Documents for "Social Reform":

• ACLU see American Civil Liberties Union.

• affirmative action in the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women. The policy was...

• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), nonpartisan organization devoted to the preservation and extension of the basic rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution. Founded (1920) by such prominent figures as Jane Addams, Helen...

• animal-rights movement diverse individuals and groups concerned with protecting animals from perceived abuse or misuse. Supporters are specifically concerned with the use of animals for medical and cosmetics testing, the...

• Brook Farm 1841-47, an experimental farm at West Roxbury, Mass., based on cooperative living. Founded by George Ripley , a Unitarian minister, the farm was initially financed by a joint-stock company with 24 shares of stock at $500 per share. Each member was to take part in the manual labor in an attempt to make the...

• civil disobedience refusal to obey a law or follow a policy believed to be unjust. Practitioners of civil disobediance basing their actions on moral right and usually employ the nonviolent technique of passive resistance in order to bring wider attention to the injustice. Risking punishment, such as violent retaliatory acts or imprisonment, they attempt to bring about changes in the law. In the modern era, civil...

• civil rights rights that a nation's inhabitants enjoy by law. The term is broader than "political rights," which refer only to rights devolving from the franchise and are held usually only by a citizen, and unlike "natural rights," civil rights have a legal as well as a philosophical basis. In the United States civil rights are usually thought of in terms of the specific rights guaranteed in the Constitution: freedom of...

• Common Cause U.S. organization that seeks a "reordering of national priorities and revitalization of the public process to make our political and governmental institutions more responsive to the needs of the nation and its citizens." Established in 1970 by John W. Gardner , it succeeded the Urban Coalition Action Council, founded in 1968. Common Cause supports a large number of political reforms, including campaign finance reform, government ethics and...

• communistic settlements communities practicing common ownership of goods. Communistic settlements were known in ancient and medieval times, but the flowering of such groups occurred in the 19th cent. in the United States,...

• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), civil-rights organization founded (1942) in Chicago by James Farmer. Dedicated to the use of nonviolent direct action, CORE initially sought to promote better race relations and end racial...

• Consumers' League, National organization designed to promote better conditions among workers by encouraging the purchase of articles made and sold under improved working conditions. The movement started in England (1890); the...

• cooperative movement series of organized activities that began in the 19th cent. in Great Britain and later spread to most countries of the world, whereby people organize themselves around a common goal, usually...

• cruelty, prevention of In the 19th cent. many laws were passed in Great Britain and the United States to protect the helpless, especially children, lunatics, and domestic animals, from willful and malicious acts of...

• desegregation see integration.

• Equal Rights Amendment see civil rights ; feminism.

• feminism movement for the political, social, and educational equality of women with men; the movement has occurred mainly in Europe and the United States. It has its roots in the humanism of the 18th cent...

• gay-rights movement organized efforts to end the criminalization of homosexuality and protect the civil rights of homosexuals. While there was some organized activity on behalf of the rights of homosexuals from the mid-19th through the first half of the 20th cent., the modern gay-rights movement in the...

• Greer, Germaine 1939-, Australian feminist and writer. She moved to England (1964), earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge, and taught at the Univ. of Warwick (1967-73). Her book The Female Eunuch (1970), an analysis of attitudes...

• gun control government limitation of the purchase and ownership of firearms. The availability of guns is controlled by nations and localities throughout the world. In the United States the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is guaranteed by the Constitution, but has been variously interpreted through the years. Since the late 1930s federal judicial and law enforcement officials have generally held that the right...

• Henry Street Settlement see Wald, Lillian D.

• League of Women Voters voluntary public service organization of U.S. citizens. Organized in 1920 in Chicago as an outgrowth of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, it had as its original nucleus the leaders...

• muckrakers name applied to American journalists, novelists, and critics who in the first decade of the 20th cent. attempted to expose the abuses of business and the corruption in politics. The term derives...

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organization composed mainly of American blacks, but with many white members, whose goal is the end of racial discrimination and segregation.

• National Organization for Women (NOW), group founded (1966) to support "full equality for women in America in a truly equal partnership with men." Its founder and first president was feminist leader Betty Friedan , author of The Feminine Mystique (1963). Through a program of legislative lobbying, court litigation, and public demonstrations, NOW seeks to end sexual discrimination in employment. The largest women's rights group in the United...

• NOW see National Organization for Women.

• orphan trains see Brace, Charles Loring.

• pacifism advocacy of opposition to war through individual or collective action against militarism. Although complete, enduring peace is the goal of all pacifism, the methods of achieving it differ. Some...

• Perfectionists see Noyes, John Humphrey.

• progressivism in U.S. history, a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th cent. In the decades following the Civil War rapid industrialization transformed the United States. A...

• Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs see Rotblat, Sir Joseph.

• safety movement widespread effort to prevent accidents that followed the increasing number of casualties in industry, traffic and transportation, and homes arising out of the Industrial Revolution and the growth...

• social settlement see settlement house.

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), civil-rights organization founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King , Jr., and headed by him until his assassination in 1968. Composed largely of African-American clergy from the South and an outgrowth of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that King had led, it...

• temperance movements organized efforts to induce people to abstain—partially or completely—from alcoholic beverages. Such movements occurred in ancient times, but ceased until the wide use of distilled liquors in the...

• Urban League, National voluntary nonpartisan community service agency, founded in 1910, whose goal is to help end racial segregation and discrimination in the United States, especially toward African Americans, and to...

• Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), organization that seeks to upgrade moral life, especially through abstinence from alcohol. The National WCTU of the United States was founded (1874) in Cleveland, Ohio, as a result of the...

• women's movement see feminism ; woman suffrage.