws that mandated “separate but equal" status for African Americans.
  • John J. Smallwood and the Temperance, Industrial and Collegiate InstituteJohn Jefferson Smallwood (September 19, 1863–September 29, 1912) was founder and president of the Temperance, Industrial and Collegiate Institute in Claremont, Va. Smallwood determinedly pursued his own education and his vision of educating others, eventually founding a school "For the Moral, Religious, Educational and Industrial Welfare of the Negro Youth." Between 1892 and 1928, more than 2,000 students attended the Institute.
  • Johnson, Cernoria M.Cernoria Johnson was the director of the Washington office of the National Urban League from the late 1950's to the early 1970's where she was a close colleague of Whitney Young. During her years with the Urban League, she was involved with the development and passage of the Great Society legislation and she served on the first advisory committee to the Medicaid Program enacted in 1965.
  • Johnson, Lyndon B. (1908 - 1973) In the 1960 campaign, Lyndon B. Johnson was elected Vice President as John F. Kennedy's running mate. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as the 36th United States President, with a vision to build "A Great Society" for the American people. In his first years of office he obtained passage of one of the most extensive legislative programs in the Nation's history. First he obtained enactment of the measures President Kennedy had been urging at the time of his death--a new civil rights bill and a tax cut. Next he urged the Nation "to build a great society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor."
  • Jones, Mary Harris 'Mother'Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones (1837-1930): Labor Activist and Organizer, Speaker, Teacher
  • Josephine Newbury Demonstration Kindergarten, Richmond, Va.Before the Newbury Center opened in 1957, there was no education available in a school setting in Richmond or the surrounding counties for children younger than five. Preschool itself was an innovative concept then. The facility was purpose-built to become a model preschool for the training of teachers and the design of innovative curriculum.
  • Junior Leagues
  • Karls, James M. (1927-2008)Dr. Karls’ greatest contribution to the public appreciation of social work is his development of the “person in the environment” (PIE) assessment system that distinguishes social work from the other mental health professions. Working with Dr. Karin Wandrei, Dr. Karls used the concept underlying social work practice of person-in-environment to develop a system for social workers to record the results of their assessment that addresses the whole person. It helps the practitioner determine recommended courses of action, and to clearly follow the progress of the work. PIE has been translated into many languages, and it has been computerized. It is used as a teaching tool not only in the US but in other countries. PIE provides an alternative to the medical model that has traditionally dominated mental health practice, and encourages social work leadership in social rehabilitation, community resources, and advocacy models.
  • Keckley, Elizabeth HobbsIn Washington, D.C., Keckley built a successful dressmaking career becoming acquainted with Mary Lincoln, whom Keckley met on President Lincoln’s first day in office. Her work for and friendship with Mary Lincoln permitted her a unique view of events during this era which she chronicled in Behind the Scenes (1868). Keckley also became a prominent figure in D.C.’s free black community, helping to found and serving as president of the Contraband Relief Association, which later became the Ladies’ Freedmen and Soldier’s Relief Association.
  • Keepers of Democracy (1939)By Eleanor Roosevelt, 1939. "If you are in the South someone tells you solemnly that all the members of the Committee of Industrial Organization are Communists, or that the Negroes are all Communists. This last statement derives from the fact that, being for the most part unskilled labor, Negroes are more apt to be organized by the Committee for Industrial Organization. In another part of the country someone tells you solemnly that the schools of the country are menaced because they are all under the influence of Jewish teachers and that the Jews, forsooth, are all Communists. And so it goes, until finally you realize that people have reached a point where anything which will save them from Communism is a godsend; and if Fascism or Nazism promises more security than our own democracy, we may even turn to them."
  • Keith-Lucas, Alan (1910 - 1995)
  • Keller, Helen
  • Keller, Helen -- Story of My Life: Part 1AS THE feat may seem almost incredible, it may be in order to say at the beginning that every word of this story as printed in THE JOURNAL has actually been written by Helen Keller herself -- not dictated, but first written in "Braille" (raised points); then transferred to the typewriter by the wonderful girl herself; next read to her by her teacher by means of the fingers; corrected; then read again to her, and in the proof finally read to her once more.
  • Keller, Helen -- Story of My Life: Part 2THE next important step in my education which I remember distinctly was learning to read. As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly learned that each printed word stood for an object, an act or a quality. I had a frame in which I could arrange the words so that they would make little sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make them with objects. I found the slips of paper which represented, for example, "doll," "is," "On," "bed," and placed each name on its object; then I put my doll on the bed with the words "is," "on," "bed" arranged beside the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and, at the same time, carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves....
  • Keller, Helen -- Story of My Life: Part 3.THE next important event in my life was my visit to Boston, in June, 1888. As if it were yesterday I remember the preparations, the departure with my teacher and my mother, the journey, and finally the arrival in Boston. How different this journey was from the one I had made to Baltimore two years before! I was no longer a restless, excitable little creature, requiring the attention of everybody on the train to keep me amused. I sat quietly beside Miss Sullivan, taking in with eager interest all that she told me about what she saw out of the car window: the beautiful Tennessee River, the great cotton fields, the hills and woods, and the crowds of laughing negroes at the stations, who waved to the people on the train and occasionally brought delicious candy and popcorn balls through the car....
  • Keller, Helen -- Story of My Life: Part 4.Helen Keller was devastated by the charges of plagiarism, and by Michael Anagnos’s efforts to distance himself from her. She went into a months-long depression, as recounted in this excerpt from her autobiography. Keller also describes how she learned and how dependent she was on reading for knowledge of the outside world. Like many children, she found it hard to separate what she read from her own thoughts, and she drew heavily on her sources in her writing. Keller’s dependence on reading, moreover, reflected Sullivan’s realization that the best way to teach Keller idiomatic (everyday) English was to expose her to as many books as possible—even if she could not yet understand every word or phrase....
  • Keller, Helen -- Story of My Life: Part 5 My studies the first year were French, German, History, English Composition and English Literature. In the French course we read some of the works of Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Alfred de Musset and Sainte-Beuve, and in the German those of Goethe and Schiller. We reviewed rapidly the whole period of history from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of the eighteenth century, and studied critically Milton's poems and the "Areopagitica."
  • Keller, Helen -- Story of My Life: Part 6I TRUST that the readers of THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL have not concluded from the chapter on books in the preceding number of the magazine that reading is my only pleasure; for my pleasures and amusements are as varied as my moods.
  • Kelley, AbbyAbigail (Abby) Kelley was an influential Quaker anti-slavery reformer and a women rights activist who provided inspiration and courage to the women who organized the 1848 Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention. Her activism in Seneca Falls led to the formation of the Wesleyan Methodist Congregation with their public anti-slavery stance and free speech commitment.
  • Kelley, Florence
  • Kellogg, Paul Underwood
  • Kelly, James R.
  • Kempshall, Anna "Star" - (1891 -1961)In 1917, four days before Christmas, and with only twenty hours notice, Miss Kempshall was dispatched by the C.O.S to assist the American Red Cross in relief work in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the site of an enormous explosion that caused death and damage to a large area surrounding the Halifax Harbor area. (Editor’s Note: On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax Harbor in Nova Scotia, Canada. One ship was loaded top to bottom with munitions and the other held relief supplies, both intended for war-torn Europe. The resulting blast flattened two towns, Halifax and Dartmouth. The toll of the Halifax Explosion was enormous with over 1,600 men, women and children killed. An additional 9,000 people were injured and 25,000 buildings spread over 325 acres were destroyed.)
  • Kendall, Katherine
  • Kennedy, Albert J.
  • Kerby, Monsignor William Joseph
  • Keve, Paul W.Paul Willard Keve was a pioneer in the field of criminal justice, particularly regarding a professional focus on the management and administration of correctional programs and as a professional writer on criminal justice issues.
  • Kindergarten A Child-Saving Work (1882)This entry was a presentation by Mrs. Cooper at the Ninth Annual National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1882. Mrs. Cooper was internationally known as a pioneer in kindergarten education. Her ideas were endorsed by American educators, and she... led the founding of a teacher training institute, and in 1892 she founded and was elected first president of the International Kindergarten Union.
  • Kindergarten: Practical Results Of Ten Years' Work - 1889This entry was a presentation written by Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper at the Sixteenth Annual Session of the The National Conference of Charities And Correction, 1889. Mrs. Cooper was internationally known as a pioneer in kindergarten education. Her ideas were endorsed by American educators, and she...led the founding of a teacher training institute, and in 1892 she founded and was elected first president of the International Kindergarten Union. The Kindergarten takes hold of the child at the most important epoch of life,- the formative period. Impressions precede expressions, and we should be most careful that the child receive none but the best impressions, especially when we consider that these will be lasting and affect his whole after life.
  • Kindergartens: A History (1886)This entry is a presentation by Constance Mackenzie at the Thirteenth Annual Session of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1886. "'The kindergarten itself does not, of course, bear directly upon crime,' writes one of our correspondents; 'but, if the entire after education of the child were carried out according to the principles of the kindergarten, there can be no doubt that its effects would be strongly felt in every direction.'"
  • King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr.In 1963, Dr. King led a massive civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Ala., and organized drives for black voter registration, desegregation, and better education and housing throughout the South. During these nonviolent campaigns he was arrested several times, generating newspaper headlines throughout the world. In June, President John F. Kennedy reacted to the Birmingham protests by submitting broad civil rights legislation to Congress. Dr. King was the final speaker at the historic March on Washington DC (August 28, 1963), where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. In June the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Also in 1964, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • Kirkbride, Thomas StoryThomas Story Kirkbride 1809-1883 — Physician, Psychiatrist and Developer of the Kirkbride Plan. This article was used with permission and derived from the research of Linda S. Stuhler.
  • Klaassen, David
  • Knights of LaborArticle by Michael Barga. The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor were the most prominent labor organization of the 1880’s. Characterized by its oath-bound secrecy, its emphasis on autonomy of local Knights and non-violence, and its broad sense of solidarity, it is considered by many to be a failed experiment in the labor movement which did not capitalize on the action-mindedness of the Great Upheaval moment.
  • Knights of St. Peter Claver (1909- )The Knights of Peter Claver organization was founded in 1909 in Mobile, Alabama. It is the largest African American Catholic lay organization in the United States.
  • Konopka, Gisela
  • Labor History Timeline: 1607 - 1999From the earliest days of the American colonies, when apprentice laborers in Charleston, S.C., went on strike for better pay in the 1700s, to the first formal union of workers in 1829 who sought to reduce their time on the job to 60 hours a week, our nation’s working people have recognized that joining together is the most effective means of improving their lives on and off the job.
  • Lange, DorotheaDorothea Lange was one of the leading documentary photographers of the Depression and arguably the most influential. Some of her pictures were reproduced so repeatedly and widely that they became commonly understood symbols of the human suffering caused by the economic disaster. At the same time her work functioned to create popular support for New Deal programs.
  • Lasting Values of the WPAWritten by Ellen Woodward, WPA Assistant Administrator in charge of the Division of Women’s and Professional Projects. "No one can better appreciate the lasting values of the work relief program than we women, for its results affect primarily that which is closest to our hearts--the home."
  • Lathrop, Julia CliffordJulia Clifford Lathrop (1858-1932): First Chief of the Children’s Bureau and Advocate for Enactment of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921
  • Lawrence House BookletLawrence House: A 1905 Booklet Depicting Activities of a Settlement House in Baltimore, MD.
  • Lee, Porter R.
  • Legal Background of the Social Security Act (1961)Beginning in the early 1900's, a number of States had started to pass State statutes designed to substitute for the old-fashioned poorhouse some kind of aid to poor people who were aged so that they could maintain their own homes. This was partly humanitarian; it was partly because soft-hearted social workers, a profession that was only just beginning, understood that many aged people couldn't bear to be called paupers and be treated accordingly; and it was partly because when they were moved out of their homes and were put into poorhouses, It was a heart-breaking experience frequently followed by unhappy conditions. There was, however, another interest here--an influence that caused State action. It was purely economic. It was very expensive to run poorhouses.
  • Lehman, Angela
  • Lenox Hill Neighborhood HouseLenox Hill Neighborhood House was founded in 1894 by the Alumnae Association of Normal College (now known as Hunter College of the City University of New York) as a free kindergarten for the children of indigent immigrants. Since then, we have remained at the forefront of community advocacy and social and educational change.
  • Lenroot, KatherineKatharine F. Lenroot, (March 8, 1891 – February 10, 1982) – Director of the Children’s Bureau, Child Welfare Advocate and Social Welfare Leader
  • Lessons From the Real Me - Willnette CunninghamThis remembrance is excerpted from a forthcoming book by Willnette Cunningham being prepared in collaboration with Shruti Sathish, editor. Ms. Cunningham is an AIDS survivor and HIV Awareness Activist.
  • Letters from the Field: June 11, 1934On this trip I've tried not to be too preoccupied with relief. I've tried to find out what the people as a whole are thinking about--people who are at work. I carry away the impression that all over the area, from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Tupelo, Mississippi, and on up to Memphis and Nashville, people are in a pretty contented, optimistic frame of mind. They just aren't thinking about the Depression any more. They feel that we are on our way out and toward any problems that have to be solved before we get out their attitude seems to be, "Let Roosevelt do it."
  • Letters from the Field: IntroductionWe spent the morning in conference, took a quick look at the transient setup--thousands came here looking for work, you see, and present quite a problem--and spent the afternoon looking over Muscle Shoals--Wilson dam and power house, Wheeler dam, the houses they are building there for the engineers and their families, the construction camp, and so on. It's all on such a huge scale! But darned interesting. Always in the background, though, is this dreadful relief business-- dull, hopeless, deadening. God--when are we going to get out of it? As nearly as I can figure it out, most of the relief families in Tennessee are rural, living on sub-marginal or marginal land. What are we going to do with them? And, so low are their standards of living, that, once on relief, low as it is, they want to stay there the rest of their lives. Gosh! TVA is now employing some 9,500 people. But it doesn't even make a dent! . . .
  • Letters from the Field: June 6, 1934Nearly 10,000 men--about 9,500--are at work in the Valley now, at Norris and Wheeler dams, on various clearing and building projects all over the area. Thousands of them are residents of the Valley, working five and a half hours a day, five days a week, for a really LIVING wage. Houses are going up for them to live in--better houses than they have ever had in their lives before. And in their leisure time they are studying--farming, trades, the art of living, preparing themselves for the fuller lives they are to lead in that Promised Land. You are probably saying, "Oh, come down to earth!" But that's the way the Tennessee Valley affects one these days.
  • Lewenstein, Ian
  • LGBTQIA+ Health DisparitiesA very diverse group within itself, the LGBTQIA+ community contains people from every race, ethnicity, and socio-economic group. While each of these populations have their own unique needs, studies show that members of the LGBTQ community face similar challenges when it comes to seeking medical care.
  • Life In The Asylum (1855)The Opal was published by the patients at the New York State Insane Asylum in Utica during the 1850s. It contained comments on current events, literary essays and book reviews, poetry, and descriptions of events at the asylum, including the dramatic and musical productions of the patients themselves.
  • Light, Mattie McNabDuring 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.
  • Lincoln University in PennsylvaniaLincoln 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.
  • Lindeman, Eduard
  • Lindeman, Eduard C.: A LetterIn order to make matters more explicit, I shall now state my chief reasons for being an anti-Communist: (1) on philosophical grounds I belong to the American tradition of pragmatism of which William James and John Dewey were the chief exponents. This philosophy is experimental and non-authoritarian and is definitely opposed to the dogmatic German philosophy of Hegel, and out which Marxism arose. (2) on moral grounds I am opposed to Communism because it teachers the immoral doctrine that good ends may be achieved through the use of evil means; it practices conspiracy and falsehood and thus, through the employment of such means, produces gross immorality; (3) I am a believer in cultural pluralism while Communism advocates the cultural uniformity. I believe in diversity because I believe in freedom. (See THE DEMOCRATIC WAY OF LIFE BY T.V. SMITH and EDUARD C. LINDEMAN, published last year by The New American Library.) (4) I believe in what may be called the Judeo-Christian ethics which is founded upon the conception of human brotherhood and love. Communism, on the contrary, preaches hate and conflict. There are many other reasons for opposing this malevolent movement which has perverted so many millions but the above are fundamental.
  • Lindeman, Eduard: A Neglected Social WorkerEduard Christian Lindeman was a remarkable social worker but he is less well known than other early stalwarts. Many factors contributed to this. He was not a self-promoter, he was not a specialist and worked in other fields, and he was not a clinician. Despite these “deficits” his life and writings are of continued value to social work.
  • Lindemeyer, Kriste, Ph.D.
  • Lindsey, Inabel Burns
  • Listening to Patients: The Opal as a Source The Opal, which was “dedicated to usefulness,” is a ten volume Journal that was written and edited by the patients of the Utica State Lunatic Asylum, (1851 – 1860). The more than 3,000 pages of material in The Opal includes political commentary, humor, advice, and theory on insanity in the form of articles, poetry, prose, cartoons, plays, and literature.
  • Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1820-1905)Mary Livermore was born on December 19, 1820, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was an American suffragist and social reformer who lectured and wrote for religious and reform periodicals. She served as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association, the Association for the Advancement of Women and the Massachusetts Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Livermore died in 1905.
  • Livingston, EdwardEdward Livingston (May 28, 1764 – May 23, 1836) — Jurist, statesman, elected official and prison reformer
  • Locust Street Settlement HouseModeled after Jane Addams‘ Hull-House, Locust Street Settlement House opened in 1890 in Hampton, VA.
  • Loeb, Sophie Irene
  • Logan, Carrie Steele
  • Long, HueyAs the Great Depression worsened, Long made impassioned speeches in the Senate charging a few powerful families with hoarding the nation’s wealth. He urged Congress to address the inequality that he believed to be the source of the mass suffering. How was a recovery possible when twelve men owned more wealth than 120 million people?....In 1934 Long unveiled a program of reforms he labeled “Share Our Wealth” designed to redistribute the nation’s wealth more fairly by capping personal fortunes at $50 million (later lowered to $5 - $8 million) and distributing the rest through government programs aimed at providing opportunity and a decent standard of living to all Americans. Long believed the programs he initiated in Louisiana were effective in lifting people out of poverty, and he wanted to implement this philosophy nationally.
  • Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation (1775)Dunmore’s proclamation offered freedom only to those who would flee from rebel masters and serve the crown. Its purpose was strategic, to disable rebellion, rather than humanitarian, yet its effect was rather the reverse. White southerner colonists swung to oppose royal authority as it appeared that Dunmore and his “Damned, infernal, Diabolical” proclamation were inciting slave insurrection: nothing, it can be argued, so quickly lost the South for the crown. British officialdom, however, never repudiated the proclamation’s message and soon established an alliance with black Americans that brought thousands of escaped southern slaves to the side of the British forces operating in the south.
  • Lovejoy, OwenOwen Lovejoy (January 6, 1811 – March 25, 1864) was an American lawyer, Congregational minister, abolitionist, and Republican congressman from Illinois. He was also a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. After his brother Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in November 1837 by pro-slavery forces, Owen became the leader of abolitionists in Illinois.
  • Lowell, Josephine ShawJosephine Shaw Lowell (1843-1905) — Social reformer, Founder of the New York City Charity Organization Society and advocate of the doctrine that charity should not merely relieve suffering but also rehabilitate the recipient. By John E. Hansan, Ph.D.
  • Lurie, Abraham
  • Lurie, Harry L.
  • Lutheran Social Service of MinnesotaLutheran Social Service of Minnesota (LSS) is the largest private, nonprofit human service organization in Minnesota. It offers a comprehensive array of support services tailored to the unique needs of individuals, families and communities.
  • Lutheran Social Services of MichiganThis entry was copied with permission from the book "This Far By Love: The Amazing Story of Lutheran Social Services of Michigan" by Nancy Manser. Motivated to serve others as an expression of the love of Christ, Lutheran Social Services of Michigan continues today to help those in need regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin.
  • MacColl, Christina Isobel
  • Maclachlan, H. D. C.
  • Madison House and the Great DepressionThis retrospective view of Madison House highlights the contributions of Felix Adler and the Ethical Culture Society. Madison House was funded by the Ethical Culture Society but was governed democratically by club members and staff who planned activities and programs for all ages. By Jeanne Talpers, Daughter of Philip Schiff, Headworker of Madison House 1934-1939
  • Madison House in 1938"A Day in the Life of Madison House – 1938." This entry about Madison House was contributed by Jeanne Talpers, daughter of Philip Schiff who attended Madison House as a youngster from the age of 10 and grew up to become the Headworker in 1934.
  • Madison House Speaks in 1916In 1916, using personification, a very different type of progress report was prepared to describe the growth and changes experienced by Madison House over its first 18 years. Titled "The Old House Speaks" thats document is displayed here.
  • Madison House: Tops In Every RespectThis Is a Retrospective View About the Origins and History of a Settlement House on the Lower East Side of New York City written by Jeanne Talpers, Daughter of Philip Schiff, a Social Work Pioneer, Who Attended Madison House as a Youngster and Grew Up to Become the Headworker in 1934.
  • Maid Narratives The stories personalize the sufferings by these southern black women who worked as young children in the cotton fields and who managed somehow to raise their children and protect their men folk in a racially hostile environment. The economic oppression they endured was echoed by legal constraints that always favored the dominant race at their expense. The norms of segregation, as the book explains, were enforced by white men bent on suppressing black men and keeping them away from their women. At the same time, these men had access to black women, a fact of which they often took advantage. The term segregation to the extent that it means separation of the races does not really apply. In any case, the social system that evolved following slavery. Consider the tremendous legal battles that ensued to keep the races separate in the schools and universities.
  • Malekoff, Andrew
  • Mall, Mary Lou Ricker
  • Management Of Almshouses In New England (1884)Presentation by Frank B. Sanborn at the Eleventh Annual Session, National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1884. In this paper for the NCCC, Sanborn reviews the basic structure of poorhouse care in Massachusetts and demonstrates reformers’ intense interest in controlling costs and removing able-bodied children from poorhouses.
  • March on Washington, D.C. August 28, 1963On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people from across the nation came together in Washington, D.C. to peacefully demonstrate their support for the passage of a meaningful civil rights bill, an end to racial segregation in schools and the creation of jobs for the unemployed.
  • March on Washington, D.C.: Rev. King's "I Have a Dream" SpeechOn August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people from across the nation came together in Washington, D.C. to peacefully demonstrate their support for the passage of a meaningful civil rights bill, an end to racial segregation in schools and the creation of jobs for the unemployed. It was the largest demonstration ever held in the nation’s capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage. The march is remembered too as the occasion for Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
  • March on Washington, DC: Final Organization PlansOriginal documents prepared for the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom
  • March on Washington, DC: Lincoln Memorial ProgramOriginal documents for the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom
  • March on Washington, DC: My Omen For The Success Of The MarchIn August 1963, I was a member of the Cincinnati Committee for the Washington March, serving in my role as Chairman of the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Our committee recruited a contingent of 500 supporters from the Cincinnati, OH area who paid their own fares for a two-night roundtrip train ride to Washington, D.C.
  • Marks, Rachel
  • Marshall, ThurgoodMarshall’s most famous case was the legal challenge on behalf of Linda Brown and twelve other plaintiffs that would result in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954. Here the high court struck down an earlier Supreme Court's 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, declaring that “separate but equal” public education was unconstitutional. Numerous legal scholars contend that this ruling was one of the most important and far reaching in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court and of the nation.
  • Martyrs of MemphisIn 1878 the city of Memphis, Tennessee was struck by an epidemic of yellow fever, which so depopulated the area that the city lost its charter and was not reorganized for fourteen years. Almost everyone who could afford to do so left the city and fled to higher ground away from the river. There were in the city several communities of nuns, Anglican or Roman Catholic, who had the opportunity of leaving, but chose to stay and nurse the sick. Most of them, thirty-eight in all, were themselves killed by the fever.
  • Marx, Jerry D., Ph.D.
  • Mary McDowell Settlement (1961)Service Report. "The purpose for which the corporation is formed is to provide a center for educational and philanthropic work and social services; to engage in and pursue such activities at such places and in such manner as may be necessary and desirable, not including the care of neglected and dependent children.”
  • Masi, Dale A.
  • Mason, Lucy Randolph (1882-1959)Lucy Randolph Mason devoted her life to bringing about more humane conditions for working people, ending racial injustice and ensuring that union organizers throughout the South were guaranteed the constitutional rights to free speech, assembly and due process that her ancestor, George Mason, had helped establish.
  • Massachusetts Report On Public Charities: 1876 As Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn held the most powerful position on the board. This report to the National Conference of Charities illustrates Sanborn’s deep faith in the power of statistical research to illuminate the nature of social problems.
  • Matthews, Victoria Earle (1861-1907)In civic areas, Mrs. Matthews founded the Woman’s Loyal Union in 1892. She was also one of the leaders in supporting the anti-lynching crusade of Ida B. Wells. In 1895 Matthews helped found the National Federation of Afro-American Women and was later instrumental when this organization and the National Colored Women’s League merged with the National Association of Colored Women (1896). She served as the first national organizer of the combined group from 1897 to 1899.
  • Mayo, Leonard W.
  • McDowell, Mary
  • McLean, Francis H.In 1908, McLean gave another presentation at the 35th annual session of the National Conference of Charities and Correction held in Richmond, VA. The title was: “How May We Increase Our Standard of Efficiency in Dealing with Needy Families.” One of his major points was the necessity for workers to record and maintain Diagnosis and Treatment Cards for the families they are trying to help. He said: “…A growing realization of the need of an aid which would impart definiteness to records and give one a clear idea of not only the main problem, but all of the subsidiary problems, caused the Field Department last fall to send out to the societies in the exchange branch of the department, a proposed form to be known as a diagnosis and treatment sheet. A study of the records last winter has convinced the field secretary that these sheets are an absolute necessity, and should be used by all the societies. Even the very best of the records would have been much clearer to the reader with such a sheet. In many cases, apparent lapses in treatment would have been revealed to the societies, if they had attempted to fill out the blanks...."
  • McNally, Deborah
  • Medicaid Program (circ. 1980)Medicaid (Title XIX of the Social Security Act) was created with little debate in 1965. Its purpose was to provide federal financial assistance (FFP) to states in providing health care for public welfare recipients. Similar to other state-federal public welfare program, states had to choose whether or not to participate in the Medicaid program.
  • Medical Social Work: A Review of Harriett Bartlett's Book 1934This is a 1934 review of Harriett Bartlett's Book "Medical Social Work."
  • Meeting The Manpower Crisis In Staffing The Mental Health Facilities: The Role Of The Federal Government (1963) Speech given by Milton Wittman, D.S.W. at the Annual Meeting of Conference of Chief Social Workers in State and Territorial Mental Health Programs, Cleveland, Ohio, May 17, 1963. "It seems inappropriate to consider the “manpower crisis” only in terms of numbers of social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and nurses. Rather, it seems more important to discuss the use which is made of these professions in the structure of mental health programs as they function today and as they may function in the future."
  • Menace Of Racial And Religious Intolerance (1925)Presentation by Professor Charles Ellwood at the National Conference Of Social Work. Dr. Ellwood was concerned that intolerance seemed to be growing in every form of American life and he concluded that intolerance was a handicap to social progress.
  • Menken, Alice Davis
  • Mental Health America - OriginsIn 1908, Clifford Whittingham Beers published his autobiography “A Mind That Found Itself.” The publication chronicled his struggle with mental illness and the shameful state of mental health care in America. In the first page of his book, Beers reveals why he wrote the book: "...I am not telling the story of my life just to write a book. I tell it because it seems my plain duty to do so. A narrow escape from death and a seemingly miraculous return to health after an apparently fatal illness are enough to make a man ask himself: For what purpose was my life spared? That question I have asked myself, and this book is, in part, an answer...."
  • Merrick, Mary Virginia
  • Michel, Sonya, Ph.D.,
  • Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital: New York - 1891This is a lengthy "Letter to the Editor" of The New York Times written by "Index Medicus," a medical society and journal. If New York State was transferring patients out of their district to another state hospital, why couldn’t the State pay for the transportation of patients whose family and friends wanted them to receive homeopathic medical care as opposed to allopathic medical care?
  • Migration of Negroes Into Northern Cities 1917In the first place, this movement of Negroes, while it is larger and more widespread due to the present unusual conditions, has been going on for the past three or four decades. It may not have attracted as much attention because it was going on quietly and at a slower rate. But there has been a steady stream and the moving causes are the same. An indication-of this fact is the increase of Negro population since.1880 in the following nine northern and border cities: Boston, Greater New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Evansville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis. Between 1880 and 1890 the Negro populationof these nine cities increased about 36.2 per cent. From 1890 to 1900 it increased about 74.4 per cent and from 1900 to 1910 about 37.4 per cent.
  • Milestones in Social HygieneBy Anna Garlin Spencer. Through the consolidation of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene, the American Vigilance Association (which was the later name for the American Vigilance Committee) the American Purity Alliance, and other agencies for social service, the present American Social Hygiene Association came into existence in 1914.
  • Miss Bailey SaysIn 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.
  • Miss Bailey Says...#1There is perhaps no point in the whole business of relief about which the public is so sensitive as in the matter of car-ownership. The question comes up even in the most car-conscious communities. Stories of abuses multiply at dinner and bridge tables and sooner or later magnify into newspaper headlines. More than once they have occasioned formal investigations of relief agencies and sweeping "reforms."
  • Miss Bailey Says...#10 What can the relief worker do when: • Practically every relief family in a foreign-speaking neighborhood finds the price of a ton of grapes for its year’s supply of wine? • A family steadfastly refuses to give any information about a relative who regularly pays their rent and sends them occasional boxes of luxurious clothes? • The family of five which is suddenly augmented by three half-grown children who, it is calmly explained, have been visiting their “auntie,” hitherto unheard of?
  • Miss Bailey Says...#2What shall the untrained investigator do when she observes in homes such situations as: Bootlegging? Deserted wife with children on relief, living in sin with a lodger? Father periodically drunk and (a) cheerful, (b) abusive to children? Father demanding shotgun marriage for reluctant daughter?
  • Miss Bailey Says...#3What shall the untrained relief investigator do when she observes in homes such situations as: The family on relief that she "catches" filing into the movie theater? The girl in the family who blossoms out with a new permanent wave? The family that, at the morning call, was in rags and despair, and is all dressed up and going to a party when she returns at night with a food order? The family that supports a man‑sized dog?
  • Miss Bailey Says...#4What about relief investigators who, when visiting families: Smoke if they feel like it Holler upstairs Pump the children and the neighbors Look under the bed for extra shoes and into the cupboard for food?
  • Miss Bailey Says...#5 What about relief investigators who, in visiting families: • Find a public‑health nurse also on the job? • Opine that codliver oil is an old wives' tale? • Predict the goryness of approaching tonsillectomies? • Report prenatal patients when the stork is on the wing?
  • Miss Bailey Says...#6What can an unskilled home visitor do when she finds that in families where relief is as adequate as conditions permit: • Children, under threat of parental whipping, are coming to the office to make special pleas? • Children and grown‑ups too are making a practice of begging? • Children are being permitted, even sent, to hang around restaurants and explore garbage‑cans?
  • Miss Bailey Says...#7 What should relief workers do when: What should relief workers do when: • A waiting client suddenly throws a paper‑weight across the office and begins to scream • A client disrupts the waiting‑room with loud threats of what he proposes to do to the interviewer? • A delegation with banners and baby‑carriages demonstrates noisily under the office windows? • A large and voluble committee, with police hovering in the background, demands a hearing for its protest against the relief system?
  • Miss Bailey Says...#8 Families with bank accounts, families with cars, families never before touched by social agencies, now figure large in the “relief population” of these United States. How the new problems they bring, rarely encountered by case workers of a few years ago, are being treated, how workers without extensive training are being prepapred to meet situations calling for quick and discriminating judgment, are the subjects of a series of Survey articles, of which this is the eighth, drawn from day-to-day experience in busy relief offices.
  • Miss Bailey Says...#9What shall the home visitor do about: • The unemployed son of the house who brings home an unemployed bride? What shall the home visitor do about: • The girl who holds out her slender earnings from the family budget and takes title to a cheap fur coat the day the family is dispossessed? • The able-bodied youth who refused to go to a refestation camp and who has since kept himself in cigarettes by bartering the tidbits of the family grocery order? • The mother who persistently and successfully connives to swap essentials of the food order for cream to satisfy the “weak stummick” of her 200-pound son? • The mother who supports her stalwart eldest in his refusal to take a job that requires him to get up at six o’clock in the morning?
  • Mobilize for Total Nutrition! (1941)Very many families are unable to secure enough "protective foods." Milk, meat, eggs, fresh vegetables, and fruits are relatively expensive. Whole wheat bread and other whole grain cereals are perishable—a factor which adds to the cost of their distribution. The farmer in most cases can keep a cow and have a garden and an orchard; but on some poor lands, this is impossible. The city dweller is always dependent on the market for the variety of foods available to him and the amounts which his dollar will purchase. Families with incomes below a certain level must have assistance in tangible form if they are to secure the foods which provide an adequate diet. Assistance may take the form of a money dole, or it may involve the direct distribution of food.
  • Model Ordinance This Model Ordinance was developed by Leroy Allen Halbert, General Superintendent of the Kansas City Board of Public Welfare for eight years. During that time, he helped formulate plans for how other cities, counties and states could organize their own Boards of Public Welfare. For example, in a presentation to officials in Topeka, Kansas in the Spring of 1912, he said: “…small towns could not afford to have a full time trained social worker and that the proper unit for handling welfare problems for the small communities was the county and urged that probation work, truancy work, relief work, etc. should all be concentrated in the hands of a good trained social worker.” This Model Ordinance as one of the tools he developed to assist in the creation of local departments of public welfare.
  • Moral TreatmentWritten by Dr. James W. Trent, Jr., Gordon College. "Moral treatment was a product of the Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century. Before then people with psychiatric conditions, referred to as the insane, were usually treated in inhumane and brutal ways."
  • Moral Treatment of the Insane: 1847That some cases of insanity require medical treatment we believe, but we also believe that a large majority of the patients in Lunatic Asylums do not. There is much analogy between many of the patients found in all such institutions, and the passionate, mischievous, and what are called bad boys in a school, and there is about as much propriety in following the example of Mrs. Squeers, and physicing and medicating the latter as the former, in order to cure them or to change their propensities. Rational hopes for the improvement of either, should we believe, be founded on moral management alone.
  • More Than Sixty Years With Social Group WorkA personal and professional history written by Catherine P. Papell, Professor Emerita, Adelphi University School of Social Work. "Personal history is not Truth with a capital T. It is the way the past was experienced and the way the teller sees it. "
  • Morgan, Essie D.
  • Morris, Robert
  • Mothers AidAfter 1900 several States also passed laws to safeguard women in industry. As late as 1896, only 13 States had attempted to limit by statute the hours worked by women, and only 3 States had enacted laws that were capable of enforcement. For some years, adverse court decisions retarded the adoption of further legislation, but after 1908, when the Supreme Court ruled favorably on an Oregon statute, progress was rapid and marked.
  • Mott, Lucretia Coffin
  • Music & Social ReformWritten by Catherine A. Paul. "Throughout the history of the United States, music has been used to bring people together. By singing together, people are able to form emotional bonds and even shape behavior...Therefore, it is unsurprising that social movements have similarly interwoven music and action to create and sustain commitment to causes and collective activities."
  • NASW Social Work Pioneers
  • Nation, Carrie A. Carrie Amelia Nation was perhaps the most famous person to emerge from the temperance movement—the battles against alcohol in pre-Prohibition America—due to her habit of attacking saloons with a hatchet.
  • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 by W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, and Mary White Ovington and is recognized as the United States’ oldest civil rights organization
  • National Association of Black Social WorkersBy Alice W. Campbell, 2021. The National Association of Black Social Workers was founded on May 8, 1968 in San Francisco, CA.
  • National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, Inc. (1896-)The National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, Inc. (NACWC), was established in July 1896 as a merger between the National League of Colored Women and the National Federation of Afro-American Women. The merger enabled the NACWC to function as a national umbrella group for local and regional Black women’s organizations.
  • National Association Of Social Workers
  • National Association of Social Workers: History (1917 - 1955)The National Association of Social Workers was established in October, 1955, following five years of careful planning by the Temporary Inter-Association Council (TIAC). Seven organizations – American Association of Social Workers (AASW), American Association of Medical Social Workers (AAMSW), National Association of School Social Workers (NASSW), American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers (AAPSW), American Association of Group Workers UAW Association for the Study of Community Organization (ASCO), and Social Work Research Group (SWRG) – merged to form the NASW. The attainment of this long-sought objective reflected the growing conviction on the part of social work practitioners that there was need for greater unity within the social work profession, and an organizational structure through which the resources of the profession could be utilized most effectively for the improvement and strengthening of social welfare programs.
  • National Catholic Community ServiceThe National Catholic Community Service (NCCS) served the spiritual, social, educational, and recreational needs of the military and defense workers and their families from 1940 to 1980.
  • National Child Labor CommitteeIn the late 1700′s and early 1800′s, power-driven machines began to replace hand labor for the making of most manufactured items. Factories sprung everywhere, first in England and then in the United States. The owners of these factories found a new source of labor to run their machines — children.
  • National Conference of Charities and Correction
  • National Conference of Charities and Corrections: Part II: Progress 1874-1893
  • National Conference of Charities and Corrections: Social Progress from Its Beginnings
  • National Conference on Social Welfare
  • National Conference on Social Work
  • National Council on Naturalization and CitizenshipThe National Council on Naturalization and Citizenship was formed in 1930 as an association of organizations and individuals who sought to reform naturalization laws and regulations. The Council advocated policies and procedures that were humane, uniform, and simple. Among its prominent leaders were Ruth Z. Murphy, Read Lewis, Abram Orlow, and Frank Orlow.
  • National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood CentersWritten by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. "The NFS was a social welfare organization devoted to the promotion and improvement of the settlement movement throughout the United States."
  • National Housing Conference, IncFrom the 1940s to the 1960s, NHC consisted of a coalition of public housing advocates, social workers, labor unions, and local housing authorities who pushed for housing reforms. However, by the 1970s, NHC became an ally of the federal housing bureaucracy because its membership included primary builders, construction unions, and real estate developers.
  • National Industrial Recovery Act (1933)The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was enacted by Congress in June 1933 and was one of the measures by which President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to assist the nation’s economic recovery during the Great Depression.
  • National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933Economists, scholars, politicians, and the public at large were deeply divided as to the underlying causes of the Great Depression and the best means to bring it to an end. In the months following Roosevelt's inauguration, his advisers, along with members of Congress and representatives from business and labor, drafted the legislation that was introduced in Congress on May 15, 1933, as the National Industrial Recovery Act. The division of opinions about the Depression was reflected in those who drafted NIRA, and the act drew both praise and criticism from across the political spectrum. Nevertheless, the urgency of the economic situation (with unemployment exceeding 30 percent in many parts of the country) pressured Congress to act.
  • National Industrial Recovery Act: FDR's Statement - 1933The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was one of the most important and daring measures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was enacted during the famous First Hundred Days of his first term in office and was the centerpiece of his initial efforts to reverse the economic collapse of the Great Depression. NIRA was signed into law on June 16, 1933, and was to remain in effect for two years. It attempted to make structural changes in the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. It succeeded only partially in accomplishing its goals, and on May 27, 1935, less than three weeks before the act would have expired, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
  • National Labor Relations Board The National Labor Relations Board is proud of its history of enforcing the National Labor Relations Act. Starting in the Great Depression and continuing through World War II and the economic growth and challenges that followed, the NLRB has worked to guarantee the rights of employees to bargain collectively, if they choose to do so.
  • National Recovery AdministrationThe National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was signed by newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 16, 1933. The new law created the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The NRA began to work with businesses to establish the mandated codes for fair competition, which were to be exempt from the antitrust laws.
  • National Recreation Association
  • National Recreation Association Philosophy
  • National Social Welfare AssemblyThis organization changed its name 1n 2005 to the National Human Services Assembly. The membership of the National Assembly includes national nonprofit organizations in the health and human services field (e.g., Girl Scouts, American Red Cross, The Salvation Army). Those organizations and their constituent services networks collectively touch or are touched by nearly every household in America—as consumers of services, donors or volunteers. They comprise a $32 billion sector that employs some 800,000 workers, operating from over 150,000 locations.
  • National Social Welfare Assembly Comics ProjectBy Linnea Anderson, 2017. The National Social Welfare Assembly’s Comics Project was a collaboration between The National Social Welfare Assembly and National Comics, the company which became DC Comics. The project lasted from August, 1949 to July, 1967 and produced over 200 comic pages promoting citizenship and social values.
  • National Urban League
  • National Welfare Rights OrganizationThe National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) was a U.S. activist group that advocated for welfare rights--especially the rights of women and children. The NWRO demanded welfare payments that provided an adequate income, dignified treatment, justice and democratic participation.
  • National Woman Suffrage AssociationThe NWSA dealt with many issues of interest to women besides suffrage, such as the unionization of women workers. In 1872, it supported Victoria Woodhull, the first woman candidate for president of the United States. In 1890, the NWSA and AWSA overcame their previous divisions, joining as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), thereby strengthening the movement.
  • National Woman's PartyThe National Woman’s Party, representing the militant wing of the suffrage movement, utilized picketing and open public demonstrations to gain popular attention for the right of women to vote in the United States. The origin of the National Woman's Party (NWP) date from 1912, when Alice Stokes Paul and Lucy Burns, young Americans schooled in the militant tactics of the British suffrage movement, were appointed to the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) Congressional Committee. Radicalized by their experiences in England–which included violent confrontations with authorities, jail sentences, hunger strikes, and force-feedings–they sought to inject a renewed militancy into the American campaign for womans suffrage?.
  • National Women's Trade Union LeagueThe National Women’s Trade Union League of America (NWTUL) was established in Boston, MA in 1903, at the convention of the American Federation of Labor. It was organized as a coalition of working-class women, professional reformers, and women from wealthy and prominent families. Its purpose was to “assist in the organization of women wage workers into trade unions and thereby to help them secure conditions necessary for healthful and efficient work and to obtain a just reward for such work.”
  • National Youth Administration: The College and High School Aid ProgramA speech by Aubrey W. Williams, Executive Director of the National Youth Administration in 1937. "The Youth Administration was established to equalize opportunity for Youth. It was set up to raise economically disadvantaged Youth to within reach of opportunities denied them."
  • National Youth Organization"I hereby prescribe the following functions and duties of the National Youth Administration: To initiate and administer a program of approved projects which shall provide relief, work relief, and employment for persons between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five years who are no longer in regular attendance at a school requiring full time, and who are not regularly engaged in remunerative employment."
  • Naturalization Process in U.S.: Early HistoryWritten by Eilleen Bolger. The first naturalization act, passed by Congress on March 26, 1790, provided that any free, white, adult alien, male or female, who had resided within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States for a period of 2 years was eligible for citizenship.
  • NCSW Part 1: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Table of Contents, IntroductionIn emphasis, the National Conference of Social Welfare - like the serving professions themselves who constituted its membership - has swung between the pleas of social action and social service. Its presidents have been selected from among those who can best be understood as social prophets - Jane Addams and Whitney Young, for example - and from among those who had made technical contributions of surpassing importance to the better service of health, education, and welfare - Homer Folks, for example, and Dr. Richard Cabot. Its leaders­ Conference Presidents and Conference Secretaries alike, and all that great host of program committee members, panel participants, and executive officers - have most often, how­ever, combined a concern for the reform of social evils with a commitment to more effective service. Such persons engaged in attempts to create a synthesis between the two phases on the grounds that they were not, ultimately, mutually exclusive or contra­dictory, but mutually supportive and complementary.
  • NCSW Part 2: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Economic IndependenceFar-reaching changes have occurred in social work during the last century. When the National Conference was created in the early 1870's the common idea was that, for the most part, poverty (and dependency) was the result of personal failure, a flaw in the moral character of the individual; the individual, therefore, not society, was responsible for economic independence. Indeed, it was widely believed that the economic and social order could not operate successfully if the state, through its poor laws, undermined the work incentive by providing citizens a degree of security through public assistance.
  • NCSW Part 3: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Problems of Effective FunctioningAttempts to define the remedial field often lose more than they gain in elaboration. Once stripped of the categories - "mental health," "corrections," "retardation;" unen­cumbered by the labels - "multi-problem family," "emotionally disturbed child," "juvenile offender;" and liberated from the technical jargon - "psycho-social diagnosis," "therapeutic intervention," the remedial field may be seen in its essence: which is, quite simply, people helping people.
  • NCSW Part 4: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Social Aspects of HealthPhysicians frequently have had important parts in National Conferences, but seldom as physicians and almost never as bridging persons between medicine and social welfare. For instance, in the 1932 Conference Dr. 'Richard Cabot gave the presidential address and Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur was one of the principal speakers. However, Dr. Cabot, who was somewhat out of step with some of his medical colleagues, spoke more as the founder of medical social work than as a representative of the medical profession, while Dr. Wilbur, past president of the American Medical Association, formerly dean of one of the leading medical schools in the country, and at the time chairman of the precedent-setting Com­mittee on the Costs of Medical Care, spoke in his capacity as Secretary of the Interior, a political appointment under President Hoover, and only mentioned medical concerns in passing in his address on the United States Children's Bureau.
  • NCSW Part 5: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Leisure-time NeedsActually, the role of concerned citizens in providing public recreational programs began in the United States as far back as 1885. Unfortunately, although the history of this involvement is spotted with some progressive movement, on the whole lackadaisical developments have failed to keep pace with changes in cultural and social patterns that occur when one ethnic group moves into a community replacing another. In 1885, for example, the first efforts to improve recreational facilities for the underprivileged were led by Joseph Lee, who was shocked to see boys arrested for playing in Boston streets; George E. Johnson was moved at the pathos of the attempts of little children to play in the narrow crowded alleys in Pittsburgh.
  • NCSW Part 6: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Provision and Management of Social ServicesImagine a network of rural villages and surrounding farms -- populations of 2,000 are large. Slow transportation makes them physically isolated and economically and socially self-sufficient. Most citizens are called yeoman farmers: they own and work their land. They are militant Protestants, likely to be of a single denomination and congregated in a single church. They are democrats, proud of their revolution, jealous of their rights, scorning the pretensions of European aristocracy. They are said to be friendly and gener­ous with neighbors and strangers, but acquisitive and zealous for the main chance. Such communities were most clearly realized in the New England towns that Alexis de Tocqueville described in 1835 and in the settlements of religious groups, such as the Mormons. In many places settlers were too few and scattered to establish close ties, but where they could they did.
  • NCSW Part 7: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: Societal ProblemsThis paper will trace certain con­tinuities in the responses to poverty and social problems in America over the past cen­tury. It will show that despite the emphasis on "novelty," "discovery," and "invention," there have been continuities in the treatment of dependency and poverty in America, which have affected the development of the social welfare system, especially where the traditional attitudes have handicapped creative responses to social problems.
  • NCSW Part 8: A Century of Concern 1873-1973: BibliographyThis bibliography was an important part of the pamphlet published by the National Conference of Social Welfare on the occasion of its 100th Anniversary. The bibliography covers the Introduction written by Clarke Chambers as well as the six essays written by leaders in the field of social welfare.
  • NCSW: Report of 1946 Conference
  • Negro in Virginia (1940)Compiled by Workers of the Writers Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Virginia. Sponsored by the Hampton Institute.
  • Negro Visitor in Negro Homes (1919)
  • Negro Wage Earners and Trade Unions (1934)Written by William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor, 1934. "During the past five years Negro wage earners have been turning to the organized labor movement with new conviction. They are becoming responsible union members, sharing the benefits and hardships of union endeavor...These developments are evidence of substantial progress in the growing acceptance of responsibility on the part of Negro workers."
  • Negro Workers and Recovery: 1934Written by Lester B. Granger. "Negro labor in St. Louis, MO., has shown the way for colored workers throughout the country to make an aggressive attack against prejudiced and discriminatory policies on the part of certain sections of the American labor movement."
  • Neighborhood House, Richmond VAIn 1912, the Richmond Section of the National Council of Jewish Women established Neighborhood House at 19th and Broad in Richmond, Virginia to respond to the needs of recent immigrants from Russia, Germany, and Eastern Europe. For 33 years, Neighborhood House offered Americanization, religious, and cultural support to immigrants in the city’s East End.
  • New Concepts in Community Organization - 1961 Certain broad concepts about community organization as carried on by social workers have been developed in the social work curriculum and in practice. We have developed certain values which give us a philosophical underpinning. In addition, we have a body of rough-and ready rule-of-thumb ideas about how to carry on our daily tasks. However, if our literature is a guide, we have moved very slowly toward the development of any precise or clear body of concepts to govern either the teaching or the practice of community organization. This gap is found primarily between the philosophy, which tempers our work, and the mechanics of day-by-day action. This fact becomes apparent when we try to translate our philosophy into operational theory.
  • New Deal and the Negro (1935)If the 2,500,000 Negroes in the North and the 9,500,000 in the South earned more they would buy more. The masses of Negroes have never purchased enough food, clothing, furniture, transportation, hospitalization, and the like. Twelve million people would greatly expand production if they were employed and paid according to their economic value rather than their social status.
  • 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
  • New Governmental Interest in the Arts (1934)Eleanor Roosevelt's speech before the Twenty-Fifth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Artists in 1934. "Go ahead and make this thing as beautiful as you can make it...make of this thing something that really was the expression of a "love"--a piece of work that was done because he loved to do it."
  • New York State Care System For The Insane Completed: 1896"The Governor has approved the bill creating the Manhattan State Hospital and providing for the transfer of the lunatic asylums of this city and the care of their inmates to the State"
  • New York State Charities Aid Association: 1873The following First Annual Report of the State Charities Aid Association was addressed to The Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities of the State of New York in 1873. "“The objects of our work are of a twofold nature. 1. To promote an active public interest in the New York State Institutions of Public Charities, with a view to the physical, mental and moral improvement of their pauper inmates. 2. To make the present pauper system more efficient, and to bring about such reforms in it as may be in accordance with the most enlightened views of Christianity, Science and Philanthropy."
  • New York State's County Poor Houses (1864)In 1864, an investigation was made concerning the treatment of the “insane” confined in the county poor houses of New York State. Dr. Sylvester D. Willard’s Report was the instrument that persuaded the New York State Legislature to pass, on April 8, 1865, The Willard Act, “An Act to authorize the establishment of a State asylum for the chronic insane, and for the better care of the insane poor, to be known as The Willard Asylum for the Insane.” What follows is the original report to the New York State Legislature by Dr. Sylvester D. Willard, Secretary of the Medical Society.
  • Next Steps In Interracial Relations: 1944Every American who is worthy of the title "citizen" has carried a deep sense of shame and a feeling of almost personal responsibility for what happened in 1943 in New York City, Los Angeles, Beaumont, Mobile, and Detroit. Those bloody and costly riots were warnings of how far this nation still has to go in order to develop the single-minded purpose and the well-disciplined unity that are needed to win this war. It is possible mathematically to calculate the loss of man-hours of labor, of war materials, and of property caused by those riots. It will never be possible, however, to calculate the more severe loss of confidence by American citizens in their government and the loss of trust and cooperation between white and Negro Americans who should be working and planning together, wholeheartedly, for victory.
  • 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.
  • No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery: A Speech by Wm. GarrisonIn 1854, William Lloyd Garrison gave a speech in which he opened with: "I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence, I am an abolitionist. Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form-and most of all, that which turns a man into a thing--with indignation and abhorrence. Not to cherish these feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defense, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not be a liar, a poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any sect, to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any institution, or to promote any object. Convince me that one man may rightfully make another man his slave, and I will no longer subscribe to the Declaration of Independence."
  • Nursery Schools: History (1844 - 1919)Historical sketch of the day nursery movement. "What brought the nurseries so early in our history? It was the machine, the machine which faced working mothers with a desperate choice–the choice between destitution, and leaving their children uncared for."
  • Nurses and Wartime St. Vincent’s HospitalSt. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village was not just a place of employment for nurses, but it was also a place for education. In 1892, forty-three years after the hospital’s opening, the St. Vincent’s School of Nursing opened its doors to women. The school was first directed by Katherine A. Sanborn. Many graduates from this school continued their work at St. Vincent’s hospital. Other graduates went to work elsewhere in New York City, including the New York Foundling Hospital, another institution directed by the Sisters of Charity. Eventually, in the 1930s, St. Vincent’s School of Nursing began to accept men. This produced even more graduates and more St. Vincent’s educated nurses working in the field.
  • Nurses In "Settlement" Work (1895)Presentation by Lillian D. Wald at the Twenty-Second Annual Session of the National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1895. "The actual nursing in the tenements, the lending of sick-room utensils and bedding, and the making of delicacies and carrying of flowers have not been different from the usual methods of district nursing."
  • Nurses Settlement, Richmond, VA - Handbook of Settlements (1911)
  • Obtaining Civil Rights In Baltimore 1946-1960Looking 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...
  • Occupational Social Work: An IntroductionRecent developments in the practice of social work in the work world have introduced new challenges to the profession. The growing interest in this specialized social work practice is reflected in the greater numbers of practitioners in business settings, the proliferation of articles documenting these experiences, and the profession’s recognition of this as an area of social work practice to be studied and incorporated into professional social work education….
  • Old Age Assistance: A Brief History (1934)At the end of 1928, after six years of agitation, there were only six states and one territory which had made provision for their aged. They were Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Wisconsin and Alaska. All the state laws were of the optional type, i.e., they left the adoption or rejection of an old age assistance system to the discretion of the counties. For this reason these laws had very limited effect only.
  • Old Age Assistance: An OverviewFrom the earliest colonial times, local villages and towns recognized an obligation to aid the needy when family effort and assistance provided by neighbors and friends were not sufficient. This aid was carried out through the poor relief system and almshouses or workhouses. Gradually, measures were adopted to provide aid on a more organized basis, usually through cash allowances to certain categories among the poor. Mothers’ pension laws, which made it possible for children without paternal support to live at home with their mothers rather than in institu­tions or foster homes, were adopted in a number of States even before World War I. In the mid-twenties, a few States began to experiment with old-age assistance and aid to the blind.
  • Old Age Pensions - Eleanor Roosevelt (1934)"...We can hardly be happy knowing that throughout this country so many fine citizens who have done all that they could for their young people must end their days divided--for they usually are divided in the poorhouse. Old people love their own things even more than young people do. It means so much to sit in the same old chair you sat in for a great many years, to see the same picture that you always looked at! And that is what an old age security law will do. It will allow the old people to end their days in happiness, and it will take the burden from the younger people who often have all the struggle that they can stand. It will end a bitter situation--bitter for the old people because they hate to be a burden on the young, and bitter for the young because they would like to give gladly but find themselves giving grudgingly and bitterly because it is taking away from what they need for the youth that is coming and is looking to them for support. For that reason I believe that this bill will be a model bill and pass without any opposition this year."
  • Old Age Pensions: A Brief HistoryThis is a portion of Special Study #1, a lecture Dr. Bortz, the first SSA Historian,developed as part of SSA’s internal training program.
  • Old Age Security: Abraham Epstein's View (1934)We all know, of course, that any program of social security will be complete if complete security is provided and the best kind of security. But I believe that since we are just imperfect human beings, and most of us are imperfect, we should confine ourselves for the present to one problem, at least try to solve one problem at a time, not 100 per cent, or even 90 per cent. If you can only get over that philosophy to the legislatures, I think that all of our problems on social security in this country will be solved. The reason that there is no perfect remedy for making old age absolutely secure, no matter what principle is adopted, no matter what legislation we enact, is that there will always be certain flaws to make it at least just below 100 per cent perfect, if for no other reason than the fact that the members of the Senate and House of Representatives are fallible people. Some may not believe that, but at least most of us agree on it. Therefore, we cannot expect infallible laws.
  • Older Americans Act of 1965
  • On The Duties And Advantages Of Affording Instruction To The Deaf And Dumb (1824)A sermon by Thomas Gallaudet, 1824. Gallaudet saw deaf education in general and sign language in particular as the means by which an evangelical vision could be universalized.
  • One Hundred Years toward Suffrage: An OverviewSuffrage is the right or privilege of voting and is frequently incorporated among the rights of citizenship. However, just as not all people in the United States are necessarily granted the privilege of citizenship, not all U.S. citizens have been uniformly endowed with the right to vote. Given the property laws and economic status of citizens at that time, these restrictions meant that most women and persons of color could not vote, and only about “half of the adult white men in the United States were eligible to vote in 1787.”With so few rights, many women drew parallels between their social and political state and that of slaves. This entry notes the dates and events that eventually resulted in the 19th Amendment.
  • One Means Of Preventing Pauperism (1879)In 1876, Josephine Shaw Lowell (Mrs. C.R. Lowell) was appointed by Governor Tilden of New York State to be the first woman commissioner of the New York State Board of Charities. She served in this position until 1889, using her post to speak out, lobby, legislate, and advocate for people who were unable to do so themselves. Her investigations led to the establishment of the first custodial asylum for feeble minded women in the United States in 1885 and to the House of Refuge for Women (later the State Training School for Girls) in 1886.
  • Oneida Community (1848-1880): A Utopian CommunityThe Oneida Community (1848-1880) was a religiously based, socialist group, dedicated to living as one family and to sharing all property, work, and love. They called their 93,000 square foot home the Mansion House.
  • Opening of the Virginia State School for Colored Deaf and Blind Children, 1909The following is a transcription of a newspaper article published in The Times Dispatch  (Richmond, Va.) on August 15, 1909, p. 18. The story details the opening of the first residential school for African American blind and Deaf children in Virginia.
  • Ora Brown Stokes and the Richmond Neighborhood AssociationOra Brown Stokes founded and was the driving force behind the Richmond Neighborhood Association (RNA), an organization which has received little attention despite its centrality to social welfare work among Richmond’s African Americans between 1912 and 1924, particularly among children and young women.
  • Organization of Municipal Charities and Corrections (1916)Paper presented by L. A. Halbert, General Superintendent, Board of Public Welfare of Kansas City, Missouri at the National Conference Of Charities And Correction Held In Indianapolis, 1916. "If we were able to ascertain the activities of all incorporated towns and cities, it would show a tremendous volume of activity and an expenditure of many millions of dollars."
  • Organization, Powers, And Duties of State Boards of Charity (1892)Written by William P. Letchworth, Chairman Of The Committee On State Boards Of Charities. "It should be borne in mind that few things in this world are perfect; and, even in a charitable institution, we must look for the maximum of excellence instead of perfection..."
  • Orie Latham Hatcher, Woman's Club, Richmond, Va., 1904
  • Origin of the National Conference of Charities and Correction
  • Origin Of The Treatment And Training Of Idiots (1856)The idiot wishes for nothing, he wishes only to remain in his vacuity. To treat successfully this ill will, the physician wills that the idiot should act, and think himself, of himself and finally by himself. The incessant volition of the moral physician urges incessantly the idiot out of his idiocy into the sphere of activity, of thinking, of labor, of duty and of affectionate feelings; such is the moral treatment. The negative will of the idiot being overcome, scope and encouragement being given to his first indications of active volition, the immoral tendencies of this new power being repressed, his mixing with the busy and living word is to be urged on at every opportunity.
  • Origins of the Settlement House MovementExcerpt from "Legacy of Light: University Settlement’s First Century" by Jeffrey Scheuer. "The initial idea was simply to bring the working classes into contact with other classes...and thus to share the culture of university life with those who needed it most. An accompanying theme was that of nurturing the whole person..."
  • Origins of the State and Federal Public Welfare Programs (1932 - 1935)The history of public welfare in the United States has been one of continuing change and growth. Prior to the 1900’s local governments shared with private charitable organizations major responsibility for public assistance or as it was often termed, “public relief.” As the nation’s economy became more industrial and the population more concentrated in urban areas, the need for public relief often grew beyond the means, and sometimes the willingness, of local public and private authorities to provide needed assistance. During the Progressive Era, some state governments began to assume more responsibility for helping the worthy poor. By 1926, forty states had established some type of public relief program for mothers with dependent children. A few states also provided cash assistance to needy elderly residents through old-age pensions.
  • Orphan TrainsBetween 1854 and 1929 the United States was engaged in an ambitious, and ultimately controversial, social experiment to rescue poor and homeless children, the Orphan Train Movement. The Orphan Trains operated prior to the federal government’s involvement in child protection and child welfare. While they operated, Orphan Trains moved approximately 200,000 children from cities like New York and Boston to the American West to be adopted. Many of these children were placed with parents who loved and cared for them; however others always felt out of place and some were even mistreated.
  • Orshansky, Mollie
  • Oswald Villard, the NAACP and The Nation JournalIn 1909, when the founders of the NAACP needed help organizing their new civil rights group, they reached out to Oswald Garrison Villard, The Nation's future editor and owner.
  • Our Jobless Youth: a Warning (1939)By John Chamberlain, October, 1935. "We have seen in our time the revolution of dispossessed youth in Europe, where anything seemed better—to live, and march, and die for—than existence without meaning. Can we give our young people a real stake in life before it is too late? This grave question is put to educators, and all responsible leaders in American life, by one of our best informed and most sympathetic younger writers."
  • Our New York State Charities: 1873"At present these petty criminals spend their time in complete idleness in the county jails, and go out worse than they entered. To improve this class there should be a separate department in the State work-houses proposed, and the criminal statutes should be changed, so that the magistrates could commit them to these, and for longer terms than is at present the custom."
  • Outlining the New Deal Program (1933)A Radio Address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sunday, May 7, 1933.
  • Over The Hill To The Poor-House (1872)Poem written by Will Carleton in 1897.
  • Ovington, Mary WhiteMary 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.
  • Papell, Catherine
  • Papell, Catherine P.Katy Papell was professor and director of the Practice Division, Adelphi University’s School of Social Work, where she served on the social work faculty for more than 30 years. While teaching group work, casework, family practice and community and human development she designed the Integrative Curriculum, or what later came to be known as “Foundation Social Work Practice.” In 1975 Dr. Papell led a collaborative effort involving Adelphi University, Nassau County Commission on Drug and Alcohol Addiction, and the Long Island Council on Alcoholism that initially led to an introductory day to educate Adelphi faculty, then a first and annual Conference on Alcohol and Substance Abuse for Long Island, and finally a course in Adelphi's Doctoral Program and development of a post MSW Addiction Specialist Certificate Program.
  • Passaic Textile Strike (1926) - film
  • Passaic Textile Strike, 1926By Catherine Paul, 2017. The 1926 Passaic Textile Strike began on January 25th, 1926 and lasted through March 1st, 1927. The work stoppage involved more than 15,000 wool and silk workers in and around Passaic, New Jersey. The Passaic Textile Strike is notable for the use of force against the demonstrators, the debates over free speech, the role of intellectuals and intellectualism, and for being the Communist Party's first attempt to organize a large-scale demonstration encompassing the region’s textile industry.
  • Paterson Silk Strike, 1913
  • Paul, Alice Stokes
  • Paul, Catherine A.
  • Pea-Pickers' Child (1935)Written by Lucretia Penny, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1935. "The death notice in the county paper was not more than two inches in depth but it had, nevertheless, its modest headline: PEA-PICKERS CHILD DIES. Already there had been three deaths in the pea-pickers' camp: a Mexican had been murdered, stabbed; a child had died of burns; a baby had died of what his young mother referred to as "a awful fever in his little stomach." And now the shallow headlines spoke of Zetilla Kane, the seventh child and only daughter of Joe and Jennie Bell Kane."
  • Peck, Amanda
  • Peebles-Wilkins, Wilma, Ph.D.
  • Pendergast MachinePolitical bosses and their “machine organizations” operating in large American cities at the turn of the century enjoyed strong support among the poor and immigrants, who returned the favor by voting for the bosses' preferred candidates. Many immigrants saw bosses and political machines as a means to greater enfranchisement. For immigrants and the poor in many large U.S. cities, the political boss represented a source of patronage jobs.
  • Pennsylvania Prison Society"...their object, as stated in their Preamble was to discover “such degree and modes of punishment” as might restore our “fellow creatures to virtue and happiness.” In the spirit of the Founder of Christianity they proposed to extend compassion toward the fallen by “alleviating” the unwholesome conditions in prisons and by mitigating the “unnecessary severity” of punishments."
  • Perkins School for the BlindPerkins School for the Blind is located on a 38-acre campus on the Charles River in Watertown, Massachusetts, with partner programs in 65 countries. The school is committed to providing education and services that build productive, meaningful lives for children and adults around the world who are blind or deafblind, including those with additional disabilities.
  • Perkins, Frances, Change AgentIn 1913 Perkins married Paul Caldell Wilson. He was handsome, rich and a progressive. She defied convention and kept her maiden name. After several attempts at conceiving a daughter was born. Life did not treat Frances well. Both husband and daughter were depressed and institutionalized for long periods. While she had some help with living from her wealthy friends Frances paid their bills until they died. She also dealt with a myriad of stresses they introduced into her life. She did not believe in divorce. Despite her personal miseries Frances continued to develop her political skills.
  • Perkins, Frances: The Roosevelt YearsThe Labor department that Perkins found called into play all her research and political skills. It was corrupt and inefficient and hadn’t accomplished much. Many were removed and some eventually went to jail. No detail was too small. In her shabby offices cockroaches were found. This was because black employees were not allowed to use the department cafeteria and brought their lunches to work. She and her secretary cleaned the office and soon ordered the cafeteria to be integrated.
  • Perry, Fredericka Douglass Sprague
  • Petersen, Anna M.
  • Peterson, Esther (1906–1997)Esther Peterson was a trailblazer—as a woman and an advocate for workers’ rights. She was honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame as “one of the nation’s most effective and beloved catalysts for change.” In 1981, Esther received a Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian award, to honor her more than 50 years of activism.
  • Philadelphia Training School for Social Work - 1908Over a hundred years, the growth and development of what became today’s School of Social Policy and Practice of the University of Pennsylvania reflects the changing environment and the evolving role of charity, philanthropy and professional social work in our society. It is therefore noteworthy to list the various names this great institution of learning has carried over time: * 1908 -- Philadelphia Training School for Social Work * 1914 -- The Pennsylvania School for Social Service * 1921 -- Pennsylvania School of Social and Health Work * 1933 -- Pennsylvania School of Social Work * 2005 -- School of Social Policy and Practice of the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Phillips, Elsie C.
  • Phillips, Wilbur C.
  • Pinchback, Pinckney Benton Stewart: (1837-1921)Before ascending to the office of governor, Pinchback had run for both a U.S Senate seat and a seat in the U.S. Congress simultaneously in 1872. He won both contests but was barred from taking his congressional post when his opponent contested the election and was awarded the position. Pinchback was denied his seat in the senate as well as a result of charges of election fraud.
  • Place of The Kindergarten in Child-Saving (1900)Paper presented by Eva Harding, M.D. at the Twenty-Seventh Annual Session of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1900. "Perhaps in no field of sociological effort has more intelligent and corrective progress been made, in recent years, than in the treatment of children and the recognition of prenatal influences, which have only recently been regarded as of importance. There has been a constant advance in the recognition of that period in the lives of children when they should become objects of educative and considerate direction."
  • Playground Association of America Progress Report: January 20, 1910
  • Playground Association of America: Early DaysFounding and early history of The Playground Association of America.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)Written by Stephen Jager, independent historian. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was the Supreme Court decision that judicially validated state sponsored segregation in public facilities by its creation and endorsement of the “separate but equal” doctrine.
  • Plessy, Homer A.Homer A. Plessy was the plaintiff in the middle of the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that confirmed the concept of "separate but equal" in U.S. law which then opened the door even wider for legal segregation, commonly known as "Jim Crow" laws.
  • PolioBy Catherine A. Paul, 2017. Polio is caused by a virus; it affects the body by attacking the central nervous system, specifically those neurons essential for muscle activity. The first U.S. polio epidemic swept across the country in 1916, and then again in the late 1940s and 1950s.
  • Poor House Conditions: Albany County, New York - 1864In 1824 the New York State legislature enacted the "County Poorhouse Act," a measure that called for one or more poorhouses to be built or established in each county. Thenceforth, all recipients of public assistance were to be sent to that institution. All expenses for building and maintaining the poorhouse(s) and supporting its inmates were to be defrayed by the county out of tax funds. The Act also created a new body of relief officials: County Superintendents of the Poor.
  • Poor Relief and the AlmshouseWritten by Dr. David Wagner, University of Southern Maine. "Poorhouses (almshouses were simply the same thing with the old English word “alms” for charity used) started out rather small, sometimes in private homes, and at first were scattered in America. But in the 1820s, when America ceased being a completely agricultural society and began to receive more immigration, reformers such as Josiah Quincy in Massachusetts and John Yates in New York led a drive to build almshouses or poorhouses in every town and city. Their purposes were deeply steeped in a desire to not only save money but also to deter the 'undeserving poor.”"
  • Poor Relief in the Early America
  • Port Royal ExperimentIn January of 1862 Union General William T. Sherman requested teachers from the North to train the ex-slaves. Three months later U.S. Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase appointed Boston attorney Edward L. Pierce to begin the Port Royal Experiment, which would create schools and hospitals for ex-slaves and to allow them to buy and run plantations. That same month the steamship Atlantic left New York City bound for Port Royal. On board were 53 missionaries including skilled teachers, ministers and doctors who had volunteered to help promote this experiment.
  • Position of United Neighborhood Houses on Issues"[Settlements] differ greatly in opinion and method; however, they unite in sympathy and common aims. They are working always for progress by orderly process of law and for an America in which all classes shall live and work in concord."
  • Poverty: An Anthropologist's View - 1961This means that we must give money in amounts generous enough to be really constructive, to people who have done nothing to earn or deserve it. This brings us back to the barrier of the relative values prevailing in our society. The necessary generosity will be forthcoming only when our society really accepts the premise that people are deserving simply because they are people; that is, because they are fellow human beings. To be realistic, this acceptance will not develop magically or through appeals to conscience. Power rests in the middle class. And we in the middle class are notoriously anxious and defensive in the presence of people whose way of life is more primitive and violent than our own. We are threatened, and hence our response is rejection, not acceptance.
  • Powderly, Terence
  • Praglin, Laura J., Ph.D., L.M.S.W.Laura J. Praglin, Ph.D., LMSW is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research and teaching interests include the history of social work, especially the interaction of the early social work profession with other civicand religious organizations.
  • Precarious Learners: Race, Status and the Making of Virgin Islands Education from 1917-1970When the United States purchased the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands) from Denmark in 1917, the change in the islands’ political status profoundly impacted the educational options afforded to those residing in the territory. Being new subjects of a U.S. empire primarily concerned with preventing enemy expansion in the Caribbean basin both improved and complicated Virgin Islanders’ access to comprehensive education. For those residing in the U.S. Virgin Islands, American citizenship both exposed and exacerbated the precarious conditions of learning and belonging in a U.S. territory. Warped by a history of racialized domination and economic deprivation, education for Black Virgin Islanders has long been fraught by the conditions of precarious citizenship. 
  • President Roosevelt's Fireside Chat, June 28, 1934And, finally, the third principle is to use the agencies of government to assist in the establishment of means to provide sound and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life -- in other words, social insurance. Later in the year I hope to talk with you more fully about these plans. A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it "Fascism", sometimes "Communism", sometimes "Regimentation", sometimes "Socialism". But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.
  • President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice (FEPC)President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, creating a Committee on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC) to investigate complaints of discrimination and take action against valid complaints in any defense industry receiving government contracts.
  • Prince Edward County, VA School ClosingsWritten by Joan Lowe. "In 1959 Shirley turned 6 years old. Her excitement grew as fall approached because she would be going to school for the first time. What she didn't understand was that 1959 was to be different. The US Federal Court had ordered Prince Edward County, Virginia, where Shirley lived, to desegregate its schools. And the county school board, rather than integrate their system as ordered, closed all the public schools."
  • Principles of The Universal Negro Improvement Association (Marcus Garvey, 1922)We of the Universal Negro Improvement Association are determined to unite the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world to give expression to their own feeling; we are determined to unite the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world for the purpose of building a civilization of their own. And in that effort we desire to bring together the 15,000,000 of the United States, the 180,000,000 in Asia, the West Indies and Central and South America, and the 200,000,000 in Africa. We are looking toward political freedom on the continent of Africa, the land of our fathers.
  • Pritchard, Marion: Social Worker and Savior of Jews in WW IIThe Dutch government surrendered to the Nazis 5 days after the Germans invaded in May, 1940. Millions of Jews, Gypsies, and others were slaughtered, while some Dutch people risked their lives to help the victims....Marion Pritchard was one of the rescuers. She concealed a Jewish family for nearly 3 years and killed a Dutch Nazi policeman to save the children.
  • Problems Addressed By Social Security: 1936The Social Security Act, our first organized and nation-wide security program, is designed to meet no less than five problems. It is designed to protect childhood, to provide for the handicapped, to safeguard the public health, to break the impact of unemployment, and to establish a systematic defense against dependency in old age.
  • Profile of General Motors (1937)Article written by Samuel Romer, The Nation, 1937. "When sitdown strikes in five General Motors automobile and parts plants resulted in a practical paralysis of production operations and forced direct negotiations between national officers of both the corporation and the union, few of the workers involved realized that they were participating in the first important battle of a civil war which will largely determine the industrial progress of America during the next decade."
  • Program of Work for the Assimilation Of Negro Immigrants In Northern Cities (1917)Presentation by Forrester B. Washington, Director of the Detroit League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, given at the 44th Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare, 1917. "The establishment of a bureau of investigations and information regarding housing comes next in importance. The character of the houses into which negro immigrants go has a direct effect on their health, their morals and their efficiency. The rents charged determine whether the higher wages received in the North are real or only apparent, whether the change in environment has been beneficial or detrimental. The tendency is to exploit the negro immigrant in this particular."
  • Progress Report on Maternal and Child-Health Services: 1940Progress report on maternal and child-health services by Edwin F. Daily, including recommendations and 15 month assessment of the Children's Bureau.
  • Progressive EraProgressivism is a term commonly applied to a variety of responses to the economic and social problems that arose as a result of urbanization and the rapid industrialization introduced to America in the 19th Century.
  • Progressive Values: The Seedbed for New Deal PoliciesThe 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.
  • Public Aid For The Feeble-Minded (1889)This entry was a presentation by Mrs. George Brown at the Sixteenth Annual Session of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1889. "In an assemblage like this Conference, it must be an axiomatic proposition that the State should educate all its dependent children. It is not charity: it is simply providing for those of its own household...The question, then, is, in what respects must this provision for the feeble-minded differ from that given to others?"
  • Public Assistance--Values and LacksThrough provisions in the public assistance titles of the Social Security Act, great progress has been made in fulfilling the obligation of government to secure and protect human rights. For the first time in the United States, the legal right of a needy person to public assistance was established for four groups. Requirements for approval of state assistance plans included: the right to apply for assistance and to have prompt action taken on the application, and if eligible, to receive unrestricted money payments for as long as needed, to have personal information kept confidential, except as required for administration of public assistance, and to have the right of appeal to a state agency and the courts if denied assistance by a local agency. These provisions were all intended to prevent discrimination and humiliation and to help recipients maintain or rebuild their independence.
  • Public Relief in the Sit-Down Strike: 1937An Editorial in The Survey, March, 1937. "A sharp reminder that 'emergency' is the middle name of public relief agencies came home to the Genesee County, Mich. Welfare Relief Commission last month with the 'sit-down strike' in Flint of the United Automobile Workers."
  • Public School Classes For Mentally Deficient Children (1904)Presentation by Lydia Gardiner Chase at the National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1904. "Perhaps none have been more misunderstood than the mentally deficient. Through neglect, these children will degenerate into the ranks of the defectives and the delinquents; through individual training, some can be saved for the social body and the condition of all can be improved."
  • Public Welfare In The Democratic ProcessPresentation to the American Public Welfare Association Regional Meeting by Loula Dunn. "Public welfare is one way in which a basic principle of democracy finds practical application."
  • Public Welfare: A System of Government Social WorkThe board of public welfare movement has behind it the dynamic of a great ideal which in a measure explains its history. The movement proclaims a practical Utopia to be realized by doing scientific social work on a large scale. This program is based on the idea that social science and social invention can revolutionize society. It accepts no misery as inevitable and no wrong as irremediable. It aims at a new social order. Since 1900, there has been a greater development along these lines than existed in the previous one hundred years. Miss Eva M. Marquis, superintendent of the research bureau of the Kansas City board, made a study of all the national organizations devoted to social betterment propaganda and social reform which she could find. She listed ninety, in all, and found that three-fourths of them had been organized since 1900. It is probably no exaggeration to say that the proportion of governmental activities for social welfare that have originated since 1900 would be almost the same.
  • Public Welfare: Aid for Dependent ChildrenAid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was established by the Social Security Act of 1935 as a grant program to enable states to provide cash welfare payments for needy children who had been deprived of parental support or care because their father or mother was absent from the home, incapacitated, deceased, or unemployed.
  • Public Welfare: Model Constitution At the Forty-Fifth Annual Session of the National Conference of Social Work in 1918, Leroy A. Halbert, General Superintendent, Board of Public Welfare, Kansas City, Missouri, presented his views on: Boards Of Public Welfare: A System Of Government Social Work. In the course of his presentation he described an initiative he facilitated. Below is a paragraph from his presentation describing the work of the National Public Welfare League and a copy of the Model Constitution offered to prospective members.
  • Race, Religion and Prejudice (1942)Over and over again, I have stressed the rights of every citizen: Equality before the law. Equality of education. Equality to hold a job according to his ability. Equality of participation through the ballot in the government.
  • Randall, James I.
  • Randall, Ollie A.
  • Randall, Robert Richard and Sailor’s Snug HarborCaptain Robert Richard Randall died in 1801, and in his will he turned his property over to what would be called “Sailor’s Snug Harbor.” According to Randall’s will, this “snug harbor” was to be a marine hospital for “the purpose of maintaining aged, decrepit, and worn-out sailors.” The lawyer responsible for drawing up the will was none other than Alexander Hamilton. The charity set up by Randall and Hamilton was one of the first charitable institutions in the United States. The sole requirement for residency at Sailor’s Snug Harbor was five years of service in the United States Navy. There were no age, religion, race, or other factors taken into consideration. Once in residence, each former sailor was called “Captain” by the staff, regardless of their actual rank during their service.
  • Randolph, A. PhillipA. Philip Randolph: Founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Chair of the Committee that Organized the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”
  • Rankin, Jeannette (1880–1973)Jeannette Rankin’s life was filled with extraordinary achievements: she was the first woman elected to Congress, one of the few suffragists elected to Congress, and the only Member of Congress to vote against U.S. participation in both World War I and World War II. “I may be the first woman member of Congress,” she observed upon her election in 1916. “But I won’t be the last.”1
  • Reciprocal Aid: Fraternalism and Early Social Welfare HistoryBy Sarah Shepherd. Fraternalism fulfilled a crucial role in society. It was a social club as well as an early form of social welfare through the principle of reciprocal aid.
  • Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Maternal and Child Health Services: 1938Recommendations regarding the selection, training and compensation of personnel, cooperation with other agencies, and hospital standards.
  • Recreation Movement in the United StatesA 1925 report by the Playground and Recreation Association of America. 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.
  • Red Cross Home Service Institutes -- Richmond School of Social Economy.
  • Red Summer, Race Riots, and White Supremacist Terror - SourcesAs 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.
  • Redefining the Federal Role in Social Welfare: 1995The November 1994 congressional elections transformed the perennial debate over how much of the national income should be allocated for social welfare, how broadly or narrowly should the welfare responsibility of government be defined, what populations or institutions should receive benefits or administer them, and how to divide the costs.
  • Refugees Here (1940)How are we going to help the refugees find a place in the life of the nation? How must such help be constructed, to interfere as little as possible with the economic situation and to help the American people benefit from the arrival of the refugee? These questions do not only concern the organizations which were formed to deal with the refugee problem. They are of great concern for the general public. Without its cooperation a policy concerning the refugee can neither be constructed, nor can it work. Without an adequate understanding on the part of the public, the efforts of these organizations will be greatly hampered.
  • Rehabilitation Of The Mentally And Physically Handicapped (1929)Further progress must of necessity depend on a deeper understanding on the part of every man and woman in the United States. Knowledge of the splendid results already accomplished is not widespread. You can go into thousands of farming districts in this State and you can go into thousands of closely populated wards in our great cities and find ignorance not only of what has been accomplished but of how to go about utilizing the facilities which we already have. There are literally hundreds of thousands of cases of boys and girls in the United States hidden away on the farm or in the city tenements, boys and girls who are mentally deficient or crippled or deaf or blind. Their parents would give anything in the world to have their mental or physical deficiencies cured, but their parents do not know how to go about it.
  • Reida, John
  • Relation of the Kindergarten to Social Reform: 1888This entry was a presentation by Kate Douglas Wiggin at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of The National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1888. Wiggin was an American educator and author of children's stories. She devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor. Wiggin discusses kindergarten as a type of social reform.
  • Religion In Nineteenth-Century AmericaWritten by Dr. Graham Warder, Keene State College. "Converts to the new religious ways ardently strove to eliminate sin from themselves and from their society. The result was a faith that promoted social reforms of various kinds, among them abolitionism, temperance, health reform, and the asylum movement."
  • Remarks at Thanksgiving Day Party at Warm Springs (1934)The Birthday Party will give 70 percent of all funds raised to the care of infantile paralysis in the various localities throughout the country where they have Birthday Balls; the other 30 percent is going to be spent to do something we have always had in mind. It is going to further the cause of research. As I said this afternoon in the dedication of the two buildings, you must always remember that you who are here, those of us who are here under medical care, only represent a tiny fraction of the people throughout the land, grown-ups and children, who have infantile paralysis. Therefore, even if we were to double in size or quadruple in size, we could treat only a small fraction of the people of this country who need treatment.
  • Removal of Children From Almshouses (1894)Presentation by Homer Folks, Chairman, Secretary of the State Charities Aid Association of New York. This entry is one of three presentations by distinguished leaders of the era at the 1894 Annual Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare in a section of the meeting on “Child-Saving.” Together, the three entries describe the institutions, deplorable conditions and efforts to reform and improve the care of vulnerable children.
  • Removal of Children From Almshouses in The State of New York (1894)Presentation by the Hon. Wm. P. Letchworth, Member of the State Board of Charities Of New York. This entry is one of three presentations by distinguished leaders of the era at the 1894 Annual Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare in a section of the meeting on “Child-Saving.” Together, the three entries describe the institutions, deplorable conditions and efforts to reform and improve the care of vulnerable children.
  • Report from Flint, Michigan, November 30, 1934What to me was of outstanding interest here is the way the unemployed are behaving about relief. The workers on the whole are "hard babies," the living conditions are bad, the struggle for existence has been terrible even before the depression, but the place is to a certain extent a yardstick of behavior in depressed, deflated conditions....I spent a day visiting homes with investigators. They tell me that relief is actually raising standards in some of these shack lives. One of the leading doctors told me that medical care in the City was now better than it had ever been before. In the homes that I visited less than 25 per cent were "unemployables." All, except a very few, asked for clothing or other articles such as a new stove, that neighbors had received from relief. I certainly had a feeling that few would choose to stay on relief but there was little feeling that it was a painful process to ask for relief.
  • Report, Flint, Michigan, November 17, 1934As one investigator said, "The workers in Detroit used to run up debts between employment,--run a rent up for several months, owe a grocery bill for several months and borrow on the furniture. They don't do that any more. When their money is exhausted they come to relief." While several men said to me with evident satisfaction that they had no debts, others pointed out that the grocers and landlords no longer feeling so optimistic about the economic possibilities of their debtors will not extend credit as they used to. An old Ford worker said, "I used to be able to pick up odd jobs such as washing cars. My wife did, too, then. We used to worry along." A Chevrolet man said "Each year my savings grew lean and less until now I am at rock bottom." These men are both applying for relief for the first time this Fall. They expect to get jobs by the first of the year if not before.
  • Reuther, Walter (1907 - 1970)Walter Reuther, Labor Organizer and President of the United Automobile Workers from 1946 to 1970
  • Reynolds, Bertha Capen
  • Richmond School of Social Economy - Beginnings. October 1916 - July 1917
  • Richmond School of Social Economy - Opening Term. Fall 1917.
  • Richmond, MaryMary Richmond is considered a principle founder of the profession of social work and the importance of professional education. She constructed the foundations for the scientific methodology development of professional social work. She searched for the causes of poverty and social exclusion in the interaction between an individual and his or her environment.
  • Riis, Jacob
  • Rinaldo, Harriet
  • Robert M. Ball, Social Security PioneerBall started his career in the Social Security field in 1939 and he labored on issues related to Social Security without stint for the next 69 years, working up until two weeks before his death at age 93.
  • Robeson, PaulPaul Robeson is best known as a world famous athlete, singer, actor, and advocate for the human rights of people throughout the world. Over the course of his career Robeson combined all of these activities into a lifelong quest for racial justice.
  • Robinson, Virginia PollardTo a degree rare in social work education her view of her tasks was marked by a sustained interest in and respect for the field of social work practice, while at the same time she maintained a scholarly perspective upon the field as a rich source for study, learning and teaching. Even more significantly for the School, the nature of Robinson's interest in social work as related to professional education suggested methods of interchange and patterns of relationship between classroom and field work which have proven steadily fruitful through the years and remain widely recognized as effective in preparing the student both in comprehension of his task and in be- ginning competence in practice.
  • Roosevelt, EleanorDespite her initial intent to focus on her social activities as First Lady, political issues soon became a central part of the weekly briefings. When some women reporters assigned to ER tried to caution her to speak off the record, she responded that she knew some of her statements would "cause unfavorable comment in some quarters . . . but I am making these statements on purpose to arouse controversy and thereby get the topics talked about."
  • Roosevelt, Eleanor and the AFSCWritten by Jack Sutters, former AFSC archivist. "Eleanor Roosevelt's association with the AFSC began before Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration in March 1933."
  • Roosevelt, Eleanor: The Women's MovementEleanor Roosevelt (ER) became aware of the barriers women faced while working with other women on other social justice issues. Although she did work in a settlement house and joined the National Consumers League before she married, ER's great introduction to the women's network occurred in the immediate post World War I period when she worked with the International Congress of Working Women and the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to address the causes of poverty and war.
  • Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
  • Roosevelt, Theodore
  • Roots of Social Security - Frances PerkinsBefore I was appointed, I had a little conversation with Roosevelt in which I said perhaps he didn't want me to be the Secretary, of Labor because if I were, I should want to do this, and this, and this. Among the things I wanted to do was find a way of getting unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, and health insurance. I remember he looked so startled, and he said, "Well, do you think it can be done?" I said, "I don't know." He said, Well, there are constitutional problems, aren't there?" "Yes, very severe constitutional problems," I said. "But what have we been elected for except to solve the constitutional problems? Lots of other problems have been solved by the people of the United States, and there is no reason why this one shouldn't be solved." "Well," he said, "do you think you can do it?" "I don't know, " I said But I wanted to try. "I want to know if I have your authorization. I won't ask you to promise anything." He looked at me and nodded wisely. "All right," he said, "I will authorize you to try, and if you succeed, that's fine."
  • Rose Schneiderman: N.Y. Senators vs. Working WomenRose Schneiderman, an organizer for the New York Women’s Trade Union League, worked to bring together middle and working-class women in support of women’s right to vote. She makes a good case here against male politicians’ opposition to woman suffrage and she supports working women’s efforts to reduce the hours of labor and secure protective legislation.
  • Rosenwald, Julius
  • Rustin, Bayard (1912-1987)Bayard Rustin: Trade Union and Civil Rights Organizer and Activist
  • Rustin, Bayard: Master OrganizerIn 1956, he took leave from the League to advise Martin Luther King on non-violent tactics during the Montgomery bus boycott. When the pacifist Rustin first met King, he slept with a pistol under his pillow and had armed guards. He who introduced him to pacifism and non-violent tactics. In 1957, he and King started to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Given his political and sexual past, other black leaders, especially Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, forced him to resign. While Rustin did not have to resign from his role in organizing King’s 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, A. Phillip Randolph got the up-front publicity. In putting the march together, Rustin was known for paying meticulous attention to every detail and for seeming to be everywhere at once. He was the engine that made it go.
  • Ryan, Monsignor John A.
  • Sampson, Deborah (1760-1827)For over two years, Deborah’s true sex had escaped detection. She had had close calls with both discovery and death: fainting on that first march to West Point, lying that she had had smallpox when the soldiers were culled for vaccination in the winter of 1782, receiving a revealing wound in June of 1781, and nearly drowning in the Croton River in December of that year. In the first half of 1783, she had taken a perilous trip through the snow to the frontiers of upstate New York, had been attacked by robbers, and had avoided bathing in the Hudson River with the rest of the troops. All this and more she had successfully navigated. She knew that unconsciousness was her greatest danger because then she could not rely on quick thinking to get her out of trouble. She also feared being in a hospital where she could be subjected to the unwanted probing of the doctor. Now both things that she had dreaded the most, even more than the prospect of death, had happened. Dr. Benjamin Binney did discover her secret, which he eventually made known in a letter to General Peterson on Deborah’s return to the army.
  • Sampson, EJ
  • Samuel, Jessica S., Ph. D.
  • Sanger, MargaretMargaret (nee: Higgins) Sanger risked scandal, danger, and imprisonment to challenge the legal and cultural obstacles that made controlling fertility difficult and illegal. Ms. Sanger viewed birth control as a woman's issue and she was prepared to take on the medical establishment, the churches, the legislatures, and the courts. She was persuasive, tireless, single-minded, and unafraid of a fight. On October 16,1916 she opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn, was arrested, and served thirty days for distributing information about contraceptives. From that experience, Sanger moved on to assume leadership of the struggle for free access to birth control. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League, the precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation, and spent her next three decades campaigning to bring safe and effective birth control into the American mainstream.
  • Sathish, Shruti
  • Schiff, PhilipAs headworker at Madison House during The Great Depression, Schiff, like so many other settlement house workers, tried to cope with the immediate problems of relief, unemployment, and evictions. He established a day care center, introduced venereal disease and tuberculosis control programs, and started a vocational training program for unemployed youth. he was also was a community organizer and helped create a network of Lower East Side social service agencies to advocate for social welfare policies, especially unemployment and housing. In 1936, Philip Schiff ran unsuccessfully on the American Labor Party's ticket for First Assembly representative to the New York State legislature.
  • Schiff, Philip: 1958 MemorialThe Metropolitan Washington Chapter of NASW held a special memorial meeting for Philip Schiff on September 25, 1958, at which Dean Inabel Lindsay of the School of Social Work of Howard University presented this paper.
  • Schiff, Philip: A Political Campaign Speech - 1937"As a united progressive group we do not intend to let go of the tiger's tail until it has been twisted beyond recognition! A defeat for Tammany in the 1st Assembly District. means a death blow from Tammany in the city. What an opportunity for the American Labor Party and those in sympathy with its aims! For the sake of the thousands who reside in the 1st District., the city and the state, we must not permit it to slip out of our grasp! "The “Dooling way” is the path to loss of civic self-respect, an acknowledgment of defeat for obtaining the things we want most, an agreement to continue playing with a representative who is tied lock, stock and barrel to a system which has for years been “kidding” the public and is constantly under public scrutiny because of its many excursions into the public through for its own benefit.
  • Schiff, Philip: An Address 1954Address by Phil Schiff at The Annual Meeting of Alumni and Friends of Madison House, Inc. "When did we come in? Where are we? Where are we going? Where did we come in?"
  • Schneiderman, Rose"Rose Schneiderman, the labor organizer who taught Eleanor Roosevelt everything she 'knew about trade unionism.'”
  • School for Bums (1931)If you want to know how to make a bum out of a workingman who has had trade, home, security and ambition taken from him, talk to any of the young fellows on the breadline who have been in town long enough to have become experienced in misery. Say a man in this town goes to the Municipal Lodging House for his first night. Until lately, he would have been routed out at five in the morning. Now he can stay until six. He is given breakfast, then he must leave, blizzard or rain. He can go next to a Salvation Army shelter for a handout, and get down to the City Free Employment Bureau before it opens. Or he can find shelter in subways and mark the Want Ads in a morning paper.
  • Schools for a Minority (1939)Article written by Gould Beech, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1939. "...it was 'too great a compliment to attribute to the Negro child the ability to gain equal education for one dollar to every seven spent on the education of the white child...' And yet even against such handicaps, the Negro race has advanced in little more than three generations from 80 percent illiterate to better than 80 percent literate—a heartening measure of capacity to make bricks with such straw as there is.,,,Educational discrimination is only one phase of the Negro's economic, political and social status, but it is perhaps the most vital standard by which his participation in American life is measured."
  • Schools for New Citizens (1941)Article written by Viola Paradise appearing in Survey Graphic, 1941. "September . . . a new school term. Not only for America's millions of school children, but for some two and a half million adults, as well. Under the sponsorship of local school boards, WPA, settlements, unions, churches, they study subjects ranging from simple English to international relations, from Diesel-engine operators to dietetics."
  • Schottland, Charles I.
  • Schuetz, Breanna
  • Schuyler, Louisa LeeTo say that Louisa Lee Schuyler was a humanitarian and a pioneer in social work would be an understatement. Miss Schuyler was the driving force in the movement to reform the poor house system in New York State.
  • Scientific Charity Movement and Charity Organization Societies“Scientific charity built on Americans’ notion of self-reliance, limited government, and economic freedom. Proponents of scientific charity shared the poorhouse advocates’ goals of cutting relief expenses and reducing the number of able-bodied who were receiving assistance, as well as the moral reformers’ goal of uplifting people from poverty through discipline and religious education via private charity. In this model, individuals responded to charity and the government stayed out of the economic sphere.
  • Scott, DredOn March 6, 1857, the United States Supreme Court finally ruled in Dred Scott v Sandford [Sanford was misspelled by a court clerk]. In a 7-2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the majority of justices said that Scott and all slaves and free blacks were not citizens of the United States and therefore had no standing in the courts. Shortly after the decision was handed down Mrs. Emerson freed Scott. The case itself led to the nullification of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, allowing the expansion of slavery into formerly free territories and the legal principle that African Americans, slave or free, were not citizens of the United States. The backlash to this decision strengthened the abolitionist movement and further divided the North and South, leading four years later to the U.S. Civil War.
  • Scottsboro Boys, Trial and Defense Campaign (1931–1937)On March 25, 1931, nine unemployed young black men, illegally riding the rails and looking for work, were taken off a freight train at Scottsboro, Alabama and held on a minor charge. The Scottsboro deputies found two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, and pressured them into accusing the nine youths of raping them on board the train.
  • Scudder, Vida Dutton
  • Securing and Training Social Workers: 1911This section meeting in 1911 describes in detail the progress of social welfare pioneers struggling to define social work and how it could be taught to aspiring students as well as current workers in social agencies and philanthropies. It also includes references to the evolutionary history of the social work profession. In one paragraph Miss Breckinridge says: "...In these meetings we are laying bare before the Conference the elementary stage at which our thought and our practice upon these points still rests. To be sure, a review of the past decade convinces the observer that real progress has been made. In 1897, fourteen years ago, at Toronto, Miss Richmond made her notable statement before the Conference regarding the desirability of establishing professional schools. In 1901, four years later, Dr. Brackett reported somewhat at length upon the establishment of the Summer School for Philanthropic Workers, established by the New York Charity Organization Society....Today the New York Summer School for Philanthropic Workers has lost itself in the New York "School of Philanthropy" conducted by the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York and affiliated with Columbia University, whose purpose is "to fit men and women for social service in either professional or volunteer work." The Boston School for Social Workers maintained by Simmons College and Harvard University, established in 1904, has completed its seventh year of successful educational work. The Chicago Institute for Social Service has become the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, and may be reported as established on a safe pecuniary and a sound educational basis. The St. Louis School of Social Economy, affiliated with Washington University, starting in 1901-2 as a series of Round Table meetings of workers, has passed beyond the experimental stage and has just completed its sixth year of full academic quality and amount...."
  • Segregation. Color Pattern from the Past--Our Struggle to Wipe it Out. Survey Graphic, January 1947
  • Seneca Falls Convention, July 1848A report from the convention at Seneca Falls. "Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States." In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.
  • Settlement Houses: An IntroductionWritten by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. " The establishment and expansion of social settlements and neighborhood houses in the United States corresponded closely with the Progressive Era, the struggle for woman suffrage, the absorption of millions of new immigrants into American society and the development of professional social work."
  • Settlement Houses: How It All BeganThe following is based on research by Albert J. Kennedy, summarizing the specific ways in which settlements enriched or improved neighborhood life during the first sixty years.
  • Settlement Houses: The View Of The Catholic ChurchNeighborhood and Community: The View Of The Church by Rev. William F. O'Ryan, St. Leo's Church, Denver, Colorado--a presentation at the 52nd Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare, Denver, Colorado, June 10-17, 1925
  • Settlement Movement: 1886-1986This booklet was published for the 1986 Centennial of the U.S. Settlement Movement by United Neighborhood Centers of America (UNCA). In addition to being a history of the settlement movement over a period of one hundred years, it includes valuable references and sources of additional information about settlements. The author, Margaret E. Berry, was a former director of the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, the predecessor of UNCA
  • Settlement Workers of Washington, DC and Baltimore, MDThis original list of settlement houses serving neighborhoods in Baltimore was probably published sometime between 1912 -1915. It briefly describes the many ways early settlement house residents and volunteers provided facilities and resources in order to assist recent immigrants and very poor families to play, socialize, learn a variety of skills, save money, organize and take steps to improve their lives and the communities in which they lived. The document was contributed by Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Social Work.
  • Settlements and Neighborhood Centers"The settlements and Neighborhood Centers are multifunctional agencies, which exist to serve the social needs of persons in given geographical neighborhoods—the neighborhood is their “client.” It provides: (1) Informal Educational and Recreational Services, (2) Neighborhood Services, and (3) Personal Services."
  • Seventeenth Street Mission, Richmond VAIn 1911, Murray Grey and other students from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (later, Union Presbyterian Seminary) started The Seventeenth Street Mission, a settlement house and urban ministry outreach program in Shockoe Bottom, the most impoverished neighborhood of Richmond, Va.
  • Shahan, Bishop Thomas
  • Shakers - A Utopian Community: Founded In U.S. 1776Formally known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming, the Shakers developed their own religious expression which included communal living, productive labor, celibacy, pacifism, the equality of the sexes, and a ritual noted for its dancing and shaking.
  • Shelby County v. Holder (2013)Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was a landmark decision of the U. S. Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  • Shepherd, Sarah H.Sarah H. Shepherd is is the archivist at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library in Lexington, Massachusetts.
  • Shift in Child Labor (1933)By Beatrice McConnell, Director Bureau of Women and Children, Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. "Child labor cannot be ignored as a vital factor in the present economic crisis. Children are leaving school and going to work at a time when millions of adults are jobless and many of these children are acting as the sole support of their families because their fathers and older brothers and sisters are unemployed."
  • Shuttlesworth, Rev. FredAs Birmingham goes, so goes the nation. That belief was the driving force behind Shuttlesworth's crusade for equality. "He was the soul and heart of the Birmingham movement," Georgia Rep. John Lewis said. It was Birmingham, he said, that brought the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "Fred Shuttlesworth had the vision, the determination never to give up, never to give in," Lewis said. "He led an unbelievable children's crusade. It was the children who faced dogs, fire hoses, police billy clubs that moved and shook the nation."
  • Simkhovitch, Mary Kingsbury
  • Sinclair, Upton
  • Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, OHWritten by Michael Barga. "The work of the SCCs includes the creation of orphanages, schools, and hospitals... SCCs make vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience to God and strive to live simply, be in solidarity with the poor, and embrace multiculturalism in ministry and membership."
  • Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, KYWritten by Michael Barga. The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky (SCNs) are a religious order in the Catholic Church whose social concern and traditional spirituality stem from Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac. Their initial local efforts in education, health care, and social service have expanded to the international level today.
  • Sisters of Charity of New YorkWritten by Michael Barga. "Some of the earliest sustained social service institutions and health care facilities in New York City were started by the sisters. Their allegiance to local Catholics in the city came in conflict with their obedience to their superiors ... eventually leading to the establishment of a separate order recognized as the Sisters of Charity of New York (SCNY)."
  • Skreslet, Paula
  • Smith, Zilpha DrewIn 1886, Smith was appointed general secretary of the Associated Charities of Boston and formally launched her professional career in the charity organization movement and social work education. Under her leadership, Associated Charities was successful in bringing together most of the charities and relief organizations operating in Boston. Building on the skills she learned earlier, Smith organized a central file of families being served, a system of district offices, paid agents and volunteer friendly visitors. In an 1887 presentation at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Charities held in Omaha, Nebraska, Smith described aspects of the relationship among committees, volunteer visitors and paid agents doing the service of Associated Charities:
  • Social Darwinism and the PoorExtrapolations from Darwinism, with its emphasis on evolutionary progress, offered reason for hope that a new and better social order could emerge from the turbulence. At the same time, by highlighting competition and the survival of the fittest as the drivers of evolution, it seemed to explain both the emergence of the fittest -- fabulously wealthy elites and giant corporations, as well as the unfit -- the masses of poor in the teeming city slums.
  • Social Group Work Theory and PracticeProfessor Gertrude Wilson contributed significantly to the establishment of social group work within social work in the United States. Through national research and numerous publications, Professor Wilson was able to demonstrate and describe the relationship between group work and case work. She demonstrated that they draw upon many of the same basic concepts from the behavioral sciences as well as from socio-psychological sources; and that there were key common skills. She argued that group work was a process through which group life was influenced by a worker who directed the process toward the accomplishment of a social goal conceived in a democratic philosophy
  • Social Insurance & Social Security Chronology: Part I -- 1600s -- 1800sThe following pages present a detailed historical chronology of the development of social insurance, with particular emphasis on Social Security. Items are included in this compilation on the basis of their significance for Social Security generally, their importance as precedents, their value in reflecting trends or issues, or their significance in Social Security Administration's administrative history. The information includes legislative events in Social Security and related programs. Our expectation is that this Chronology can be used as a reference tool and finding aid for important dates and events in Social Security's long history.
  • Social Insurance & Social Security Chronology: Part II - 1900s - 1920sThe following pages present a detailed historical chronology of the development of social insurance, with particular emphasis on Social Security. Items are included in this compilation on the basis of their significance for Social Security generally, their importance as precedents, their value in reflecting trends or issues, or their significance in SSA's administrative history. The information includes legislative events in Social Security and related programs. Our expectation is that this Chronology can be used as a reference tool and finding aid for important dates and events in Social Security's long history.
  • Social Insurance & Social Security Chronology: Part III - 1930sThe following pages present a detailed historical chronology of the development of social insurance, with particular emphasis on Social Security. Items are included in this compilation on the basis of their significance for Social Security generally, their importance as precedents, their value in reflecting trends or issues, or their significance in SSA's administrative history. The information includes legislative events in Social Security and related programs. Our expectation is that this Chronology can be used as a reference tool and finding aid for important dates and events in Social Security's long history.
  • Social Insurance & Social Security Chronology: Part IV -- 1940sThe following pages present a detailed historical chronology of the development of social insurance, with particular emphasis on Social Security. Items are included in this compilation on the basis of their significance for Social Security generally, their importance as precedents, their value in reflecting trends or issues, or their significance in SSA's administrative history. The information includes legislative events in Social Security and related programs. Our expectation is that this Chronology can be used as a reference tool and finding aid for important dates and events in Social Security's long history.
  • Social Insurance & Social Security Chronology: Part V -- 1960sThe following pages present a detailed historical chronology of the development of social insurance, with particular emphasis on Social Security. Items are included in this compilation on the basis of their significance for Social Security generally, their importance as precedents, their value in reflecting trends or issues, or their significance in Social Security Administration’s administrative history. The information includes legislative events in Social Security and related programs. Our expectation is that this Chronology can be used as a reference tool and finding aid for important dates and events in Social Security’s long history.
  • Social Responsibility for Individual WelfareWe have to recognize that our type of capitalism in this country is different from what the same word connotes in some other countries. From the time of the last depression we have taken great strides in the recognition of the responsibility of government and industry to cooperate to prevent any disasters to the normal economy of the country. We have to be prepared to meet disasters caused by nature. These we expect the government to cooperate in meeting, but we recognize the responsibility of industry today as well as of the individual. We believe that together we should strive to give every individual a chance for a decent and secure existence and in evolving our social patterns we are trying to give both hope for better things in the future and security from want in the present.
  • Social Security Act of 1935On August 15, 1935, the Social Security Act established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the physically handicapped.
  • Social Security Compared to Public AssistanceThis is the concluding section of a lecture by Abe Bortz, the first SSA historian, on the history of social security.
  • Social Security: A Brief History of Social InsuranceThis is a portion of Special Study #1, a lecture Dr. Bortz, the first SSA Historian, developed as part of SSA’s internal training program. It features an extensive overview of social policy developments dating from pre-history up to the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935.
  • Social Security: A Radio Address by Frances Perkins, 1935Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins' national radio broadcast, one of the earliest popular explanations of what would become the Social Security program.
  • Social Security: Early HistoryThis is a portion of Special Study #1, a lecture Dr. Bortz, the first SSA Historian, developed as part of SSA’s internal training program. It features an extensive overview of social policy developments dating from pre-history up to the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935.
  • Social Security: Early Promotional PostersPosters like these were designed to bring information about the new Social Security Act of 1935 to the American public.
  • Social Security: Old Age Survivors Insurance ProgramsSocial security is the term commonly used to describe the Old Age, Survivors Insurance program (OASI) created by Title II of the Social Security Act of 1935. The original OASDI legislation was developed as one part of the federal response to the economic vulnerabilities of workers and their families revealed by the Great Depression of the 1930s.
  • Social Security: Organizational History of SSAThe Social Security Administration (SSA) began in 1935. It became a sub-cabinet agency in 1939, and returned full-circle to independent status in 1995. Throughout the years, arguments had been heard in the halls of Congress that SSA should be returned to independent agency status. This debate was given impetus in 1981 when the National Commission on Social Security recommended that SSA once again become an independent Social Security Board.
  • Social Security: Origin of the TermAbraham Epstein is credited with recommending the use of the term Social Security: Epstein, Frankel said, was in the process of “...establishing a national organization to spread the gospel of old age assistance throughout the United States. . . the proposed American Old Age Pension Association. When I heard the word pension’ it did not sit so well with me, knowing that at that moment the word had a connotation of politically radical action which challenged the established order. I told Epstein I would not use the word pension. He naturally asked me what word I would suggest. I thought for a moment and simply said: ‘security’.”
  • Social Security: The Roosevelt AdministrationPresident Franklin Delano Roosevelt's philosophy was: that Government has a positive responsibility for the general welfare. Not that Government itself must do everything, but that everything practicable must be done. A critical question for F.D.R. was whether a middle way was possible-- a mixed system which might give the State more power than conservatives would like, enough power indeed to assure economic and social security, but still not so much as to create dictatorship.
  • Social Security: Unemployment Insurance“The fundamental case for unemployment protection lies in the fact that under a democratic form of society we are forced to prevent any large-scale starvation. Funds must be provided somehow . . . It is practical sense to build a system which will gather the funds in good times and disburse them in bad times. This simple theory underlies all formal proposals for unemployment insurance, for unemployment reserves.” Stanley King in American Labor Legislation Review, December 1933, p. 170.
  • Social Unit PlanThe social unit plan aims to bring about a genuine and efficient democracy by showing the rank and file how to secure for themselves a clear idea of their own needs and by helping them to organize for the satisfaction of those needs the best skill and the wisest advice available. Practical health work is the point of attack because it is one of the sorest immediate needs and the one of which people are most conscious. The laboratory chosen for the working out of this new concept of democracy is a typical district of Cincinnati containing approximately fifteen thousand people. In this district, under the control of the citizens who reside in it and with the co-operation of citizens throughout the entire city as well as of the city government, it is planned to develop an organization which, if successful, may later, with minor modifications, be capable of application in other sections of the city and in cities throughout the country.
  • Social Welfare Developments in the 1600s
  • Social Welfare Developments in the 1700s
  • Social Welfare Developments, 1800-1850
  • Social Welfare Developments, 1851-1900
  • Social Welfare Developments, 1901-1950
  • Social Welfare Developments, 1951-2000
  • Social Welfare History Group
  • Social Welfare In The Black Community, 1886-1939Over the past two decades, social work educators and students have developed a body of literature, which describes the legacy, and contributions of African Americans or members of the Black community to social welfare historical developments.
  • Social Work and Aftercare of the Mentally Ill in Maryland"The question of affording proper care for patients discharged from hospitals for the insane is by no means a new one. The best and most satisfactory method of administering this aid has not yet been entirely decided…" (Arthur P. Herring, Secretary of the Maryland Lunacy Commission, September 14, 1910).
  • Social Work and Social Action-1945For the purpose of this discussion we shall define social action as the systematic, conscious effort directly to influence the basic social conditions and policies out of which arise the problems of social adjustment and maladjustment to which our service as social workers is addressed. This definition itself may not satisfy all of us to begin with, for it has at least one debatable limitation. While it does not deny, neither does it specifically acknowledge or emphasize the potential and actual indirect influence upon the total social scene which may emanate from the specific services social workers render to particular individuals and groups, through the traditional primary task of helping people to find and use their own strength and the resources around them for the solution of their own problems and the fulfillment of their own lives.
  • Social Work and the Labor Movement (1937)"The Social Program of the Labor Movement," a presentation by Mary van Kleek, Director, Division of Industrial Studies, Russell Sage Foundation New York City, at the National Conference of Social Work, 1937. "It is true that the movement has been divided as between the craft unions and the great masses of unorganized workers. Every day, however, brings evidence of the present vital unity."
  • Social Work At Massachusetts General Hospital: 1908Ida Maud Cannon was responsible for developing the first social work department in a hospital in the United States. Convinced that medical practice could not be effective without examining the link between illness and the social conditions of the patient Cannon diligently worked at creating the field of medical social work. During her long career, she worked as a nurse, a social worker, Chair of Social Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, author of a seminal book in the medical social work field, organizer of the American Association of Hospital Social Workers, consultant to hospitals and city administrations throughout the United States, professor and designer of a training curriculum for medical social workers.
  • Social Work in Divisive Times: Navigating Dual Roles Across Eras and MovementsSocial work is often celebrated for its commitment to social justice, aiding vulnerable populations, and driving societal change. Yet, this narrative too frequently fails to grapple with the darker elements of the profession’s past—namely, the instances where it has caused harm to those it intended to help. Throughout its history, social work has not only offered support and advocacy but has also, at times, played a role in perpetuating injustices and societal harms.
  • Social Work Training: A 1905 Report by Graham TaylorIn 1903-4 announcement was made of the establishment in London at the initiative of Mr. C. S. Loch and the Charity Organisation Society of a "School of Sociology and Social Economics." The same year the New York Charity Organization Society supplemented its summer school by winter courses arranged chiefly for charity workers employed during the day. Encouraged by the demand for training, the existence of which was demonstrated by such partial advantages as had been offered, the "New York School of Philanthropy" was opened the same year with a curriculum extending through eight autumn and winter months and including a full rounded course of training, with many lines of specialized study.
  • Social Work: A Definition - 2000Social work in its various forms addresses the multiple, complex transactions between people and their environments. Its mission is to enable all people to develop their full potential, enrich their lives, and prevent dysfunction. Professional social work is focused on problem solving and change. As such, social workers are change agents in society and in the lives of the individuals, families and communities they serve. Social work is an interrelated system of values, theory and practice.
  • Social Work: Community Organization If we define community organization in its broadest sense, as a recent writer has done, as "deliberately directed effort to assist groups in attaining unity of purpose and action... in behalf of either general or special objectives," it is clear that a substantial part of community organization falls even outside the broader field of "social welfare," of which the whole of social work is an integral part. But it is also clear that another substantial part, whose function has been described in a recent report as that of creating and maintaining "a progressively more effective adjustment between social welfare resources and social welfare needs," certainly belongs within the "social welfare" field. But does this practice of community organization for a "social welfare" purpose conform to our criteria of generic social work practice?
  • Social Work: Community Organization Process - 1947Urban League finds it easy to talk about the principles of good housing for all the people, but when steps to attain that housing contravene the purposes of profit interest groups, threaten to change the racial character of a given neighborhood, or run into the cross fire of opposing citizen interests, the League finds that principles constitute one thing and practice something entirely different. Thus, in organizing the community for social action, it must be remembered that frequently all the community cannot be organized, and a choice, therefore, must be made as to with which groups the agency will work. It mut be remembered, also, that even when over-all community support is essential, the cells of hidden or open resistance must be located and either isolated or dissolved before the organizing process can gain its full momentum.
  • Social Work: Group Work and Change - 1935Social work in its various forms addresses the multiple, complex transactions between people and their environments. Its mission is to enable all people to develop their full potential, enrich their lives, and prevent dysfunction. Professional social work is focused on problem solving and change. As such, social workers are change agents in society and in the lives of the individuals, families and communities they serve. Social work is an interrelated system of values, theory and practice. (Grace Coyle, 1935)
  • Social Work: The Case Worker's Task - 1917I know that some leaders feel that this would be quite futile, that social case work as a separate discipline is soon to disappear, to be absorbed into medicine on the one hand and education' on the other. Both of these are welcome to absorb all that they can contain, but there is going to remain a large field quite neglected unless we cultivate it. As democracy advances there can be neither freedom nor equality without that adaptation to native differences, without that intensive study and intensive use of social relationships for which social case work stands.
  • Social Work: What is the Job of a Community Organizer? - 1948Community organization must never be seen as merely a job. We are working with the materials out of which a community is built, a cooperative society is fashioned. We are in the thick of the personal, group, and inter-group relationships that make up modern social life. The community organization worker needs a sense of vocation. He is performing an essential function. He is a producer and conserver of social values. He has a vital and crucial role to play in the social drama of our time-the role of a servant of democracy.
  • Solitude of Self: An Address by E.C. Stanton January, 1892Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men" (the play tells us) "seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What a picture of woman's position. Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection.
  • Some Abnormal Characteristics Of Idiots And The Methods Adopted In Obviating Them (1883)What is called idiocy is a mental state. This is true, no matter what our idea may be of the nature of mind. It is true, whatever may be the physiological or pathological conditions associated with it. Thus, when we speak of idiocy or imbecility, of fatuity or feeble-mindedness, we refer to grades and shades of mental states below the normal standard of human intelligence.
  • Some Limitations of Case-Work 1919The adoption of the case-work method in the care of the families of soldiers and sailors has been widely considered a significant tribute to the inevitable. But what of the fact that this new extension of Home Service (a division of the American Red Cross) is, for the time being at least, entirely on the same basis? Aside from the practical circumstances that case-work is, if anything, just what Home Service workers have been taught to do, in situation suggests a discussion of the merits of case-work. In relation to a movement so new and experimental nothing should be assumed to be inevitable. A new appraisal of case-work method is clearly justified. What can case-work do best? What can it do fairly well? What can something else do better?
  • Some Social Causes of Prostitution (1914)In 1914, Mrs. John M. ( Mary Wilcox) Glenn gave a presentation entitled “Some Social Causes of Prostitution” at the Forty-first Annual Conference of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Memphis, Tennessee.
  • Sorensen, John
  • South End House, Boston, MAWritten by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. “The house is designed to stand for the single idea of resident study and work in the neighborhood where it may be located. . . . The whole aim and motive is religious, but the method is educational rather than evangelistic. A second, though hardly secondary, object….will be to create a center, for those within reach, of social study, discussion, and organization.”
  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)SCLC is a now a nation wide organization made up of chapters and affiliates with programs that affect the lives of all Americans: north, south, east and west. Its sphere of influence and interests has become international in scope because the human rights movement transcends national boundaries.
  • Southern Farm Tenancy: 1936When an Alabama town erected a monument "in profound appreciation of the boll weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity" a moral was pointed which this author drives home with recent researches in the South. Cotton still enslaves 8 million people; emancipation can come only by diversified farming, a long range program for which is here given
  • Southern Scenes in 1846This lengthy entry is from The Library of Congress's American Memory. It is a copy of a pamphlet prepared, published and sold as "Facts for the People of the Free States." It is a significant document insofar as it reports on the reality of slave treatment and the influence of Southern States on the politics and policies of the federal government in the year 1846.
  • Southern Tenant Farmers' UnionThe Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) was founded in Arkansas in 1934 by a group of socialism-inspired sharecroppers. The STFU was notably an interracial and gender-inclusive organization. They sought relief from the federal government for populations neglected by the New Deal’s agricultural policies, such as sharecroppers and tenant farmers.
  • Springer, Gertrude"Gertrude Springer has sprung from Better Times to The Survey. With this issue of the Mid-monthly, she takes over, as associate editor, the Social Practice Department.... " (15 October 1930, p. 106.) Springer undertook field trips and initiated contacts to determine the lay of the social welfare landscape beyond New York. In pithy writing about social issues, policy, and services across the country, she never neglected to explain how things came down to affecting individuals. "Amelia Bailey," — "Miss Bailey" to most people — was a 1930s-style virtual-reality public relief supervisor. “Miss Baily Says…” columns dealt with issues such as: “When Your Client Has a Car,” “Are Relief Workers Policemen?,” “How We Behave in Other People’s Houses.”
  • Springfield Race Riot of 1908On 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.
  • Stanton, Elizabeth CadyElizabeth Cady Stanton was a very prominent proponent of a woman's legal and social equality during the nineteenth century. In 1848, she and others organized the first national woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. She co-authored that meeting's Declaration of Sentiments, a document modeled on the Declaration of Independence, and introduced the most radical demand: for womens suffrage.
  • Starr, Ellen Gates
  • State Board of Charities of New York: Reports 1878-1884n the early years of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, representatives of the states in attendance were invited to share reports on their experiences, problem areas and achievement in connection with the charities and institutions in their respective states. Below are reports from the New York representative at the conferences held from 1978 to 1884.
  • State Boards Of Charities: A Report Of The Committee - 1889Report by H. Hastings Hart presented at the Sixteenth Annual Session of The National Conference of Charities and Correction. "A board of charities is a balance-wheel to steady the motion of the charitable machinery of the State. It is its office to promote the wise founding and the safe running of public charities, to correct and prevent abuses, to check extravagance, to promote economy, and to rebuke niggardliness."
  • State Boards of Charity: Early History
  • State Care of the Insane: New York 1901"Rise and Progress of New York State Care of the Insane: 1901" by Goodwin Brown, Ex-State Commissioner in Lunacy. "It is consonant with its destiny and greatness that the Empire State should have, of all States and countries in the world, the most complete, humane, and comprehensive system of caring for this most unfortunate class."
  • State-Federal Welfare RelationshipsThe Social Security Act of 1935 established the basic framework for what we know as the federal-state system of public welfare. Essentially, the Social Security Act established two sets of program designed to serve different purposes: (1) a national system of social insurance - or entitlements- for wage earners; and, (2) a system of state-federal public welfare programs for persons who were deemed destitute and unable to work for wages. To this day, the entitlement programs created by the Act, Unemployment Insurance and Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, form the bulwark of protection for the vast majority of wage earners and their families against the loss of income due to temporary unemployment, retirement, death or disability. For persons who were not then able to work, and therefore unlikely to become eligible for benefits under the wage-related social insurance programs, the Act authorized federal financial participation (FFP) in state administered cash assistance programs: Aid to the Aged, Aid to the Blind, and Aid to Dependent Children. The program of Aid to the Disabled was added in 1950.
  • Steele, CarrieCarrie Steele Logan (1829–1900) – Founder of the Carrie Steele Orphan Home in Atlanta, GA
  • Stewart, Maria MillerMaria W. Stewart (1803-1880) was one of the first American women to leave copies of her speeches. The address below is her second public lecture. It was given on September 21, 1832 in Franklin Hall in Boston, the meeting site of the new England Anti-Slavery Society. Although as an abolitionist, she usually attacked slavery, in this address she condemns the attitude that denied black women education and prohibited their occupational advancement. In fact she argues that Northern African American women, in term of treatment, were only slightly better off than slaves.
  • Stock Market Crash of October 1929In late October 1929 the stock market crashed, wiping out 40 percent of the paper values of common stock. When the stock market crashed in 1929, it didn’t happen on a single day.
  • Stone, Lucy
  • Stuart, Paul H., Ph.D., M.S.W.
  • Stuhler, Linda S.
  • Success Stories—Work Relief StyleIN DECEMBER 1932, A DISCONSOLATE YOUNG MAN, TWO OR three years out of college, sat on a park bench and watched his big toe come through his best shoe, while he tried to screw up courage to apply for relief. Two years later he was the executive head of an insurance enterprise handling millions of dollars annually, working in close conjunction with important medical and educational institutions. He, himself, has won an international reputation in his special field. His name would be known to many Survey Graphic readers.
  • Success Stories—Work Relief Style: 1939IN DECEMBER 1932, A DISCONSOLATE YOUNG MAN, TWO OR three years out of college, sat on a park bench and watched his big toe come through his best shoe, while he tried to screw up courage to apply for relief. Two years later he was the executive head of an insurance enterprise handling millions of dollars annually, working in close conjunction with important medical and educational institutions.
  • Suffrage in the South Part II: The One Party SystemIn a sequel to his study of the poll tax, this young southern writer further analyzes democracy in Dixie. His findings and his conclusions, carefully checked by southern researchers, are especially significant in this year of national elections.
  • Suffrage in the South: The Poll TaxIn the South, two thirds of the voting population are barred from the polls by a head tax which is a prerequisite to voting. What this "one third democracy for one sixth of the nation" means to the Democratic party, to the nation, and to the issues of the 1940 elections are revealed in the staggering facts and figures here presented in the first of two articles by a young southern writer.
  • Sullivan, AnneSullivan's mother died when Anne was about eight years old. Thomas Sullivan found it too difficult to raise a family by himself and soon abandoned his children. Anne and her younger brother Jimmie were sent to live in the "poor house" in Tewksbury. Conditions at the Tewksbury Almshouse were deplorable. Chronically underfunded, overcrowded and in disrepair, the Almshouse housed an average of 940 men, women and children during the years that Sullivan was there. The mortality rate was very high, and within three months of their arrival, Jimmie Sullivan died. The children had been close, and Sullivan felt the loss deeply.
  • Sunday School Libraries and LessonsWritten by Laurie Block, Disability History Museum Staff. "At the beginning of the 19th century, many Americans were concerned about the moral education of children. With the constitutional separation of Church and State, many asked: whose job is it to teach values?"
  • Supplemental Security IncomeThe federal and state governments now provide cash assistance to needy adults who are aged, blind, or disabled through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. A person who is 65 years of age or older, legally blind, or permanently or totally disabled, and who meets prescribed income and resource requirements, can receive a basic federal cash grant of up to $264.70 per month. In FY 1981, some four million persons received SSI payments, amounting to $8.3 billion in state and federal funds. The states’ share, composed of mandatory and optional supplements, was approximately 22 percent, or $1.8 billion.
  • Survey Associates, Inc.Survey Associates was a non-partisan, non-profit organization whose primary work was the publication of the Survey magazines. It was incorporated without capital endowment; contributions from members made up deficits which ordinary publishing receipts could not cover. The organization was managed by a board of directors and advised by the National Council of Survey Associates. Officers of the organization were a president, a chairman of the board of directors, vice-presidents, a secretary, a treasurer, and an editor. Presidents of Survey Associates were Robert W. de Forest, 1912-1931; Lucius Eastman, 1931-1938; and Richard B. Scandrett, 1938-1948. Chairmen of the board of directors were Julian W. Mack, 1938-1943; and Joseph P. Chamberlain, 1943-1952.
  • Syracuse State Institution For Feeble-Minded Children: (1916)"The State of New York thus became the first one in the United States to make separate and special provision for the feeble-minded. Two years later the Legislature provided funds for the erection of permanent buildings on a site in Syracuse donated by philanthropic citizens."
  • Taft, Jessie
  • Talpers, Jeanne Schiff
  • Tammanyizing of a Civilization (1909)The oldest and most infamous organization in America for exploiting this population is Tammany Hall of New York, which the great classic historian, Professor Guglielmo Ferrero, recently compared to the very similar organizations that were formed for exploiting the city of Rome during its decadence. For fifty years and more this body has perverted civilization in New York, using the great politically untrained population for this purpose. Its political saloon-keepers have killed unnumbered multitudes of these people through excessive drinking; its political procurers have sold the bodies of their daughters; its contractors and street-railway magnates have crowded them into the deadly tenement districts by defrauding them of their rights of cheap and decent transportation; and its sanitary officials have continuously murdered a high percentage of the poor by their sale of the right to continue fatal and filthy conditions in these tenement districts, contrary to law. Meantime they have kept control of the population they have exploited by their cunning distribution of wages and charity.
  • Tarbell, Ida Minerva
  • Taylor, Graham
  • Taylor, Lea Demarest
  • 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.
  • Tefferteller, Ralph
  • Tefferteller, Ruth S.
  • Temperance MovementDuring the first half of the 19th century, as drunkenness and its social consequences increased, temperance societies formed in Great Britain and the United States. These societies were typically religious groups that sponsored lectures and marches, sang songs, and published tracts that warned about the destructive consequences of alcohol.
  • Temporary Emergency Relief AdministrationIn 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
  • Tenement House ReformPrimary sources related to tenement house reforms in the State of New York and the passage of the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901.
  • Tentative Observations On Basic TrainingWhile the committee agreed on the foregoing, it was observed that a characteristic of family case work, whether United Hebrew Charities, Charity Organization Society, or International Migration Service, was that the family was the unit around which the action centered; in Childrens' or Travelers' Aid work, on the other hand, the child or the traveler was, generally speaking, the center of work, and the environment was adjusted to the central figure, or vice versa. This is even more true, perhaps, in hospital or psychiatric case work. In this type of agency the patient would be apt to be the center of the case work adjustment, while the family case worker has generally two or more foci in his circle.
  • Terminology Of Social Casework: An Attempt At Theoretical Clarification (1954)Although it might seem presumptuous to encompass in a portion of a paper so vast a topic as the scope and function of social casework, it is necessary to attempt at least a sketch of this. The reason is that social casework is in constant flux. As it responds to two sets of influences, changes in society and the findings of the social and biological sciences, it takes on a role which I believe makes it quite different from what it was twenty or thirty years ago.
  • Terrell, Mary ChurchMary Church Terrell was one of the first African American women to receive a college degree. She was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Colored Women's League of Washington. She also helped found the National Association of Colored Women, and served as its first national president. The Mary Church Terrell house in the LeDroit Park neighborhood of Washington was named a National Historic Landmark
  • Tewksbury Almshouse InvestigationAs can be seen in this excerpt from the Lowell Weekly Sun’s coverage of the Tewksbury investigation, people with disabilities made up a significant proportion of the population of poorhouses. By the 1860s, many states had established institutions to educate deaf, blind, and cognitively disabled children and people deemed temporarily insane. People with other impairments—and especially disabled adults—whose families could not support them had no recourse other than the poorhouse. Moreover, conditions within almshouses often proved disabling or even deadly.
  • That "One Third of a Nation" (1940)Article by Edith Elmer Wood, appearing in Survey Graphic, 1940. "Equal opportunity which lies at the heart of democracy implies for every man, woman and child at least a sporting chance to attain health, decency and a normal family life. It was because the cards were stacked against a third of the nation that there had to be a new deal in housing."
  • That Work-Relief Bill (1935)Article by Lester B. Granger, Executive Director, Los Angeles Chapter National Urban League. "Dismay is the first reaction which thoughtful Negroes will register toward this program-not so much because of what it plans, but because of what it fails to plan"
  • The Junior League Story
  • The 1970's as Policy WatershedIn 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.
  • The 19th AmendmentThe 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest.
  • The American Revolution Era (1763 - 1783)Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In 1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
  • The Challenge of the DepressionWritten by Julia Wright Merrill, Executive Assistant, Library Extension Board. "The work of the library, unlike that of many business organizations, grows rather than diminishes in times of depression. Do not trustees have a responsibility for wise spending of the funds available and for an effort to secure an adequate appropriation for the coming year?"
  • The Declaration of SentimentsThis resolution calling for woman suffrage had passed, after much debate, at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. In The Declaration of Sentiments, a document based upon the Declaration of Independence, the numerous demands of these early activists were elucidated.
  • The Detroit Strike (1933)Article by Samuel Romer, The Nation, 1933. "...There were only about 450 men working in the plant then--but every one of them put away his tools and walked out. So began the first major labor struggle in Detroit since the period immediately following the war."
  • The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil WarBy the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease. Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support functions that sustain an army, as well. Black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters also contributed to the war cause. There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers. Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman, who scouted for the 2d South Carolina Volunteers.
  • The First Department of Public Welfare in the U.S.In 1909, the Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri appointed a body of prominent community leaders with experience in dealing with social problems in the city and asked them to visit large cities all over the country and learn what was being done in those cities to deal with poverty and the unemployed. From the findings of their reports and their own ideas about what to do, the commission then set out to devise a plan to create a new agency: The Kansas City Department of Public Welfare.
  • The First Step Toward FitnessWhen America began to recover from the Great Depression, it began to take stock of its human resources. We found that a large minority of our population did not get enough to eat. These people who did not get enough to at were below par in health. They were below par in initiative and alertness.
  • The Functional School of Social WorkThe turning point in the use of psychology by social workers was the publication, in 1930, of Virginia Robinson’s A Changing Psychology in Social Work. Robinson’s book crystallized the growing discontent many social workers felt with the old, paternalistic models and proposed a new way to synthesize the individual personality and the social environment. Heavily influenced by the psychiatric theories of Otto Rank, Robinson proposed that case work should focus not on planning for the social welfare of the client, not on the client per se (or the environment per se), but on the relationship between the client and the social worker. The client, not the social worker, should be the central actor in the casework drama; the social worker – client relationship was intended to strengthen the client. …
  • The G.I. Bill of Rights"The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of June 22, 1944—commonly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights—nearly stalled in Congress as members of the House and Senate debated provisions of the controversial bill. Some shunned the idea of paying unemployed veterans $20 a week because they thought it diminished their incentive to look for work. Others questioned the concept of sending battle-hardened veterans to colleges and universities, a privilege then reserved for the rich. Despite their differences, all agreed something must be done to help veterans assimilate into civilian life."
  • The Indispensable VolunteerThe American Red Cross glorifies the volunteer while recognizing the essential place of the professional worker. The tasks of the Red Cross have required many hands. Its services have been nation-wide. Every county has needed its service, and its scheme of service has needed every county’s support and participation. War time; the rehabilitation days for the disabled veteran; the period of great drought, flood, or other disaster; the time of national unemployment—all these have required an army of workers. The professional workers of the world were not enough alone. When Government wheat and cotton distribution reaches all of the counties but 17, a great system of volunteer participation is necessary. This participation of the layman and laywoman must be recognized as vital. There must be that recognition first of all.
  • The Individual Approach: 1915Mrs. Glenn was a close friend and colleague of Mary Richmond and one of the influential voices in support of casework and social work education. In this 1915 presentation she describes her vision of a sensitive and helpful caseworker. One of the paragraphs states: "...The worker's effort is futile unless the individual to be aided become first a co-worker and then pass on to take the lead in carrying through any plan made in his behalf. The worker, whose aim is to rehabilitate men, must be one whose preparation for the task has carried him deep in a considering of human life lived in simplicity and in close relation to those who earn their daily bread. The study of recuperative power must lead the worker back to gauge the mainsprings of strength that lie hid in the individual's past. But there must be more than the harking back, there must be the readiness to take a forward leap, He is not what he may become, is the attitude of mind which gives the power to stir men to be twice made, and it is faith in one's fellow which gives the power to make men make themselves. An intense desire to see life well lived makes a worker, with tender, with restrained devotion, care to see the "downmost man" come through his wracking experience actually on top....
  • The Job AheadA call to action—and a program. An epochal statement.—by the Surgeon General, United States Public Health Service in July 1941.
  • The Lesson of Selective Service: 1941Out of a million men examined by Selective Service and about 560,000 excepted by the army, a total of 380,000 have been found unfit for general military service. It has been estimated that perhaps one third of the rejections were due either directly or indirectly to nutritional deficiencies. In terms of men, the army today has been deprived of 150,000 who should be able to do duty as soldiers. This is 15 percent of the total number physically examined by the Selective Service System
  • The Longest DayA chill returned as the sun disappeared behind the ruins of the World Trade Center. Renee Fleming, accompanied by the orchestra of St. Luke’s, sang God Bless America. I waved to a police officer wearing a light blue windbreaker. The words NYPD COMMUNITY AFFAIRS were printed in white block letters on the back of her jacket.
  • The March (1963) Film
  • The March Against Commercialized Prostitution: 1886-1949An informal chronicle of national and international events contributing to progress in this field of social hygiene.
  • The Negro and Relief - Part I (1934)This practice of the displacement of Negro labor by white labor began even before the depression. The Negro felt its effect as early as 1927. From the very beginning it has been stimulated by outside forces. For instance, an organization called the Blue Shirts was set up in Jacksonville, Florida, about 1926 for the express purpose of replacing Negroes in employment with white men. An organization called the Black Shirts was formed at Atlanta, Georgia, late in 1927 for the same purpose. The Black Shirts, whose regalia consisted chiefly of black shirts and black neckties, published a daily newspaper. They frequently held night parades in which were carried such signs as "Employ white man and let 'Niggers' go"; "Thousands of white families are starving to death-what is the reason?"; and "Send 'Niggers' back to the farms."
  • The Negro and Relief: Part II (1934)About the only source to which the Negro can look for real aid today is the United States government. Experience has shown that local authorities cannot be trusted to administer equably government funds in many sections of the country so far as Negroes are concerned. I am satisfied that the national administration is eminently fair and wants to reach out and see the benefits of its recovery program extended to every citizen, but this ideal is neutralized in many local communities. On the other hand, one does not need to argue for complete centralized control by the federal government, but rather for a degree of protection for a group which experience has proved suffers at the hands of local administrators.
  • The Negro and Social Change (1935)"...No right-thinking person in this country today who picks up a paper and reads that in some part of the country the people have not been willing to wait for the due processes of law, but have gone back to the rule of force, blind and unjust as force and fear usually are, can help but be ashamed that we have shown such a lack of faith in our own institutions. It is a horrible thing which grows out of weakness and fear, and not out of strength and courage; and the sooner we as a nation unite to stamp out any such action, the sooner and the better will we be able to face the other nations of the world and to uphold our real ideals here and abroad...."
  • The New DealOn October 29, 1929, the crash of the U.S. stock market—known as "Black Tuesday"—reflected a move toward a worldwide economic crisis. In 1929-1933, unemployment in the U.S. soared from 3 percent of the workforce to 25 percent, while manufacturing output collapsed by one-third.
  • The New Deal: Part IIThe public’s acceptance of New Deal programs and services initiated by President Roosevelt in his first term was to a large extent a result of the pain and fear caused by the Great Depression. How bad the conditions were is worth remembering, since this is a means of gauging the enormous pressure for significant changes in government policy. One of the worst thing about the 1929 depression was its length of time. Men who had been sturdy and self-respecting workers can take unemployment without flinching for a few weeks, a few months, even if they have to see their families suffer; but it is quite different after a year, two years, three years. Among the miserable creatures curled up on park benches, selling apples on the street corner or standing in dreary lines before soup kitchens in 1932 were white men who had been jobless since the end of 1929. This traumatic experience marked millions of people for the rest of their lives, and made them security conscious.
  • The Place Of Mental Health Clinics In Settlements And Neighborhood Houses"The settlement psychiatric clinic is significantly different from that in any other setting. It not only offers a more broadly based service in prevention and treatment, but it is the one place where the clinic has the opportunity to work with the total individual in his total situation – a basic treatment principle."
  • The Place Of Social Work In Public Health-- 1926The influence of social work on public health administration is found in the development of every branch of that service in the past fifty years. The recreation movement, the child welfare movement, and such special developments as workingmen's compensation in the industrial field have all been influenced by the humanitarian interests of the forces interested in social work, and each of these has had a direct bearing upon the health of the several communities in this country.
  • The Plan to End Poverty in California (EPIC)The nomination of an avowed socialist to head the Democratic party ticket was more than the California establishment could tolerate. Sinclair's radical candidacy was opposed by just about every establishment force in California. The media virtually demonized Sinclair through a concerted propaganda campaign based largely on smears and falsehoods. Sinclair's candidacy also set off a bitter political battle both within the Democratic party and with many groups who were opposed to various aspects of the EPIC plan. Sinclair was denounced as a "Red" and "crackpot" and the Democratic establishment sought to derail his candidacy. Despite all of this, Upton Sinclair was very nearly elected Governor of California in 1934.
  • The Power of Group Work with Kids (2007)Social group work’s origins are rooted by melding three early twentieth century social movements: the settlement house movement, progressive education movement and recreation movement (Breton, 1990). What all three have in common is the conviction that people have much to offer to improve the quality of their lives.
  • The Problem of Unemployment : January, 1935Speech given by Aubrey Williams, Assistant Works Progress Administrator and Executive Director of the National Youth Administration before the Buffalo Council of Social Agencies. "You and I know that the problem of unemployment does not stem directly from industrial depression...it was spawned in an era of giddy expansionism...it is an inescapable concomitant of our type of civilization...its roots are now sunk in the very bedrock of our capitalist society."
  • The Professional Basis of Social Work--1915In a 1915 presentation, Porter Lee said: Whichever of these conceptions (of social work) command the greatest measure of support from those who call themselves social workers, the proponents of all of them agree in speaking of social work as a profession. If it is or is to be a profession, has it definite characteristics which will admit all those who claim the name, or which will automatically exclude some? The announcements of this conference describe this as the greatest gathering of social workers on the continent. Our membership includes public relief officials, institution officers, play leaders, parish workers, charity organization secretaries, probation officers, placing out agents, nurses, settlement workers, medical social service workers, prison heads, friendly visitors, truant officers, matrons, teachers of special groups, members of boards of directors, tenement inspectors, public welfare directors, social investigators, executives of agencies for social legislation, industrial betterment leaders, those who work with immigrants, factory inspectors and-to avoid omitting any-many others. Is the tie which gives coherence to this group a professional one?
  • The Relation Of Hospital Social Service To Child Health Work: 1921The term hospital social service is unfortunately not a very specific term, as it has come to be used to include a great variety of extra-mural service to hospital and dispensary patients. It has been used to designate such a variety of functions as a simple follow-up system to keep track of patients' attendance at clinics, friendly visiting in the wards, various phases of public health nursing, a variety of administrative functions at admission desks and in the clinics, and medical-social case work. The fact is that all these various types of service are coming to be recognized as necessary to the improvement of hospital and dispensary service. All of them recognize the necessity of individualizing the patients and taking into account some of the social elements in the patients' situation. Before we can discuss hospital social work intelligently, we need more specific terminology and definition. I shall not attempt that now but shall choose for discussion the contribution that was made to the efficiency of medical treatment by the introduction of the trained social worker into the staff of hospitals and dispensaries. Visiting nursing in the homes of dispensary patients antedated the present hospital social work movement by several years and still remains in many cities the long arm of the hospital extending skilled nursing service and hygiene teaching to the patients discharged from the hospital or under supervision of the dispensary. Such service has long been recognized as essential to baby welfare and tuberculosis clinics and has stimulated the development of public health nursing organization in most of our cities.
  • The Scientific View of Social WorkSince its inception social work has struggled with the questions of the extent to which it should use and it could have confidence in basing practice on knowledge derived from the social and biological sciences. The Scientific Basis of Social Work is a volume that gives an emphatic yes to this query
  • The Social Implications of the Roosevelt Administration: 1934A "Year of Roosevelt" would be a crisper title for the address made at the twenty-first annual meeting of Survey Associates by Secretary of the Interior Ickes. As federal public works' administrator he is steward of "the greatest sum of money ever appropriated by any government for such a purpose in the history of the world." But it was as a fighting citizen of Chicago, a long-time member of Survey Associates, that we turned to him to interpret the social stakes in the Recovery Program
  • The Social Worker and the DepressionAt this moment what are social workers saying concerning economic and political theory or the need for fundamental social changes to eliminate the cycles and seasons of unemployment? With infrequent exception, exactly nothing at all. On the whole, social workers know little and care less about economic or political theory and practice. Their lack of understanding can only be described as abysmal, tragic. Ignorance in very young social workers, of whom there are many, may be forgiven. It is hard, however, to defend the silence--sometimes the deception--of the old-timers....The poor themselves, when they are not so persistently protected from publicity by their social workers, are taking a somewhat more practical view of their situation. Nowadays, when relief is inadequate and they are hungry, they turn to stealing, begging, and standing on the public streets in bread lines. In fact, in one city where the professional social workers are too "ethical" to disclose the distress of those receiving charitable relief, the unemployed are participating in demonstrations, petitioning the city administration for more food, and in turn are being arrested by His Honor, the mayor of the city, on charges of vagrancy and disorderly conduct.
  • The Survey Journal
  • The Tennessee Valley Authority: Electricity for AllTVA 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.”
  • The Townsend PlanThe Townsend Plan proved enormously popular. Within two years of the publication of the Plan as a Letter to the Editor in a Long Beach, California newspaper, there were over 7,000 "Townsend Clubs" with over 2.2 million members actively working to make the Townsend Plan the nation's old-age pension system. At one point in 1936 Townsend was able to deliver petitions to Congress containing 10 million signatures in support of the Townsend Plan. Public opinion surveys in 1935 found that 56% of Americans favored adoption of the Townsend Plan.
  • The TVA and the Race Problem (1934)When the civil service examinations were first given by the TVA in the twelve counties round about Norris, only 1.9 per cent of those who qualified for jobs were Negroes. In these same twelve counties Negroes comprise exactly 7.1 per cent of the total population. Thus it looked as though colored labor was to suffer. TVA authorities insisted that they were helpless to rectify matters since they were compelled to choose their employees from among the people who had qualified by examination. Negro leaders claimed, however, that the reason so small a proportion of their population had qualified was that they had either not even been told of the examinations or else had been given to understand by the native whites that there was no need for them to apply since the whole project was for the advantage of the white man. There were some facts which lent credibility to this charge. For example, TVA authorities did not, and still do not, plan to use any Negro labor on the building of the Norris Dam itself....
  • The United Order of Tents of J.R. Giddings and Jollife UnionThe United Order of Tents is a Christian benevolent organization, founded in 1867 by two formerly enslaved women, Annetta Minkins Lane of Norfolk, Va., and Harriet R. Taylor of Hampton, Va. The largely secret society is the oldest Black women’s organization in the United States.
  • The Urban League and the A.F. of L. (1935)"A Statement on Racial Discrimination," read by Reginald A. Johnson, executive secretary of the Atlanta Urban League, at the Hearing of the American Federation of Labor Committee of Five to Deal with Negro Problems, 1935. "...the American Federation of Labor has stood firmly behind its position that the ranks of organized labor must be open to all workers regardless of color or creed. "
  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law, and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.
  • The Widows' Pension Movement and its Connection to Orphanages
  • The Women Who Went to the Field - A Poem
  • Theological Foundations of Charity: Catholic Social Teaching, The Social Gospel, and Tikkun OlamA look at theological principles that have motivated Catholics, Protestants, and Jews to charitable acts.
  • Third Street Music School SettlementFounded 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.
  • Three Notable African American Women in Early Child WelfareWritten by Wilma Peebles-Wilkins, Dean Emerita, Boston University. "For the most part, social welfare history has focused on efforts to protect dependent and delinquent white immigrant children. Information on the care of African American children has been excluded. Because of racial separation and discrimination, information describing the care of African American children has often been left out. It is important to call special attention to this situation."
  • Three Years In A Mad House (1851)"Astounding Disclosures! Three Years In A Mad House," by Isaac H. Hunt, 1851. Hunt, a former patient at the Maine Insane Hospital published a scathing attack on his treatment by the institution’s attendants and doctors. Isaac Hunt describes all sorts of abuses and mistreatment. His account makes people wonder whether or not the asylum offered conditions better than those uncovered in local almshouses and jails by the investigative reports of Dorothea Dix. Out of Hunt’s complaints came an investigation by the Maine Legislature into conditions at the asylum.
  • Towle, Charlotte
  • Towle, Charlotte: A PerspectiveCharlotte Towle came into my work accidentally and peripherally. I saw her from a variety of standpoints she didn't share: as an historian, as a feminist, as a citizen of the Reagan era--although her experiences with McCarthyism would have given her some preparation for the last.
  • Towley, Louis H.
  • Towne, Laura MatildaIn 1861, the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina fell to the Union army. Faced with defeat, the entire white population fled, leaving their homes, belongings, and ten thousand slaves. Towne arrived on the Sea Islands in April 1862, one of the first Northern women to go south to work during the Civil War. She participated in the Port Royal Experiment, the first large-scale government effort to help former slaves. The teachers who went south sought not only to teach the freedmen how to read and write, but hoped to help them develop socially and morally.
  • Townsend, Dr. FrancisAfter the war the Townsends lived in Long Beach, Calif. But Townsend's private medical practice did not prosper so he took a position as assistant city health director. Because of the Great Depression, he soon lost that job. Then, at the age of 66 and wanting to retire, Townsend grew increasingly indignant over the plight of the large number of poverty-stricken old people like himself. In 1933 he proposed a plan whereby the Federal government would provide every person over 60 a $200 monthly pension. The plan called for a guaranteed monthly pension of $200, a quite-considerable sum in the 1930. The pension would be sent to every retired citizen age 60 or older, to be paid for by a form of a national sales tax of 2% on all business transactions with the stipulation that each pensioner would be required to spend the money within 30 days. His idea was to end the Depression through consumer spending by way of ending poverty among the elderly.
  • Toynbee Hall"The Beginning of Toynbee Hall," by Canon and Mrs. S. A. Barnett (1909). "We began our work very quietly and simply: opened the church, restarted the schools, established relief committees, organised parish machinery, and tried to cauterise, if not to cure, the deep cancer of dependence which was embedded in all our parishioners alike, lowering the best among them and degrading the worst."
  • Training Schools - And Civilian Public Service (1944)Article by Stephen Angell in The Reporter, 1944. The Civilian Public Service (CPS) was set up to provide conscientious objectors in the United States an alternative service to military service during World War II.
  • Training The Rural Relief Worker On The Job (1935)The rural social worker is confronted with a real dilemma in knowing how much of a family's welfare is her responsibility. It is not unusual to find that man'y of our rural areas have been untouched by social working organizations, or, for that matter, by few if any community organizations. The rural worker is called on to provide for the health needs of the families in many instances where there is inadequate medical and nursing service. School attendance becomes her concern where the state laws are static in their effectiveness. She finds mental problems of long standing, or disturbances of an acute nature, in her families, and since she is the only representative of an agency in the area, securing treatment or institutionalization becomes part of her service to the family. Whether she is equipped for it or not, emergencies arise where the worker participates in removing children from the home, in institutional placement of delinquents, feeble-minded, or handicapped members of the family.
  • Travelers Aid
  • Treatment of the Insane: 1876The "Preface" is from the Proceedings for the third Conference of Charities held at Saratoga, New York, September 6, 1876. It is followed by a paper titled “The Treatment of the Insane” delivered paper by Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell, Mass.
  • Trent, James W., Ph.D.James W. Trent, Jr. is Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Gordon College, Wenham, Mass. He completed his Ph.D. at Brandeis University. His scholarly research lies in the history of marginalized and disenfranchised groups. His most recent book is The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth Century American Reform (2012). With Steven Noll, he edited Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader (2004). He is also the author of Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (1994) that won the 1995 Hervey B. Wilbur Award of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
  • Triangle Waist Company Fire (Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire)The fire at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers, is one of the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This incident has had great significance to this day because it highlights the inhumane working conditions to which industrial workers can be subjected. To many, its horrors epitomize the extremes of industrialism. The tragedy still dwells in the collective memory of the nation and of the international labor movement. The victims of the tragedy are still celebrated as martyrs at the hands of industrial greed.
  • Triborough Bridge Dedication - 1936On October 25, 1929, Mayor Jimmy Walker broke ground on the Triborough Bridge. This date later proved significant, as it was just one day after the "Black Thursday" that helped trigger the Great Depression. The initial $5.4 million allocated by New York City for construction of the new bridge - most of which went to condemnation awards and counsel fees - had already been spent before the Ward's Island piers had been built....With its coffers depleted by the ensuing Depression, the city abandoned work on the bridge early in 1930. In 1933, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appointed Moses as the chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority. President Franklin D. Roosevelt granted the new authority a $37 million loan, making the bridge the first project in New York City to earn approval from the new Federal-level Public Works Administration (PWA). Seeking a clear break from the Tammany Hall corruption of the past, LaGuardia said the following to the press: "We are going to build a bridge instead of patronage. We are going to pile up stone and steel instead of expenses. We are going to build a bridge of steel, and spell steel "s-t-e-e-l" instead of "s-t-e-a-l." The people of the City of New York are going to pay for that bridge, and they are going to pay for it in tolls after its completion."
  • True Americanism - Address of Louis D. Brandeis (1915)Speech given by Louis Brandeis on the subject of Americanization and the essential ideals of America.
  • Truman, Harry S. (1884- 1972)In his domestic policies, Truman sought to accomplish the difficult transition from a war to a peace economy without plunging the nation into recession, and he hoped to extend New Deal social programs to include more government protection and services and to reach more people....The Truman administration went considerably beyond the New Deal in the area of civil rights. Although, the conservative Congress thwarted Truman's desire to achieve significant civil rights legislation, he was able to use his powers as President to achieve some important changes. He issued executive orders desegregating the armed forces and forbidding racial discrimination in Federal employment. He also established a Committee on Civil Rights and encouraged the Justice Department to argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of plaintiffs fighting against segregation.
  • Truth, SojournerThe turning point in Isabella’s life came on June 1, 1843, when at the age of 52 she adopted a new name, Sojourner Truth, and headed east for the purpose of “exhorting the people to embrace Jesus, and refrain from sin.” For several years, she preached at camp meetings and lived in a utopian community, the Northampton Association for Education and Industry, which devoted itself to transcending class, race, and gender distinctions.
  • TuberculosisBy Alice W. Campbell and Catherine A. Paul, 2017. Tuberculosis has been known by many names throughout history, among them “consumption,” “the white death,” and “the great white plague.” Tuberculosis remains one of the world's most deadly diseases.
  • Tubman, HarrietTubman had made the perilous trip to slave country 19 times by 1860, including one especially challenging journey in which she rescued her 70-year-old parents. Of the famed heroine, who became known as "Moses," Frederick Douglass said, "Excepting John Brown -- of sacred memory -- I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman]."
  • Turner, Henry McNealHenry McNeal Turner (1834 1915): Minister, Chaplin in the Union Army and Advocate for Emigration to Liberia
  • Tuskegee Syphilis ExperimentDoctors working with the Public Health Service (PHS) commenced a multi-year experiment in 1932. Their actions deprived 400 largely uneducated and poor African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama of proper and reasonable treatment for syphilis, a disease whose symptoms could easily have been relieved with the application of penicillin which became available in the 1940s. Patients were not told they had syphilis nor were they provided sufficient medication to cure them. More than 100 men died due to lack of treatment while others suffered insanity, blindness and chronic maladies related to the disease.
  • Twilight, Alexander (1795 - 1857)For the next twelve years he learned reading, writing and math skills while performing various farming duties. He was able to save enough (probably with some assistance from the farmer for whom he labored) to enroll in Randolph’s Orange County Grammar School in 1815 at the age of 20. During the next six years (1815-1821) he completed not only the secondary school courses but also the first two years of a college level curriculum. Following his graduation from Randolph he was accepted at Middlebury College, entering as a junior in August of 1821. Two years later he received his bachelor’s degree. Middlebury College claims him to be the first African-American to earn a baccalaureate degree from an American college or university.
  • U.S. Administration on AgingThe Administration on Aging (AoA) is one of the nation’s largest providers of home- and community-based care for older persons and their caregivers.
  • U.S. Department of Labor History"A Brief History, "written by Judson MacLaury
  • U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: A HistoryThe establishment of the Veterans Administration came in 1930 when Congress authorized the President to “consolidate and coordinate Government activities affecting war veterans.” The three component agencies became bureaus within the Veterans Administration.
  • U.S. Public Health ServiceProtecting and advancing the health of our nation’s people and contributing to the delivery of health care world-wide is very important work and the main task of the Public Health Service (PHS). The PHS is a principal part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the major health agency of the Federal Government.
  • U.S. Public Health ServiceThe history of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) developed in stages: 1) the U.S. Marine Hospital Service (1798-1902), 2) the U.S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service (1902-1912), and 3) the U.S. Public Health Service (1912-present).
  • U.S. Sanitary Commission: 1861The object of the Sanitary Commission was to do what the Government could not. The Government undertook, of course, to provide all that was necessary for the soldier, . . . but, from the very nature of things, this was not possible. . . . The methods of the commission were so elastic, and so arranged to meet every emergency, that it was able to make provision for any need, seeking always to supplement, and never to supplant, the Government.
  • Underground Railroad, The (1820-1861)The Underground Railroad worked as a series of networks. The journey north was an extremely long route and the Underground Railroad provided depots or safe houses along the way. Those that led the runaway slaves north did so in stages. No conductor knew the entire route; he or she was responsible for the short routes from station to station. Once the “cargo” reached another station, it would be passed on to the next conductor until the entire route was traversed. This limited knowledge protected both the fugitive slaves and the integrity of the routes which sometimes extended over 1,000 miles.
  • Unemployment Compensation: A 1934 Report The unprecedented extent and duration of unemployment in the United States since 1930 has left no one who is dependent upon a wage or salary untouched by the dread of loss of work. Unemployment relief distributed as a form of public charity, though necessary to prevent starvation, is not a solution of the problem. It is expensive to distribute and demoralizing to both donor and recipient. A device is needed which will assure those who are involuntarily unemployed a small steady income for a limited period. Such income, received as a right, is provided by an unemployment insurance or unemployment compensation system.
  • Unemployment Insurance: Early History
  • Union Settlement, New York City"Since 1895, Union Settlement has served the people of East Harlem. We believe the key to our endurance lies in our adaptability. East Harlem has long been a portal community whose population shifts with each new trend in immigration..."
  • United Neighborhood Houses Of New York, Inc.,: 1900 - 1950"Organized December 11, 1900, to 'effect co-operation among those who are working for neighborhood and civic improvement, and to promote movements for social progress.'"
  • United Neighborhood Houses, Fiftieth Anniversary - 1951Address by Mr. Mark A. McCloskey, 1951. "Above all, the settlements are called upon to continue to be free, to list where they will, to be different in emphasis, varied in interest and program as well as personal leadership, but called to unity and joint action in support of our common humanity. Time will not tame the settlements in the next fifty years."
  • United War Work Campaign. November 11-18, 1918
  • United Way of America
  • United Way Pioneers
  • United We Eat (1934)Article written by John S. Gambs, Survey Graphic, 1934. "In this fashion, carrying on their banners the device used by men in the Continental Navy—-the coiled rattlesnake and the militant words, Don't Tread on Me—thousands of men and women are protesting the inadequacies of unemployment relief."
  • University House of PhiladelphiaWritten by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. "Members of the University of Pennsylvania’s Christian Association (CA) founded University Settlement House in 1898...to promote 'spiritual welfare of the students of the University of Pennsylvania by encouraging Christian fellowship and cooperation.' The organization linked its mission for Christian advancement with such social services as operating settlement houses for the poor and providing summer camps for kids from less fortunate families in the vicinity of the University campus.
  • University of Chicago SettlementThe University of Chicago Settlement was established in the packing-house area in the fall of 1894 by a group of faculty members of the University of Chicago. In what is known as the “Back of the Yards” area, the heterogeneous foreign-born population had a peculiar quality that appealed to the new University: This was a place where peoples of different backgrounds might work together.
  • University of Chicago Settlement ProjectThis report was written by a "resident" of the Chicago Settlement in 1925 or 1926, thirty years after the founding of the organization. It includes observations of Mary McDowell, the original Head Worker, and compares her work and vision with the then current programs. The author also gives his and perspective of the other residents, paid staff, and volunteers who lived and worked in the agency.
  • University of Chicago Settlement: 1896Written by George C. Sikes, University Record, 1896. This document provides a detailed description of the neighborhood in which the University of Chicago located just two years after it was founded. It includes details about employment in the packing house industry, the nationality of the residents and the early programs offered to the neighborhood residents by the staff and residents of the agency.
  • University Settlement - 1911This description of the University Settlement in 1910-1911 is from the Handbook of Settlements and was written by two settlement house pioneers: Robert Archey Woods and Albert J. Kennedy. The book included the findings of a national survey of all the known settlements in existence in 1910.
  • University Settlement of New York CityDuring 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.
  • Unruly Slaves (Fighters for Freedom)"It is a remarkable thing to tell you, some
people can’t see it, but I am going to tell 
you, you can believe it or not but it’s the
truth; some colored people at that [time]
wouldn’t be whipped by masters. They would run away and hide in the woods, come home at nights and get something to eat and out he would go again. Them times they called them "runaway niggers". Some of them stayed away until after the war was over."
  • Urbanization And The Negro: 1933It is a significant fact that while there was a distinct loss in both Negro and white rural farm population during the past decade, the land operated by Negroes decreased by 31,835,050 acres, approximately 5,992 square miles (an area slightly larger than the combined land areas of Connecticut and Rhode Island), between 1920 and 1930. At the same time there was a very substantial increase of 34,743,840 acres, or approximately 54,287 square miles for white farm operators.
  • USO and the YWCAAs the United States prepared to enter World War II, the general public and many leading social service agencies voiced the need for expanded social services in coordination with the U.S. military. In 1940, General George Marshall also called for social services for the military. The USO was founded in 1941 in response to a request from President Roosevelt to provide morale and recreation services to U.S. uniformed military personnel. Roosevelt was elected as its honorary chairman. Discussions among the military, the National Jewish Welfare Board, the Salvation Army, the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), the National Council of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States (YMCA), and the National Catholic Community Service resulted in the establishment of the United Service Organizations for National Defense Inc. (USO) in New York City on February 4, 1941. In the following month, the National Traveler's Aid Association joined the organization and, thus, these groups became the six primary member agencies of the USO.
  • Vaile, Gertrude
  • van Kleeck, Mary
  • van Wormer, Katherine Stuart, Ph.D., M.S.S.W.Biography of Katherine Stuart van Wormer, MSSW, Ph.D., a Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa.
  • Vasa Children's Home"History of the Vasa Children’s Home (1865-1955)," translated by Mrs. Dennis M. Lundell. The Vasa Children's Home is the oldest Home in Minnesota and the Augustana Lutheran Church.
  • Vermont Department of Public Welfare: 1927The public welfare department “concerns itself with the same classes of people as were herded together in public almshouses 100 years ago,” said the speaker. “There, in local almshouses and workhouses, combined usually with a pest house nearby, all of our modern problems could have been found in their beginnings. Chained in the garrets or imprisoned in barred rooms were the village idiots and simple women who would now be recognized as feeble‐minded.
  • Veteran's Pensions: Early HistorySince the original resolution of 1776 pension legislation has been voluminous, and down to the revision of the pension laws in 1873 may be justly termed chaotic. This paper will attempt only to outline some of the general features. In order to do this the more clearly the various grants of pensions may be divided into four classes, viz.: I. Pensions based upon disability incurred in service, or the death of the soldier from such cause. II. Pensions based upon service and indigence, without regard to the origin of existing disability, or the cause of the soldiers death. III. Pensions based upon service only. IV. Pensions based upon disability, without regard to the origin of such disability or the pecuniary circumstances of the beneficiary.
  • Villard, Oswald Garrison
  • Virginia Home and Industrial School for GirlsThe 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.”
  • Virginia Industrial School for Colored GirlsThe residents of the Industrial School were, for the most part, delinquent or dependent colored girls sentenced to prison by local judges and then paroled to the school. There were no foster homes for colored girls who needed care and jail or prison was the only alternative. It is reported that several of the girls were “feeble minded” and a few arrived with contagious diseases...the goal of the school was to teach self-direction and character building with the expectation that... a girl could be “paroled” to a private family in the Richmond area and work for normal wages.
  • Virginia State Federation Of Colored Womens Clubs
  • Visiting Nurse Service Administered by the Henry Street Settlement (1936)"What the skill and care of these devoted nurses has meant to thousands of the needy sick, of all ages, during these dark times, no statistics can reflect. Home nursing, such as ours, includes health education to the family as well as care to the patient. The charts and facts presented in this report enable those previously unfamiliar with our work to understand in some small measure the significance of the Service."
  • Volker, William
  • Voluntary Health InsuranceIn many respects the most direct answer of all is found in the formation of a group health cooperative or similar type of group health association. Such an organization represents the practical realization on the part of its members that they cannot safely rely either for the presence of doctors among them or for adequate health facilities upon the fortuitous illness and generosity of well­ to-do people. Instead the potential need for health care on the part of an entire group of people is pooled, together with monthly payments to cover the esti­mated cost of such care. In other words, the principle of pre­payment, which everyone agrees is the central answer to the problem of en­abling people generally to pay for ade­quate health care, is applied.
  • Volunteers of AmericaThis entry is about the Volunteers of America. It was excerpted from the booklet “Maud and Ballington Booth: The Founding of Volunteers of America – The Seeds of Change 1890 – 1935” authored by Anne Nixon and produced by The Human Spirit Initiative.
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965: an introduction
  • Vourlekis, Betsy Schaefer, Ph.D.
  • Wald, Lillian
  • Wald, Lillian: Congressional Tribute
  • War Opens Up New Fields for Women's Endeavor. Orie Latham Hatcher and the Bureau of Vocations, July 1917
  • Ward, Nancy or Nanye-hi (1738-1822)Nanye-hi’s husband, with whom she had two children, was killed in a raid on the Creeks, the Cherokee’s land rivals, during the 1755 Battle of Taliwa. Nanye-hi fought by his side, chewing the lead bullets for his rifle to make them more pointed and deadly. When the enemy killed him, she rallied the Cherokee warriors, leading a charge that brought victory to the Cherokees. Because of her actions, the Cherokee clans chose her as Ghighau, or the "Beloved Woman.” In this powerful position, her opinion was influential in the tribal government because the Cherokees believed that the Great Spirit could speak through the Beloved Woman. As Beloved Woman, Nanye-hi headed the Women's Council, sat on the Council of Chiefs, and had complete power over prisoners.
  • Warner, Amos GriswoldAmos Warner's greatest contribution to the professionalization of social work was a system for the statistical analysis of cases. The majority view at his time was that heredity was the cause of personal inadequacy. He was a pioneer in his views that poverty and personal misfortune were not the result of a single cause, but a plethora of causes, many of which could be outside the control of the individual. He set about developing a series of categories to be used in conjunction with a weighted score that allowed for the prioritization of family problems. Additionally, he developed a listing of the possible causes of poverty, categorizing them as subjective (within the individual) or objective (attributed to environmental causes such as industrial or economic conditions).
  • Washington Sweatshop (1937)by Robert S. Allen, The Nation July 17, 1937. Wage-hour legislation was a campaign issue in the 1936 Presidential race.
  • Washington, Booker TaliaferroDuring his era, Booker T. Washington exerted much power on behalf of the African American community. Though many Black intellectuals disagreed with him and his tactics, his way of thinking appealed to many middle and working class Blacks. His connections with the prominent White Americans allowed him to serve as a conduit for funds that served African American community.
  • Washington, Forrester BlanchardForrester Blanchard Washington (1887-1963) — Social Work Pioneer, advocate for African Americans and educator. Written by Angelique Brown, MSW.
  • Watts, Lucian Louis (1888 – 1974)Lucian Louis Watts was a Virginia statesman who advocated for government services to support blind citizens. As the first Executive Secretary of the Virginia Department for the Blind and Visually Impaired, he promoted campaigns to prevent blindness, oversaw the development of educational programs for blind adults, and was instrumental in the introduction of sight-saving classes for children with impaired vision in Virginia’s public schools.
  • We Do Our Part--But... (1933)Article by Ira DeA. Reid in Opportunity, Journal of Negro Life (September, 1933). "Three million Negro workers, more than half of the total number of Negroes who must labor for their livelihood, will not be covered by the industrial codes now being formulated by the NRA!"
  • Weed, VerneVerne was a social worker whose commitment to human service became the essence of her being, and both the source and focus of her energy. Her life and work were illuminated by a holistic view of social relationships, which links all persons as members in the human family. She considered that solutions to social problems could be achieved through united, collective activity, and that prevention is the most effective approach to social problem solving. Verne Weed understood that the social functioning of individuals and families is related to the level of nurturance and social responsibility in the society in which they live. She undertook professional advocacy and political activity which transformed those concepts into social action. For Verne, daily participation in the struggle to produce a socially responsible society was as essential to her life as the air she breathed.
  • Wells-Barnett, Ida B.Incensed by the murder of her friends, Wells launched an extensive investigation of lynching. In 1892, she published a pamphlet, “Southern Horrors,” which detailed her findings. Through her lectures and books such as A Red Record (1895), Wells countered the “rape myth” used by lynch mobs to justify the murder of African Americans. Through her research she found that lynch victims had challenged white authority or had successfully competed with whites in business or politics. As a result of her outspokenness, a mob destroyed the offices of the Free Speech and threatened to kill Wells.
  • West Virginia Colored Orphans Home (1899-1956)By Sarah H. Shepherd, 2022. Black politician and businessman, Charles McGhee (1858-1937), was serving as a pastor in Bluefield, West Virginia when he was confronted by the lack of support for Black orphans after the death of his brother-in-law in a mining accident. In the Jim Crow South, few state resources, if any, were dedicated to African Americans. Black orphans were not admitted to white orphanages and faced significant hardships. McGhee founded an orphanage and school for these children.
  • What is Professional Social Work? (1923)Social work does not consist of maintaining any social activity which has become standard and permanent. Social workers are continually originating certain activities and vindicating them and making them standard and permanent but after they have reached that stage they are not rated as social work. At one point kindergartens which are now a regular part of our educational system were promoted and maintained as social work. Some activities that are more or less permanent and standardized in regard to their procedure such as the relief work of old family welfare societies are nevertheless exceptional activities because the circumstances of the different individuals require and receive special treatment in each case. Even relief giving may pass out of the realm of social work if it is put on the basis of flat pensions and paid for out of taxation, as in the case of soldier's pensions; or if pensions are given as a part of a fixed policy of a big corporation toward its employees, there is no reason to class the administration of these pensions as social work.
  • What is Social Group Work?The group-work process. -- Group work may be defined as an educational process emphasizing (1) the development and social adjustment of an individual through voluntary group association; and (2) the use of this association as a means of furthering other socially desirable ends. It is concerned therefore with both individual growth and social results. Moreover, it is the combined and consistent pursuit of both these objectives, not merely one of them, that distinguishes group work as a process. But what do we mean by a process?
  • What is Social Welfare History?By John E. Hansan, Ph.D. 2017. Social welfare history reflects the lives of people living, being educated, working and voting in the nation. It is an interdisciplinary study of the evolution of charitable works, organized activities related to social reform movements and non-profit or public social services designed to protect or benefit individuals, families and citizens of the larger society.
  • What Is The Public Practice Of Medicine? -- 1926Freedom from political domination is perhaps responsible more than any other single factor for the public health progress in Cincinnati. This change was brought about in I910, and with it came a reorganization of the health department, until now it parallels an ideal organization recommended by Dr. C. E. A. Winslow, chairman of the Committee on Municipal Health Department Practice of the American Public Health Association. The fact that the members of the Cincinnati Board of Health are appointed for ten years, and that only one member retires every two years, guarantees continuity of program and policy. This is a wise provision of our charter. All members of the health department are civil service appointees and devote their full time to public service.
  • What Price Slum Clearance? (1953)Background Memorandum New York State Committee On Discrimination In Housing, 1953. "The City of New York has approved plans for the displacement of at least 45,000 families within the next three years as a result of urban redevelopment, public housing projects and other public improvements such as schools, roads and port authority projects...The elimination of slums and the creation of healthy neighborhoods are necessary and worthy objectives. In the process, however, the city has certain responsibilities and obligations to the displaced families as well as the city as a whole, to see to it that social benefit for one section of the population does not result in severe hardship for others."
  • What REA Service Means To Our Farm Home (1939)THE FIRST benefit we received from the REA service was lights, and aren't lights grand? My little boy expressed my sentiments when he said, "Mother, I didn't realize how dark our house was until we got electric lights." We had been reading by an Aladdin lamp and thought it was good, but it didn't compare with our I. E. S. reading lamp.
  • What Religion Means to Me (1932)Article by Eleanor Roosevelt, Forum, 1932. "...in all cases the thing which counts is the striving of the human soul to achieve spiritually the best that it is capable of and to care unselfishly not only for personal good but for the good of all those who toil with them upon the earth."
  • What Rural Electrification Administration Means To Our Farm Home: 1939Article written by Rose Dudley Scearce in Rural Electrification News, 1939. The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was created in 1935 by President Roosevelt to promote rural electricity.
  • What Social Work Has To Offer In The Field Of Mental Retardation (1960)Social work is making a contribution to the field of mental retardation but social workers are not giving the substantial services which are needed and which they have the competence to give. Along with other professions and the general public, social work failed for many years to give focused attention to the mentally retarded as a group in the population which needed their services. Lacking knowledge of ways to help the severely and moderately retarded, the social workers helped parents place their children if that seemed the best solution at that time. Other social services were given, but often they were fragmentary and somewhat isolated. What amounted to neglect rose more from frustration and lack of knowledge than from indifference.
  • What Ten Million Women Want"...My fourth point is the woman's desire to see government lighten her burdens. The first of these burdens is the taxes. On the whole when women see that taxes which they pay bring direct returns in benefits to the community, I do not think that they are averse to paying them, but I do think that our ten million women want much more careful accounting for how their taxes are expended in the local, state or national government. They want to see the actual good which comes to them from these expenditures. They feel very strongly that governments should not add to their burdens but should lighten them. They are gradually coming to grasp the relation of legislation to the lightening of these burdens, for instance, in such questions as the regulation of public utilities and the development of the water power of our nation. They realize now that cheaper electricity means less work in the home, more time to give to their children, more time for recreation and greater educational opportunities....
  • What The Settlement Work Stands For (1896)Presentation given by Julia C. Lathrop, Hull House, Chicago at the Twenty-Third Annual Session of the National Conference of Charities And Correction, 1896. "...the settlement may be regarded as a humble but sincere effort toward a realization of that ideal of social democracy in whose image this country was founded, but adapted and translated into the life of to-day."
  • When Budgeting Was A Casework ProcessThe people who staffed the Charity Organization Society made major contributions to the growth of social casework. It was not a development they eagerly embraced. Their goal was to provide material relief after a thorough investigation of who was or was not entitled to help. They gradually found that confirming need and certifying moral worth did not achieve the rehabilitation results they desired.
  • White, Grace Elizabeth
  • White, Walter F.By 1931 White had become executive secretary, the highest position in the association. During his tenure, the NAACP led the fight for anti-lynching legislation, and initiated trailblazing legal battles to eliminate all-white primaries, poll taxes and de jure segregation....Working with labor leader A. Philip Randolph, White in 1941 helped persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 which prohibited racial discrimination in defense industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), the first Federal agency to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination measures.
  • Whither Self-Help? (1934)What is happening to the self-helpers? Will they become true cooperators? Chiselers? Brown Shirts? And what about the Communists? In California, which has more self-help organizations than all the rest of the country, barter has been going on long enough to have a history and some policies and to refute the prophets who predicted it would die aborning.
  • Why A Woman's Rights Convention?Determined to overcome the social, civil, and religious disabilities that crippled women of their day, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, on 19 July 1848. It drew over 300. Stanton drafted the "Declaration of Sentiments," a document that stated "men and women are created equal"
  • Why Ford Workers Strike (1933)Article written by Carl Mydans, The Nation, 1933. "The real object of the strike at the Edgewater, New Jersey, plant of the Ford Motor Car Company was, of course, a wage increase. The workers seized the opportunity, however, to protest against a number of the conditions under which they had been working."
  • Wickenden, Elizabeth
  • Widows and WaifsWritten by Dr. June Hopkins, Armstrong Atlantic State University. This essay investigates the connections between the child-saving movement to reform orphanages and the widows’ pension movement in New York City during the Progressive Era.
  • Widows Pensions: An Introduction
  • Widows' Pensions
  • Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith (1856-1923)In 1881, Kate married (Samuel) Bradley Wiggin, a San Francisco lawyer.‪ According to the customs of the time, she was required to resign her teaching job.‪ Still devoted to her school, she began to raise money for it through writing, first The Story of Patsy (1883), then The Birds’ Christmas Carol (1887). Both privately printed books were issued commercially by Houghton Mifflin in 1889, with enormous success. Ironically, considering her intense love of children, Kate Wiggin had none. She moved to New York City in 1888.‪
  • Wilbur J. Cohen and the Expansion of Social SecurityWe tend to think of the expansion of social security as something impersonal and bureaucratic. It is almost as if the program expanded by itself. The basic old-age insurance program never posed issues that defined the political or cultural character of an era. Yet we know that the process of social security's growth was neither smooth nor straight forward.
  • Wilbur J. Cohen And The New FrontierWhen Wilbur Cohen went from Madison to Washington, D.C. in 1934, he traveled by car and bus. Twenty-seven years later, when he went from another midwestern university town to Washington, he flew. In both cases, he left academia to seek work in a Democratic administration. In both cases, he helped first to create and then to gain Congressional approval for a broad range of social welfare programs.
  • Wilbur, Hervey B. - In Memoriam (1886)Wide as the institutional field is, it did not engross all his powers. Everything of a scientific nature, social or practical, was of interest to him, and the excellent library he gathered shows the breadth of his intellectual tastes. His sympathies embraced the wide field of humanity, and no human being was too lowly or degraded for his notice. To him the humblest of his neighbors came for advice and aid in their petty troubles, sure that he would accord them both.
  • Will the Codes Abolish Child Labor? (1933)Written by Gertrude Folks Zimand, Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee. "WHEN President Roosevelt on July 9 signed the Code of Fair Competition for the Cotton-Textile Industry, which bars from employment children under 16 years, he virtually removed from that industry several thousand children who will be replaced by adults. Had this action been taken in the spring of 1930, before unemployment became so acute, the number displaced would have been over 10,000."
  • Willard Asylum for the Insane: Steward's Report 1900Steward's Report by Captain Morris J. Gilbert, 1900. According to Dr. Robert E. Doran, Jr., author of "History Of The Willard Asylum For The Insane And The Willard State Hospital," “...he was totally responsible for all purchasing as well as overseeing the farm and maintenance work.”
  • Willard State Hospital, New York. Primary Sources
  • Willard, Frances Elizabeth Caroline (1839-1898)Frances Willard promoted the cause of women and reform as a pioneer educator and especially as the most prominent leader of the nineteenth century movement to end alcohol abuse. One of the most influential women of the nineteenth century, Frances Willard’s name is inseparable from that of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), but her life embodied little of the conservatism that came to be associated with the WCTU after her death.
  • Willard, Sylvester D.Sylvester David Willard, M.D., LL. D. (June 19, 1825 – April 2, 1865) — Volunteer Surgeon in Civil War, Founder of Willard Asylum for the Insane
  • William Lloyd Garrison, “On the Death of John Brown” (1859)On December 2, 1859, John Brown was executed by Virginia authorities in Charles Town for his ill-fated raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry. Soon after word of his death reached Boston, William Lloyd Garrison, the leading abolitionist in the United States at the time, gave this stirring tribute to Brown.
  • Williams, Aubrey Willis
  • Wilson, GertrudeGertrude Wilson was a social group worker and educator. After working in group practice at YWCA's in various cities (1922-1935), she began teaching group work. In 1935 Gertrude Wilson became an Assistant Professor at Western Reserve University's School of Applied Social Sciences. In 1938 she became a Professor and later an Associate Dean in the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh (1938-1950). In 1951, she accepted a position as Professor and head of the Social Welfare Extension program at the University of California at Berkeley (1951-1963). She also served as a visiting faculty member at schools around the United States and in Canada. After her retirement, she continued to consult with the Social Services Department of the City and County of San Francisco and wrote papers on the topic of group practice within both psychiatric and community settings.
  • Wilson, Woodrow, 28th President of the United States (1913 – 1921)Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into war in order to "make the world safe for democracy."....Like Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. "No one but the President," he said, "seems to be expected ... to look out for the general interests of the country." He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy."
  • Winant, John G.Winant was a lifelong Republican whose humanitarian principles transcended party lines. Influenced by the writings of Charles Dickens and John Ruskin and inspired by the examples of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, he was as governor a forceful advocate of progressive reform initiatives, including a 48-hour work week for women and children, a minimum wage, and the abolition of capital punishment. In 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him the first chairman of the Social Security Board.
  • Winston, Ellen Black
  • Witte, Edwin E.
  • Witte, Ernest
  • Wittman, Milton
  • Woman Suffrage: History and Time LineA resolution calling for woman suffrage had passed, after much debate, at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. In The Declaration of Sentiments, a document based upon the Declaration of Independence, the numerous demands of these early activists were elucidated. The 1848 convention had challenged America to a social revolution that would touch every aspect of life. Early women's rights leaders believed suffrage to be the most effective means to change an unjust system.
  • Woman's Place After the War (1944)"Will women want to keep their jobs after the war is over?" When I asked Miss Mary Anderson of the Bureau of Women in Industry, she told me it all boils down to economic necessity. Married women usually keep their jobs only when they have real need for money at home. This, of course, does not mean that women who take up some kind of work as a career will not stay in that work if they like it, whether they are married or single.
  • Woman’s Christian Temperance UnionThe WCTU was a religious organization whose primary purpose was to combat the influence of alcohol on families and society. It was influential in the temperance movement, and supported the 18th Amendment.
  • Women and Nineteenth-Century ReformThe problem for Dix and other women reformers of the nineteenth century was how to engage in social causes without losing their femininity. Opponents of women’s suffrage argued that political engagement would make women “mannish” and thereby undermine the social order. Even Catharine Beecher argued that women should not receive the right to vote because it would destroy their feminine virtues. Instead, Beecher believed that women could best exert their moral influence through their roles in the Christian home and neighborhood.
  • Women and Nineteenth-Century ReformThe work of Dorothea Dix to improve the treatment of persons with mental illness illustrates the gendered nature of nineteenth-century reform activity. Like many women of her generation, Dix began her career as a teacher, a profession that many women and men believed ideally suited to women as it both mirrored and prepared them for their roles within the home. Dix’ tireless activism within the Unitarian church and sense of moral religious duty was also common for women of her day. Eventually Dix felt that school teaching was insufficiently rewarding and in 1831 left the United States for a tour of England and Scotland. There, she became acquainted with a number of leading reformers who worked to improve the conditions for the poor and the mentally ill. On her return to the United States, Dix accepted a position to teach Sunday School to women prisoners at the East Cambridge jail. Thus, her life’s purpose grew out of a very common role for women at this time, that of educator and moral guide.
  • Women and the VoteWomen are thinking and that is the first step toward an increased and more intelligent use of the ballot. Then they will demand of their political parties clear statements of principles and they will scrutinize their party’s candidates, watch their records, listen to their promises and expect them to live up to them and to have their party’s backing, and occasionally when the need arises, women will reject their party and its candidates. This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which political parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.
  • Women at the HelmLet me now sum up why I think these three women were great and, as or forebears, worthy of admiration and emulation. First, a caveat. They were not great because they were women. We can be proud they were women, but the qualities that marked them for greatness are not sex related. They were great because they had powerful minds, which they never ceased to sharpen with new knowledge and new experiences....They were great because they cared about what happened to people and they believed in the worth and dignity of ever living creature....They were great because they were fighters. They preserved against great obstacles – obstacles they faced as women and obstacles generated by their advanced ideas.
  • Women In Nineteenth-Century AmericaAs household production by women declined and the traditional economic role of women diminished, the "home" appeared as a topic to be discussed and an ideal to be lauded. Less a place of production than a spiritually sanctified retreat from the hurly-burly of economic life, the home was where women nurtured men and children into becoming morally elevated beings. It could be said that what we think of as the traditional "home" was actually an invention of nineteenth-century Americans.
  • Women In Politics - Eleanor Roosevelt (1940)We are about to have a collective coming of age! The women in the United States have been participants in government for nearly twenty years. I think it behooves us to look back on this period in which we have been serving our apprenticeship and decide what our accomplishments have been, how much good our education has done us, and whether we really are able to consider ourselves full-fledged citizens.
  • Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do (1928)"...To many women who fought so long and so valiantly for suffrage, what has happened has been most discouraging. For one reason or another, most of the leaders who carried the early fight to success have dropped out of politics. This has been in many ways unfortunate. Among them were women with gifts of real leadership. They were exceptional and high types of women, idealists concerned in carrying a cause to victory, with no idea of personal advancement or gain. In fact, attaining the vote was only part of a program for equal rights--an external gesture toward economic independence, and social and spiritual equality with men...".
  • Women's BureauThe Women's Bureau was established in the Department of Labor by Public Law No. 259 of June 5, 1920. It is the only federal agency mandated to represent the needs of wage-earning women in the public policy process.
  • Women's Rights ConventionsSeptember 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.
  • Women's Suffrage: The MovementIn 2005, the passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote, celebrated its 85th anniversary. The resolution calling for woman suffrage had passed, after much debate, at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. In The Declaration of Sentiments, a document based upon the Declaration of Independence, the numerous demands of these early activists were elucidated.
  • Women, Settlements and PovertyWritten by Jerry D. Marx, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of New Hampshire, Department of Social Work. This article uses primary source documents from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s to discuss women’s roles in the reconceptualization of poverty in America. It studies the belief drawn from colonial religion that poverty was a result of personal immorality and traces the changing public perception through the turn of the 20th century.
  • Woodhull, Victoria Claflin (1838 - 1927)The following year, Woodhull became a trailblazer in another area as the first woman to run for president representing the Equal Rights Party. Woodhull’s presidential platform showed her foresight as she supported issues like an eight-hour workday, graduated income tax, new divorce laws, and social welfare programs that we enjoy today. While many trade unionists, women’s suffragists, and socialists supported Woodhull, she was unable to gain the funds for an effective campaign and could not receive votes from her female supporters as women did not yet have the right to vote.
  • Woods, Robert Archey
  • Work-Relief and Negroes"...optimism is premature, just as was true in the cases of NRA, CWA, and others of the Administration's pet schemes for "priming the industrial pump of America." Certainly the controversy which the Work-Relief Bin is evoking at present writing in Senate committee and corridors indicates that there are grave weaknesses in the plans of President Roosevelt for ending the dole by giving jobs. Outstanding among these weaknesses is the President's insistence that the rate of pay shall be lower than prevailing wage levels. Here he has met the bitter opposition of organized labor, and it seems that he will meet defeat on the issue. There should be no hesitation among the Negroes to back up the position which organized labor takes in this instance. Mr. Roosevelt's plan to pay a lower wage than private industry is nothing less than an attempt to lower the existing wage level throughout all industry. It is a surrender to those interests which claim that "recovery" is held back because the wage structure is too high. It is an ignoral of the plain fact that in the building trades the wages for workers have taken a considerable drop in the past two years while the costs of materials have gone steeply upward...."
  • Workmen's CompensationIn the drive for social justice, a new attitude began to reveal itself in trying to mitigate the evils of industrialization. One of these was in the area of safety. After the Civil War, numerous States attempted to establish--by statute--minimum safety standards for various types of industrial workers.
  • World War II and the Social Work Profession: The Veterans Administration Response to CrisisWith the entry of the United States into World War II and extending throughout the 1940s, there developed a tremendous need for medical and psychiatric social workers. A crisis existed within the profession to which the Veterans Administration responded. The VA became the largest employer of social workers in the nation.
  • 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.
  • Wright, Frances (1795-1852)Frances Wright was the first woman in America to act publicly against slavery: in 1825 she bought a tract of land twenty miles outside a little Mississippi River trading post named Memphis, and there she established a commune she called Nashoba. Its purpose was to discover and then to demonstrate how slaves could be responsibly educated and then freed without undue cost to their owners. (To impose a disproportionate burden on one part of the nation when the institution of slavery plagued and disgraced us all seemed to Fanny Wright both unfair and politically unwise. Her political sense, such as it was, deserted her, however, when she published an article about Nashoba claiming that sexual passion was “the strongest and…the noblest of the human passions,” the basis of “the best joys of our existence,” and “the best source of human happiness.” This at a time when allowing an ankle to show in public doomed a woman’s reputation.)
  • Wright, Helen R.Helen Russell Wright was a pioneer social researcher, economist, and social work educator. She was the first president of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). She also had the formidable task of becoming dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Chicago in1941, a position she held until 1956. Following in the footsteps Edith Abbott, Grace Abbott and Sophonisba Breckenridge she became an important transitional figure in the emerging profession of social work, one who often went against the then current trends by advocating for social reform supported by research as opposed to the total emphasis on the primacy of casework within the profession.
  • Y.W.C.A.: Brief History of Service in Times of WarIn one particular the Y.W.C.A. war service of 1917 differs from that of 1942. Then the Y.W.C.A. operated hostess houses on camp grounds as well as in large manufacturing areas. Today it operates U.S.O. centers close by camps, near navy yards, and in the big industrial defense areas. Now as then, while doing its share for the men in uniform, it never forgets that its main purpose is to supply the needs of women and girls—wives and families of service men, workers in cantonment areas and in war industries, nurses and employees at military posts, and others directly affected by the emergency needs of the nation. The program included recreation; education in health, nutrition, first aid, and other essential subjects, counsel on personal problems, and spiritual guidance.
  • You Can't Pauperize Children (1945)First let us review the past. Before the Social Security Act was passed, most of the states had what was called Mothers' Aid laws or Widows' Pensions. The effect of the Social Security Act was that the legislatures revised and broadened their laws because they had to comply with the more liberal provisions of the Social Security Act. The difference between the old laws for assistance to dependent children and the Social Security law is that in order to get the money, the assistance must be made statewide. In the past, the assistance was not statewide, and one city or county would give assistance here and there.
  • Young Mens Christian AssociationThe YMCA idea, which began among evangelicals, was unusual because it crossed the rigid lines that separated all the different churches and social classes in England in those days. This openness was a trait that would lead eventually to including in YMCA's all men, women and children, regardless of race, religion or nationality. Also, its target of meeting social need in the community was dear from the start.
  • Young Womens Christian Association Throughout its history, the YWCA has been in the forefront of most major movements in the United States as a pioneer in race relations, labor union representation, and the empowerment of women.
  • Young, Whitney M. JrA noted civil rights leader and statesman, Young worked to eradicate discrimination against blacks and poor people. He served on numerous national boards and advisory committees and received many honorary degrees and awards —including the Medal of Freedom (1969), presented by President Lyndon Johnson—for his outstanding civil rights accomplishments.
  • Youngdahl, Benjamin Emmanual
  • Your Girl and Mine (suffrage film)Your Girl and Mine was the first large-scale suffrage film. Also referred to as a "photo-play," the film was a collaboration between the National American Woman Suffrage Association and Selig Studio of Chicago. This article in The Times-Dispatch includes a lengthy synopsis of the film's plot, which revolves around the trials of women and children who have few legal rights. Poverty, child labor, tenement housing, alcohol abuse, and child custody battles all play out in the course of the melodrama.
  • 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.
  • Zimand, Gertrude Folks
  • Zimand, Savel