Found 6 collections related to Social reformers

Jacob August Riis (1849-1914) was a journalist, author, social reformer, and photographer. He was born in Denmark and emigrated to the United States in 1870. While working as a reporter for the New York Tribune, he began his crusade to improve urban life. His efforts to ameliorate conditions in the slums included campaigns for effective child labor laws and building codes. Riis worked at the Tribune until 1888 when he became a police reporter at the Evening Sun. After his retirement in 1899, he continued to write books and articles and lectured extensively until his death in 1914.The Jacob Riis papers consist of correspondence, diaries, lecture notes, manuscripts, photographs, and printed matter. Correspondence includes family letters of Riis, his second wife and her family; and business letters regarding Riis's work, publications, lecture tours, and farm matters. Diaries cover Riis's early years in the U.S. as well as his later business and personal affairs. Lecture notes pertain to speeches on housing, organized charity, and related topics. Holograph manuscripts represent major works. Photographs are of Riis, his family, and scenes of Denmark. Also included are news clippings, published manuscripts, letters and notebooks. less

William Frey (1839-1888) was a Russian-American social reformer and positivist. Collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts of writings, diaries, and other papers, chiefly regarding Frey's work in founding a community in Cedar Vale, Kansas, and to his preaching of positivism. Includes correspondence with Russian liberals and revolutionists, American communists, and American and English positivists; tracts on positivism; and a biography in Russian of Auguste Comte. less

Francis Patrick Walsh (1864-1939), an American lawyer and political reformer, was one of the chief architects of the legislative struggle against industrial exploitation of children and an advocate of Irish and anti-imperialist causes. He also fought for civil liberties and was a labor partisan and staunch New Dealer. Collection consists of correspondence, 1907-1939, with professional and political colleagues, friends, family, and others. There also are correspondence and papers, 1915-1939, concerning Irish affairs, the Committee on Industrial Relations, Louise Bryant, the Democratic National Committee, National Progressive League for F.D.R., the 1929 strike of textile workers in Passaic, N.J., the Spanish Civil War, and the Tom Mooney case. The rest of the collection consists of papers relating to Walsh's legal practice; some photographs of Walsh, his family, Eamon De Valera and others; a few posters dealing with Tom Mooney; and clippings, periodicals, newsletters, bulletins and other printed material about civil liberties, the Democratic Party, the Spanish Civil War, the National Woman's Party, child labor, the labor movement, and World War I and the Paris Peace Conference. less

Elizabeth Oakes Prince Smith (1806-1893) was an author, lyceum lecturer and early activist on behalf of women's rights. Her writings included novels, poetry, children's books, plays, essays, stories, and articles for newspapers and magazines. She was active in the women's rights movement and in 1848 attended the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. She was one of the first female lecturers on the lyceum circuit. Her husband, Seba Smith, was a newspaper editor and writer. Collection consists of Smith's writings, correspondence, drawings, and printed matter providing information on her literary career and her activities as a lyceum lecturer and early women's rights advocate. Writings include manuscripts of Smith's autobiography; manuscripts and clippings of her articles, lectures, poems, stories, plays, dime novels, and other writings. Among her writings are reminiscences of Ralph Waldo Emerson and several chapters of an unfinished biography of George Washington. Also, a small quantity of correspondence of Smith and her children, materials concerning spiritualism and psychometry, and several drawings and a photograph. less

The Florence Kelley papers document the professional career and family life of the Progressive-era social reformer. The papers include correspondence with her grandparents Isaac and Elizabeth Pugh, her parents William Bartram Kelley and Caroline Bonsall and her children Nicholas, William Darrah, Jr., John Bartram and Margaret Kelley. Kelley's professional correspondence documents her commitment to social reform, from her time at Hull House in Chicago to her tenure as general secretary of the National Consumers' League. The collection also includes manuscripts and typescripts of Kelley's writings, address books, scrapbooks, photographs, and a few items of ephemera. less