03/10/2020
She was approached by a young girl who kept repeating "mommy ... baby ... blood." The young nurse at first wasn't sure what to do, but she followed the child to a sick woman in a dirty, unheated tenement on the Lower East Side of New York, where immigrants were forced to live in horrible conditions.
The young girl's "mother was bleeding to death in childbirth, and . . . the doctor had abandoned the family because they couldn’t afford to pay him," according to the New York Times.
The young nurse saved the woman's life.
The nurse had been training to become a doctor [and was enrolled in medical school], which was "a rarity at that time for a woman," according to writer Sara Ivry.
But after seeing the horrid conditions immigrants had to endure, she decided to quit medical school to help and care for those in need. “She calls that her ‘baptism of fire’ moment,” Katie Vogel, a public historian, said, “because it was the first time that she witnessed those conditions up close in a way that she understood how all the factors of poverty all come together.”
The name of the young nurse was Lillian D. Wald. She was born on March 10, 1867. She championed the causes of public health nursing, housing reform, suffrage, world peace, and the rights of women, children, immigrants and working people.
"In 1893, after witnessing first-hand the poverty and hardship endured by immigrants on the Lower East Side, she founded Henry Street Settlement. She moved into the neighborhood and, living and working among the industrial poor, she and her colleagues offered health care to area residents in their homes . . . In addition to health care, Henry Street provided social services and instruction in everything from the English language to music," according to the web page of the Henry Street Settlement.
“Scorn of the immigrant is not peculiar to our generation,” she wrote in “The House on Henry Street,” the memoir she wrote in 1915.
"Lillian Wald originated the public health nursing service and the Henry Street Settlement to meet the needs of the poor . . . During the early twentieth century, this outstanding nurse and social activist was a dynamic force for social reform, creating widely-adopted models of public health and social service programs," according to the National Women's Hall of Fame.
This is part of a continuing series on the Peace Page celebrating Women's History Month.
She also "founded, and pioneered an array of social programs and initiatives that so many now take for granted," according to Ivry.
"A fierce advocate for children, she created the first playground in New York City; pioneered special education; introduced the concept of free lunches and nurses in schools; and fought against child labor," according to the New York Times.
“We extrapolated that one in six Americans has been impacted or touched by a program that was pioneered at Henry Street,” said David Garza, the organization’s executive director. “You see something like a playground — how many of us have been in a playground? How many have had a lunch at school that was free? How many have had a nurse visit someone who needed homecare?”
Wald "rejected the dominant idea of her time: that poverty is a personal moral failing . . . and she took great responsibility for those less fortunate than she was," according to Ivry.
She "went on to help organize other public health nursing programs in universities and for organizations, including the American Red Cross . . . [she also] led the charge to abolish child labor, and helped secure the creation of the federal Children’s Bureau in 1912," according to the National Women's Hall of Fame.
An early civil rights activist, Wald was an outspoken proponent of equal rights and justice for women and people of color. She insisted that all Henry Street classes be racially integrated, and she established settlement house branches in neighborhoods that had larger African-American populations so that they, too, would have access to her organization’s services.
In response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, she and Mary Talbert, Jane Addams, and Mary McLeod Bethune became founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whose first meetings were held at the Henry Street Settlement.
And, when it came to helping immigrants, Wald “thought immigrants’ culture should be valued . . . she didn't think people [should give] up their culture . . . and thought the contributions of immigrants should be celebrated,” according to Ivry.
“As a nation, we must rise or fall as we serve or fail these future citizens,” Wald wrote in a revelant observation, noting, “only through knowledge is one fortified to resist the onslaught of arguments of the superficial observer who, dismayed by the sight, is conscious only of ‘hordes’ and ‘danger to America’ in these little children.”
"A tireless and accomplished humanitarian", she became "one of the most influential and respected social reformers of the 20th century," according to the Henry Street Settlement.
"A recently discovered artifact shows the power and influence of Lillian Wald," according to the New York Times, a book which had the signatures of Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. "Throughout the 20th century, the settlement house served as a destination for civil rights leaders like W.E.B. DuBois, who visited Henry Street’s stately dining room for the reception celebrating the N.A.A.C.P.’s founding conference. Decades later, Rosa Parks stayed there while attending a rally at Madison Square Garden, just five months after her arrest."
"Wald established a close community of women—with whom she had both romantic and platonic relationships—at the Settlement," according to the Henry Street Settlement.
"Wald did not marry and maintained her closest relationships with women. Although she did not self-identify as a le***an, her letters reveal the intimate affection she felt for at least two of her companions, Mabel Hyde Kittredge and Helen Arthur," according to lgbt history month.
Today, the Henry Street Settlement continues to serve low-income individuals and families, survivors of domestic violence, youngsters ages 2 through 21, individuals with mental and physical health challenges, and senior citizens.
Wald was named by the New York Times as one of the 12 greatest living American women in 1922, devoting her life ensuring that women and children, immigrants and the poor, and members of all ethnic and religious groups would realize America's promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Lillian Wald, according to Michael Bronski, "imagined an America in which helping the poor was not charity but a work of democracy and a demonstration of equality."
~ jsr
[Photo courtesy of National Women's Hall of Fame]
