San Antonio College Library

The story of the Grimké family, starting with abolitionists and women's rights advocates Angelina and Sarah Grimké who gave up their position in Charleston society to work for what they believed in. The Grimké's brother had two sons with one of his slaves, Archibld and Francis Grimké. The two went on to become leaders in the newly formed NAACP. Archibald's daughter, Angelina Ward Grimké, was a poet and playwright during the Harlem Renaissance....

Follows the stories of three women in one extended family to explore how Bill Clinton's efforts to rework the country's welfare system impacted more than nine million women and children.

"This group biography explores the lives, work, and personal relations of nine white, middle and upper-middle-class women who were involved in the first decade of Chicago's premier social settlement. This "galaxy of stars"--As they were called in their own day - were active in innumerable political, social, and religious reform efforts." "The Women of Hull House refutes the humanistic interpretation of the social settlement movement. Its spiritual...

In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity,...

Moral reform movements claiming to protect children began to emerge in the United States over a century ago, most notably when Anthony Comstock and his supporters crusaded to restrict the circulation of contraceptive devices, information on the sexual rights of women, and "obscene" art and literature. Much of their rhetoric influences debates on issues surrounding children and sexuality today. In a book filled with Victorian accounts of pregnant girls,...

"In American Abyss, Daniel E. Bender examines an array of sources -- eugenics theories, scientific studies of climate, socialist theory, and even popular novels about cavemen -- to show how intellectuals and activists came to understand industrialization in racial and gendered terms as the product of evolution and as the highest expression of civilization. Their discussions, he notes, are echoed today by the use of such terms as the 'developed' and...

"In Against Obscenity, Leigh Ann Wheeler restores female anti-obscenity activists to their rightful place in twentieth-century women's history, uncovering a fascinating and largely untold story of the Progressive Era. At the center of Wheeler's study stands Catheryne Cooke Gilman, an indomitable woman who led the anti-obscenity movement in her native Minneapolis, and eventually a movement formed of national grassroots organizations. Through the activities...