Alzina Parsons-Stevens, labor and industrial worker and child welfare worker was born in Parsonfield, Maine in 1849, a town named after her paternal grandfather, Colonel Thomas Parsons, who received the land for his service in the American Revolution. Enoch Parsons, who served in the War of 1812, was a relatively prosperous farmer and small manufacturer. He and his wife, Louise (Page) Parsons, had seven children, of whom Alzina Parsons was the fourth daughter and the youngest child. Enoch Parsons died in 1862, leaving the family in difficult financial straits. With two sons fighting in the Civil War, Louise Parsons was forced to send her youngest daughter to work in a local textile mill. There she lost her right index finger in an industrial accident; the missing finger served as a perpetual stimulus and a reminder in her later struggles against child labor. An unfortunate early marriage soon ended in divorce, and though she kept her husband's last name, she refused to talk about him even to her closest friends, and no information about him survives.
Pioneer's Contributions to the Social Profession
At the age of eighteen, Azina Parsons Stevens left Maine and moved to Toledo, Ohio. There, motivated by her newly divorced status and the need to support herself, Stevens began to learn the printing trade. She soon became a proofreader and typesetter and ultimately an editor, making the newspaper business her life's work. After five years in Toledo, Stevens took her trade to Chicago, where she became one of the first women to join the Typographical Union No.16. She soon became active in the Chicago labor movement and in 1877 organized active in the Women's Union No.1. About 1882 she moved back to Toledo, Ohio, where she worked fo...
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...r children in society and gave them best possible education and safety as well to benefit their needs.
This information I feel will not really affect my anticipated professional practice because it has helped me better understand what the needs of the children are. It's the great pioneers of the past that helped create these social policies we have today to protect the interest of the children and the society as whole.
Works Cited
Stevens, Alzina Parsons Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved September 18, 2004, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://search.eb.com/eb/article?tocId=9069652
James,E.,James,J.,Boyer,P.(1971).Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Biography from American Reformers (1985). New York: The H. W. Wilson Company
...mes, and Paul Boyer. Notable American Women, 1607-1950. Volume III: P-Z. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Print.
Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: the Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
Sarah Breedlove “Madam C.J Walker” was born in Louisiana to former slaves on December 23, 1867. She was the first member of her family to be born “free,” and used this opportunity to have a better life. She married Moses McWilliams and gave birth to her first daughter, Lelia, on June 6, 1885. Unfortunately, soon after her daughter’s second birthday her husband was killed in an accident. She found a job as a laundress in St. Louis, Missouri and thus provided her daughter with an education that she never had the chance to get.
...areness of unjustifiable conditions that are imposed on societies youngest and most powerless members. Intermingled with his convictions of the necessity for equality and justice are portraits of children who display a most astounding amount of hope and courage. It is an essential read for all who have plans to enter the field of education. Those of us who aspire to shape the minds of the future need to be aware that all children possess the ability to love and prosper despite whatever environment they have emerged from. It is our duty to provide all children, without regard to race or economic status, with the tools and opportunities they require in order to flourish and lead the satisfying lives that they so greatly desire and deserve.
In Florence Kelley’s 1905 speech to the Philadelphia convention of the National American Women Suffrage Association, she accentuates the obligatory need to reform the working conditions for young children.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the fight for equal and just treatment for both women and children was one of the most historically prominent movements in America. Courageous women everywhere fought, protested and petitioned with the hope that they would achieve equal rights and better treatment for all, especially children. One of these women is known as Florence Kelley. On July 22, 1905, Kelley made her mark on the nation when she delivered a speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association, raising awareness of the cruel truth of the severity behind child labor through the use of repetition, imagery and oxymorons.
Patience Wright, formerly known as Patience Lovell, was born in 1725, in Long Island New Jersey to a “well-to-do-Quaker family” (MacLean, 1). At that time in America, women were not allowed to own property or make any kind of salary; it was custom for women to carry out their duties to marry and raising a family. Fortunately for Wright, the Quakers “believed women should have rights and education equal to men’s”, and being raised in a Quaker family gave her the independent and outgoing personality she is becomes known for later in her life. At the age of four, Wright’s family moved to Bordentown, New Jersey (Magliaro, 1). As a child Patience always had a special interest in art. Her sister and she would use wet dough to sculpt figurines and use grains or plant extracts to make paint (MacLean, 1).
In Christine Stansell’s City of Women, the main issue discussed is “the misfortunes laboring women suffered and the problems they caused” (xi). Throughout the book, Stansell delves into the different aspects that affected these female New Yorkers’ lives, such as inadequate wages, societal stigmas about women laborers, and the hierarchal class system, within antebellum America. She argues that since the nation’s founding, in 1789, the bedrock of these tribulations working women would be mercilessly exposed to was gender inequality. Women’s opportunities and livelihoods were strongly dependent on the dominant male figure in their life, due to the fact that in that period there was very few available and accepted forms of employment for women. Stansell claims, “Paid work was sparse and unstable. Laboring women were confined within a patriarchal economy predicated on direct dependence on men” (18). As the work continues, she illustrates these women’s desires to break away from their reliance on men, as well as the avenues they took to achieve this desired independence. To help solidify her
my name if farah ahmedi. and i have something to say. first, i am grateful for Alyce Litz, my mother, and so many others. i am also grateful to have this time. Although i do not have very much, i am going to share this time. I want to, because this is something, that has given me and so many others the urge. an urge to stand. and walk. and create. and protest. in truth, this time will stay. It will remain with us. unless we do something now. What would say to a young girl, of 4 or 5; who is in her school uniform. braids in hair. with a wholehearted desire. a desire for knowledge. but you have to say no. because she is what she is.
Evidence can be gleaned from the remaining copies of newspapers from this time period as to the types of jobs that women were pursuing. There were three types of ads offering work for them. The first, which comprised about 43% of the total, was for those who had involved herself in some kind of economic activity ad was seeking to market her product. The second type was for women who were ot presently employed, but seeking to find a particular type of work. This could include nurses, seamstresses and domestic help. The third ad category was seeking to employ a female as a wet nurse, housekeeper, and even plantation and dairy managers, shopkeepers or teachers.11.
Spencer did not work simply to earn money; she worked because she enjoyed what she was doing. According to A History of Women in the West, the women of the early 20th century were still working at home, keeping the children, doing house chores, and some even worked on the farm. When World War I broke out because of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, most women went to work in factories (24). Anne did not work in a factory; but she did work at Jones Memorial Library’s Dunbar Branch for $75 a month. Anne was not the typical librarian hired for this job. Though the library only served African American patrons, the position as a librarian normally went to a white person. She convinced the employer that she was qualified by showing him/her that she was a published poet. She also taught at her alma mater, the Virginia Theological Seminary and College for free, just because she loved teaching (Clark). On the other hand, Edward was Lynchburg, Virginia’s first parcel postman. Not only was this an enormous achievement for the city of Lynchburg, but also because Edward was an African American. Edward also helped out with the family grocery store which was close to their home on 1313 Pierce Street. The pay he received helped the family’s financial situation tremendously (Salmon 18).
"What must not be said: North and South and the problem of women's work", Catherine Barnes Stevenson.
Architecture, like art, had been only for men to pursue, but Mary Otis Stevens soon challenged the societal norms about her place in the field. The cultural standards and boundaries of the 1950s and 1960s were clearly defined, and “One of the most rigid of these boundaries was the one between the space for the daily lives of men and women, the city being defined as (men’s) work place and the suburb as (women’s) private residential haven… suburban house was both symbol and actual representation of enclosure of women and their children” (Umansky 29). Women were not allowed to be in the true workplace, and the only place they were openly accepted allowed to be was in the home taking care of children. Women were starting to have a voice in the world “in cultural and political debates” (Umansky 30) but they still had the dilemma of breaking through male-only fields, like architecture, “especially when they sought to go beyond helpmate roles” (Umansky 30). Many of the hardships Stevens overcame while trying to be accepted into an architecture program were not due to aptitude, but to sexism “some graduating classes had none (no women) at all” (Umansky 32). Even though she was in the architecture program, the university made it as hard as possible for her to stay there, for example a lack of proper dorms for women. Accepting women in
...ths and weaknesses in order to, improve my practice in the role of supporting children and young people. My learning can have a positive impact on future practice as it enhances the quality of children and young people’s health, safety and well-being.
Alice Malsenior Walker: An Annotated Bibliography, 1968-1986. Eds. Louis H. Pratt and Donnell D. Pratt. Connecticut: Meckler Corporation, 1988.