Women-Led Reform Presentation (Feb2012)

Chicago’s South Side 1871-1920 Hannah G. Solomon (top) Ida B. Wells-Barnett (bottom)

• Fast Growth: – Population – New industries

• Rise of Skyscrapers • Growth of Wealthy Class • Economic Panics • Labor Issues: – Big factories – Sweatshops – Women/Child Labor • Long hours & low pay

• • • • •

Filthy and dirty Coal-burning and sooty Crowded Influx of immigrants Influx from rural towns, farms

• Tenements – Multi-family housing in small spaces lacking indoor plumbing, (primarily Near West side)

“Chicago has 22,400 miles of water at its front door and no public baths except for those in the saloons.”

-Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson

• Corruption in government • Need for city services, municipal reform • Dangerous factories – Unsafe working conditions

• Low wages & child labor • Public health • Housing conditions • ...and Suffrage

• Civil War: Sanitary Commissions across U.S. • Northwestern Sanitary Commission, Chicago • Women’s Rights – Mary Livermore

• More middle-class women are educated, volunteer • Lacking vote, women “own” domestic issues: education, children, playgrounds, sanitation, health • Women’s Clubs begin to emerge; the focus shifts from literary to social issues.

– The Clubs create new networks of women

• 1873: Kate Newell Doggett founded Fortnightly Club • 1876: Chicago Women’s Club – privileged white women • 1890s: African-American women create Colored Women’s Clubs

• Benefits from women’s network – Hull House 1889 • By 1920 – Twenty settlement houses in city, day nurseries, openly religious or educational orientation • African-American women organize parallel institutions

A national movement to address some of the conditions of urban society that had developed along with rapid economic growth.

• Journalism played key role in disseminating stories, images • Reform associated with President Theodore Roosevelt

• Businessmen: Reform impeded more profits • Era of the City Council Grey Wolves (1871-1931) – City Council ran the City; Mayor ceremonial – Politicians paid $3 per Council session; bribes, kickback and pay-offs were common.

– Money was made on contracts for public services and city contracts – Jobs, food handed out to voters: "If you can feed 'em, you can lead 'em.”

• Prairie Avenue: Street of the wealthy – Owners, managers live here: wealth, luxury

• Servants live here as well: long hours, low pay

• Men: laissez-faire economy, profits uppermost • Women: Reforms are necessary for social good

• At first, middle-class women share goals of trade unions • Later, Labor puts own interests above suffrage, social issues – Haymarket Affair 1886 – Pullman strike 1894 – Garment Workers’ strike 1910

Ida B. Wells

Myra Bradwell

• African-American women • White Club women

Lucy Parsons

Celia Parker Woolley

• German-Jewish women • Philanthropists and clergymen

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

• Anti-lynching activist • Co-founder NAACP • Co-founder National Association of Colored Women (NACWC) • Co-founder, Alpha Suffrage, first black woman suffrage organization

Fannie Barrier Williams

• Leader in black women’s club movement • Support for Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, Provident Hospital and Training School – Prudence Crandall Study Club – First black member of Chicago Woman’s Club – Co-founder, National League of Colored Women, & successor National Assn. of Colored Women, – First black, only woman on Chicago Public Library Board, 1924

• Lucy Parsons – African-American – Labor activist, anarchist

• Florence Kelley – National Consumer League – Fought 8-hour day to Supreme Ct. – Friend, ally of WEB DuBois – Co-founder, NAACP – Lived at Hull House

• Bessie Abramovitz – Garment strike of 1910

Margaret Robbins meets with Strikers (left)

• Myra Bradwell, Chicago Legal News – First woman to pass Illinoin bar, – Mary Lincoln’s attorney

• Celia Parker Woolley, Minister – Committed to African-American rights – Founded Frederick Douglass Center (Hull House model); – Co-founder NAACP

• Mary Amaryllis Hammer – Organized, first president Mother’s Relief Association – Member, Chicago Women’s Club, International Council of Women, London, 1901.

• Henriette Greenebaum Frank – Illinois Training School for Nurses

• Hannah Greenebaum Solomon – National Council of Jewish Women

• Ferdinand Barnett – The Conservator – First African-American Cook County State’s Attorney – Husband to Ida B. Wells (different kind of “pillow talk”)

• Robert Abbott – The Chicago Defender – The Great Migration

• Julius Rosenwald • Black YMCA, 1911 • Michigan Boulevard Garden Apts.

• Trustee, Tuskegee Institute • Rosenwald Schools • Served on Hull House Board for 19 years

• Rabbi Emil Hirsch – Leads Chicago Sinai Congregation for 43 years – Outspoken on civic and social issues: • Workers’ rights • Sanitation • Social justice

• 1891 Illinois women vote in school elections • City’s first public playground • Eight-hour workday laws – Minimum wage legislation – Regulation of Child Labor

• Factory inspection laws • 1920: 19th Amendment gives women the vote

• Protective Leagues for immigrants, juveniles • First Juvenile Court in U.S (1899) • Improvement of Public Health – Sanitation systems and trash collection

• 1921: Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act., fed. $$ matched by states for programs to lower high infant mortality rate

Hannah G. Solomon

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Thank you for coming.