How Did a Multi-Racial Movement Develop in the
Baltimore YWCA, 1883-1926?

Endnotes

Introduction

1. “Introduction,” in Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City, Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 1997), p. 1.  This book is a compilation of essays on the YMCA and YWCA in several American cities.  The introduction provides a good overview of the history of the organizations.  Although it is difficult to generalize about the experiences of urban workers, the essays in this volume offer insight into the problems faced by many cities during the Progressive Era.
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2. Robert H Wiebe, The Search for Order 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), p. 13.  Wiebe's description of how American cities grew during the late-nineteenth century provides a good background for understanding the conditions faced by men and women who sought work in the city.
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3. Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 43.  In this book Spain examines how women transformed American cities. She asserts that they used a variety of means to provide for the physical and spiritual needs of women.  Their efforts to clean the city and provide affordable housing were a small part of the reform activities of many women between the Civil War and World War I. "Women adrift" were one target of middle-class reform efforts. They were women neither living with family nor as domestic servants in their employer's home. A 1910 federal report labeled these women as "adrift."
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4. Bill Harvey, "Hampden-Woodberry: Baltimore's Mill Villages," in The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History, Elizabeth Fee, Linda Shopes, and Linda Zeidman, eds. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), p. 86. 
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5. Mjagkij and Spratt, Men and Women Adrift, pp. 2-3.
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6. Spain, How Women Saved the City, p. 96.
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7. Helen Bittar, "The YWCA of the City of New York: 1870 to 1920" (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 1979), pp. 22-24.  In her dissertation, Bittar provides a strong explanation for the founding of the Young Women's Christian Association.  While it is not good to generalize too much across cities, the story of the New York YWCA shows many of the major issues faced in Baltimore and other large industrial cities.
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8. Sarah Heath, “Negotiating White Womanhood,” in Men and Women Adrift, p. 86.
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9. Spain, How Women Saved the City, p. 6.
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10. Nancy Marie Robertson, "Deeper Even then Race?: White Women and the Politics of Christian Sisterhood in the Young Women’s Christian Association, 1906-1946" (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 1997), p. 18.  This study offers a clear discussion of how the issues of religion and race influenced the leaders of the YWCA and the programs they then offered.
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11. For the best treatment of early interracial activities in the YWCA movement, see Adrienne Lash Jones, "Struggle among Saints: African American Women and the YWCA, 1870-1920," in Mjagkij and Spratt, eds., Men and Women Adrift, pp.160-87.
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12. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), p. 193. 
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13. Jones, "Struggle among Saints," pp. 163-65.
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14. Jane Olcott Walters, "History of Colored Work," typescript manuscript prepared in 1920 by Walters from YWCA national records. Photocopy courtesy of Adrienne Lash Jones.
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15. Jones, "Struggle among Saints," pp. 172-73.
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Document 8

16. "Wharf sharks" were individuals who preyed on newly arrived immigrants seeking to exploit their ignorance of the country. They intercepted immigrants at the docks and railroad stations. Reformers eventually sent volunteers to prevent the wharf sharks from leading young immigrant women into "immoral" professions. Spain, How Women Saved the City, pp. 15-16.
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17. For more information on the City Beautiful movement see Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City, pp. 13-17 and William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 75-95.
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18. This work is well described in Adrienne Lash Jones, "Young Women's Christian Association," pp. 1299-1303 in Darlene Clark Hine et al., eds., Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson, 1993), reprinted as the overview of this project.
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19. Jane Olcott, The Work of Colored Women (New York: Colored Work Committee War Work Council, 1919), pp. 133-36.
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Document 27

20. Jones, "Struggle among Saints," pp. 180-83.
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