Women's club movement in the United States
Both African-American and white women's clubs were involved with issues surrounding education, temperance, child labor, juvenile justice, legal reform, environmental protection, library creation and more.
[4] According to Maureen A. Flanagan,[5] many women's clubs focused on the welfare of their community because of their shared experiences in tending to the well-being of home-life.
Wood and Anna J. H. (Mrs. Percy V.) Pennybacker described it: "Very early the club women became unwilling to discuss Dante and Browning over the teacups, at meetings of their peers in some lady's drawing room, while unsightly heaps of rubbish flanked the paths over which they had passed in their journeys thither.
[40] Some white women's clubs were frankly unconcerned with issues relating to African Americans because they "supported the racist ideology and practices of their era".
[42] Many evolved into prominent women's clubs and the network later became a more traditional organization with dues paid to its national office, the "American Woman's Republic".
Women in clubs raised money, worked with the Red Cross, financed the Home Guard and set up communications within the community to share information quickly.
Among them, was Lenora O'Reilly who helped develop the WTUL that supported wage requests and promoted the end of child labor.
[49] Even before African Americans were freed from slavery, black women had started to come together to create organizations which looked after their community's welfare.
[53] After slavery was ended in the United States with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865,[54] black women continued to organize and often worked with churches to ensure their communities were taken care of.
[67] In Chicago, the wealthy former abolitionist Mary Jane Richardson Jones supported the development of several clubs, serving as the first chair of Wells's.
[75] The Woman's Club of Norfolk wrote letters and sent care packages to the segregated black units sent to fight overseas.
[79][80][81][82] These Faculty Wives clubs were formed during the Progressive era and served the same functions of community, cultural education, and service that characterized larger groups.
The wives at Ball State University held regular dinners for their husbands, both to relieve stress and build relationships.
[94] Some groups continue to support their original missions, such as the Alpha Home, which provides care for elderly black people.
[96] During the early 21st century, numerous new private women's clubs formed in support of personal and professional affiliations and business networking,[97] including AllBright, Belizean Grove, The Riveter, The Wing and Chief,[98] with growth attributed to factors including advances in technology and the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
[1] Many progressive ideals were pressed into action through the resources of women's clubs, including kindergartens, juvenile courts, and park conservation.
[114] Few clubs worked together across racial boundaries, although the YWCA and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) did sometimes welcome bi-racial collaboration.
[123] Women's groups also influenced discussions about classroom size; the Chicago Woman's City Club asking that there be no more than thirty children per class.
The Texas Association of Women's Clubs (TAWC) worked for several decades to create what would later become the Crockett State School which was originally meant to help "delinquent" black girls.
[132] Many women's clubs believed that compulsory education for young people would help solve many child labor issues.
[133] The Illinois Collegiate Alumnae association helped the government draw up a law in 1897 to ensure that children between the ages of seven and fourteen were in school for sixteen weeks of the year.
[143] The Chicago and Northern District Association of Colored Women's Clubs (CNDA) hosted well-known singers such as Etta Moten.
[155] In California, women's clubs helped preserve Sequoia trees and protested against "the environmentally destructive Hetch Hetchy Dam".
[20] The Ladies' Health Protective Association was established in New York City in November 1884 to address unsanitary conditions in the abattoir district, and by 1897 had become a national organization.
[177] Women's clubs helped establish many public libraries by contributing their book collections, raising money for building construction through a variety of activities for years, acting as librarians, cataloguing early collections, enlisting male leaders for public funding, and other management activities.
[76] Women's clubs were involved in tracking and investigating child labor and working conditions of all workers in the United States in the late nineteenth century.
[199] In 1936, Congress created a provision for women who had lost their citizenship due to marriage, and were no longer married, to re-swear allegiance to the United States.
The Chicago Woman's Club, which created the Protective Agency for Women and Children, presented bills to the legislature which later passed.
In 1868, Kate Newell Doggett, a botanist, helped set up a chapter of Sorosis, which became the first women's group in Chicago to focus on suffrage.
[91] Numerous women involved with the temperance movement felt that limiting alcohol access would decrease "social ills" such as gambling, prostitution and domestic violence.
