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Documents for "Social Reformers":
  • Abernathy, Ralph David 1926-90, American civil-rights leader, b. Linden, Ala. A Baptist minister, he helped Martin Luther King , Jr., organize the Montgomery bus boycott (1955). He was treasurer, vice president, and, after King's assassination (1968), president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). An...
  • Anthony, Susan Brownell 1820-1906, American reformer and leader of the woman-suffrage movement, b. Adams, Mass.; daughter of Daniel Anthony, Quaker abolitionist. From the age of 17, when she was a teacher in rural New...
  • Arnoldson, Klas Pontus 1844-1916, Swedish journalist and peace advocate. His untiring efforts for peace were rewarded by the 1908 Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with Fredrik Bajer. A book he wrote on world peace (1900) was widely read. As a member (1882-87) of the Swedish Riksdag, he introduced a motion for permanent neutrality. In the union crisis in 1905, he opposed war...
  • Astell, Mary 1666-1731, English author and feminist. Her Serious Proposal to the Ladies (2 parts, 1694-97) offered a scheme for a women's college, an idea far in advance of the time. The project was not realized,...
  • Bailey, Gamaliel 1807-59, American abolitionist editor, b. Mt. Holly, N.J. In 1837 he succeeded James Birney as editor and publisher of the Philanthropist at Cincinnati. Three times his office was attacked by proslavery...
  • Bajer, Fredrik 1837-1922, Danish pacifist and writer. He helped found the International Peace Bureau at Berne in 1891, and he shared the 1908 Nobel Peace Prize with K. P. Arnoldson.
  • Baldwin, Roger Nash 1884-1981, American civil libertarian, b. Wellesley, Mass. He helped to found (1920) the American Civil Liberties Union and was its director until 1950 and its adviser on international affairs thereafter....
  • Bamford, Samuel 1788-1872, English weaver, poet, and social reformer. Always sympathetic toward the working class, he was jailed in 1819 for his part in the Peterloo massacre. His dialect verses were popular among...
  • Barnardo, Thomas John 1845-1905, British social reformer. Pioneering in the care of destitute children, he founded (1867) in London the East End Juvenile Mission. In 1870, with the aid of the 7th earl of Shaftesbury,...
  • Barrows, Samuel June 1845-1909, American clergyman and reformer, b. New York City. He was a pastor in Dorchester, Mass., and later edited (1880-96) the Christian Register, a Unitarian weekly. In 1895 he was appointed by President Cleveland to represent the United States on the International Prison Commission. The following year he was elected to Congress, where he...
  • Bergh, Henry 1811-88, American philanthropist, b. New York City. He founded (1866) the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This organization, the first of its kind in the country, was...
  • Besant, Annie 1847-1933, English social reformer and theosophist, b. Annie Wood. She steadily grew away from Christianity and in 1873 separated from her husband, a Protestant clergyman. In 1879 the courts...
  • Birney, James Gillespie 1792-1857, American abolitionist, b. Danville, Ky. He practiced law at Danville from 1814 to 1818, before he moved to Alabama, where he served one term in the state legislature. Briefly (1832-34)...
  • Black, James 1823-93, American temperance leader. A Pennsylvania lawyer, he was active in state and national temperance work. His plan for a National Publication House was adopted by the National Temperance...
  • Blackwell, Alice Stone 1857-1950, American feminist, b. East Orange, N.J., grad. Boston Univ., 1881; daughter of Henry Brown Blackwell and Lucy Stone. She was an editor (1881-1917) of the Woman's Journal, first as assistant...
  • Blackwell, Henry Brown 1825-1909, American reformer, b. Bristol, England; brother of Elizabeth Blackwell. He was an abolitionist and later, with his wife, Lucy Stone , a worker for woman suffrage.
  • Bloomer, Amelia Jenks 1818-94, American reformer, b. Homer, N.Y. She was editor (1848-54) of the Lily, first published in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and devoted to women's rights and to temperance. In 1851 she recommended and adopted the reformed dress of short skirt and full trousers introduced by...
  • Bloor, Ella Reeve 1862-1951, American radical, popularly known as Mother Bloor, b. Staten Island, N.Y. After an early career in the woman-suffrage and temperance movements she joined the Socialist party in 1902 and...
  • Bloy, Léon 1846-1917, French writer. A Roman Catholic and a social reformer, Bloy wrote violent and vituperative attacks on religious conformism and bitter portraits of his life and friends. His works decry...
  • Brace, Charles Loring 1826-90, American clergyman and social reformer, b. Litchfield, Conn. America's pioneer children's advocate, he founded (1853) the Children's Aid Society of New York, an organization that...
  • Bradlaugh, Charles 1833-91, British social reformer, a secularist. Editor of the free-thinking weekly National Reformer from 1860 and later associated with Annie Besant , he was an early advocate of woman's suffrage, birth control, free speech, national education, trade unionism, and other controversial causes. In 1880, Bradlaugh was elected to Parliament after...
  • Brent, Margaret 1600?-1671?, early American feminist, b. Gloucester, England. With her two brothers and a sister, she left England to settle (1638) in St. Marys City, Md., where she acquired an extensive estate;...
  • Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell 1786-1845, British social reformer. As a member of Parliament (1818-37) he began his reform activities immediately with the publication of An Inquiry Whether Crime and Misery Are Produced or Prevented by Our Present System of Prison Discipline; this work led to the establishment of the Society for the Reformation of Prison Discipline. An abolitionist, Buxton succeeded William Wilberforce as leader of the antislavery group. His efforts...
  • Cadbury, Dame Elizabeth 1858-1951, English social worker and philanthropist, b. Elizabeth Mary Taylor, studied in France and Germany; wife of George Cadbury. She became interested in social service and was active in many organizations working for improvement in education, housing, and peace. She was a member of the Birmingham Education Committee after...
  • Cadbury, George 1839-1922, English manufacturer and social reformer; husband of Elizabeth Mary Cadbury. In 1861, Cadbury and his brother Richard assumed control of their father's Birmingham cocoa and chocolate factory. Interested in housing problems, the brothers moved (1880) the plant to Bournville...
  • Carmichael, Stokely 1941-98, African-American social activist, b. Trinidad. He lived in New York City after 1952 and graduated from Howard Univ. in 1964. Carmichael participated in the Congress of Racial Equality's "freedom rides" in 1961, and by 1964 was a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Alabama. As SNCC chair in 1966, he ejected more moderate leaders and set off a storm of...
  • Catt, Carrie Chapman 1859-1947, American suffragist and peace advocate, b. Carrie Lane, Ripon, Wis., grad. Iowa State College (now Iowa State Univ.), 1880. She was superintendent of schools (1883-84) in Mason City,...
  • Chadwick, Sir Edwin 1800-1890, English social reformer. For many years an assistant to Jeremy Bentham, Chadwick applied Bentham's utilitarianism to the reform (1834) of the Poor Law and to the development of public...
  • Chapman, Maria Weston 1806-85, American abolitionist, b. Weymouth, Mass. In 1834 she became a close associate of William Lloyd Garrison, helped organize the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, and for several years was...
  • Child, Lydia Maria 1802-80, American author and abolitionist, b. Lydia Maria Francis, Medford, Mass. She edited (1826-34) the Juvenile Miscellany, a children's periodical. She and her husband (David Lee Child, whom she married in 1828) were devoted to the antislavery cause; she wrote widely read pamphlets on the subject in addition to editing...
  • Clarkson, Thomas 1760-1846, English abolitionist. He devoted most of his life to agitation against slavery, and the voluminous information that he gathered on the slave trade helped to influence Parliament. With...
  • Cleaver, Eldridge (Leroy Eldridge Cleaver), 1935-98, African-American social activist, b. Wabbaseka, Ark. Growing up in Los Angeles, he spent much of 1954-66 in prison for various crimes including rape. In 1966 he...
  • Coffin, Levi 1798-1877, American abolitionist, b. North Carolina. In 1826 he moved to the Quaker settlement of Newport (now Fountain City), Ind., where he kept a store until 1847. His home became a leading...
  • Coffin, William Sloane, Jr. 1924-2006, American Protestant social activist, b. New York City. Strongly influenced by the social philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr, Coffin became a leader in the civil-rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s when he was chaplain at his alma mater, Yale. As minister (1977-87) of Riverside Church in New York City he was...
  • Comstock, Anthony 1844-1915, American morals crusader, b. New Canaan, Conn. He served with the Union army in the Civil War and was later active as an antiabortionist and in advocating the suppression of obscene...
  • Coram, Thomas 1668?-1751, English philanthropist and colonizer. He lived for some years in Massachusetts, working as a shipbuilder. On his return to England he became (1732) a trustee of James Oglethorpe's...
  • Corrigan, Mairead 1944-, Irish social activist, b. Belfast. A volunteer social worker in the Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast, Corrigan saw three of her sister's children killed when a car driven by an Irish...
  • Coxey, Jacob Sechler 1854-1951, American social reformer, b. Selinsgrove, Pa. He began his career as a stationary engineer, later turning to the scrap-iron business and then to sandstone quarrying in Massillon, Ohio...
  • Davies, Emily (Sarah Emily Davies) , 1830-1921, British feminist, co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge. Educated at home, she became (1862) secretary of a committee to obtain the admission of women to university examinations. Out...
  • Davis, Paulina Wright 1813-76, American lecturer and suffragist, b. Bloomfield, N.Y. Born Paulina Kellogg, she was married in 1833 to a merchant, Francis Wright, who died two years later. In 1849 she was married again,...
  • Day, Thomas 1748-89, English social reformer and author. He supported the American Revolution and the abolition of slavery and was interested in improving the lot of the small farmer. His moralistic History of...
  • Delany, Martin Robinson 1812-85, American black leader, b. Charles Town, Va. (now in West Virginia). The son of free blacks, he attended a black school in Pittsburgh and studied medicine at Harvard. He emphasized the...