Motherhood and women’s activism

History Is Central

Summer Institute

June 2006

Women Strike for Peace - protesting the Vietnam War

Flint auto strike, 1936

Mothers’ Crusade against Lend-Lease, Feb. 1941

Mothers protesting desegregation, Baltimore, 1954

Many different causes

Protesting the murder of Emmett Till, 1955

Social movements

• Identities

• Resources• Networks (internal/external)

• How might these apply to the 1917 food protests in NYC?

Meat protest, 1945 (NYC)

Mobilizing mothers

19c Women’s clubs– Types of activities?– Vision of government, public

responsibility?

The Story of the Illinois Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (Privately published, Chicago, IL, 1922) pp. 98

Buffalo Woman’s Club, 1910

Separatism as Strategy: Women’s organizations

• YWCA

• National Consumers League

• National Congress of Mothers

After work, Baltimore YWCA (1919)Leaders of the National Congress of Mothers, 1897

WCA, Hartford

Settlement Houses

Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull House and Its Neighborhoods (http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/urbanexp/index.htm)

Civic housekeeping

“Women’s place is Home. But Home is not contained within the four walls of an individual house. Home is the community. The city full of people is the Family. And badly do the Home and Family need Mother.”

- Rheta Dorr (journalist and suffragist)

Cartoon portraying Rudolph Blankenburg of Philadelphia as urban reformer, 1896/1911

Suffrage card, National Women’s History Museum

A Vote for Mother“For the safety of the Nation

To the Women Give the Vote

For the hand that Rocks the Cradle

Will Never Rock the Boat!”Banner carried by NAWSA, 1916 parade in Chicago

(WI State Historical Society)

National Women’s History Museum, www.nwhm.org

Creating the Children’s Bureau, 1912

“to investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people.”

Julia Lathrop (Library of Congress)

"$acred Motherhood" was created in 1908 by Chicago Daily News cartoonist Luther Bradley for exhibition at a joint conference of the Women's Trade Union League and the Chicago Federation of Labor..Artist: Luther BradleySource: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-37917)

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/11224.html

Protesting working conditions - The Women’s Trade Union League, 1908

Muller v. Oregon (1908)

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Blondie: The Night Shift,” 1933 (Library of Congress)

Day Nurseries

• How was child care shaped by ideas about motherhood?

Sources and questions

• Annual reports of day nurseries

• Organizational records

• Case records on families

• Records of other agencies

• Newspaper clippings

Local connections: CT State Library/CT Historical Society

• General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Connecticut• College Club of Hartford• Northwest Child Welfare Club• Hartford Women’s Club, 1890-1923• CT Woman Suffrage Association, 1869-1921• CT Valley Kindergarten Association, 1895-1940• Goodwill Club of Hartford • Hartford Maternal Milk Station• National Popular Education Board, 1845-1855 (letters

of women sent West as teachers)