56 Facts About Florence Kelley

1.

Florence Moltrop Kelley was a social and political reformer and the pioneer of the term wage abolitionism.

2.

From its founding in 1899, Kelley served as the first general secretary of the National Consumers League.

3.

In 1909, Florence Kelley helped to create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

4.

On September 12,1859, Kelley was born to William D Kelley and Caroline Bartram Bonsall in Philadelphia.

5.

Florence Kelley's father was a self-made man who became an abolitionist, a founder of the Republican Party, a judge, and a longtime member of the US House of Representatives.

6.

Caroline Bartram Bonsall, Florence Kelley's mother, was not a less-prominent figure.

7.

Florence Kelley spent many happy years with her grandparents Isaac and Kay Pugh.

8.

Florence Kelley had two brothers and five sisters; all five sisters died in childhood.

9.

Florence Kelley was an early supporter of women's suffrage after her sisters died and worked for numerous political and social reforms, including the NAACP, which Florence Kelley helped found.

10.

Florence Kelley wanted a divorce because of his physical abuse and overflowing debt.

11.

Florence Kelley earned a law degree at Northwestern University School of Law in 1894.

12.

Florence Kelley was then able to start a school for working girls in Pennsylvania.

13.

Florence Kelley was a member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an activist for women's suffrage and African-American civil rights.

14.

Florence Kelley was a follower of Karl Marx and a friend of Friedrich Engels.

15.

Florence Kelley joined the Hull House settlement house from 1891 to 1899.

16.

Florence Kelley became friends with Grace and Edith Abbott as well as Alice Hamilton, a professional physician specialized in preventing occupational diseases.

17.

Florence Kelley interacted with the Chicago Women's Club under Jane Addams' sponsorship by establishing a Bureau of Women's Labor within Hull House.

18.

Florence Kelley is credited with starting the social justice feminism movement.

19.

Reform of labor conditions, in line with her socialist commitments, led to Florence Kelley having pioneering roles in factory inspection, in organizing social movement pressure on employers, and in advocating for reform legislation and legal action over the course of her career.

20.

Florence Kelley contributed to or led a variety of social organizations including National Child Labor Committee, National Consumers League, National Conference of Social Workers, American Sociological Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association, NAACP, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

21.

Florence Kelley's father had toured her through glass factories at night when she was young.

22.

Florence Kelley fought to make it illegal for children under the age of 14 to work and to limit the number of hours for children under 16.

23.

Florence Kelley sought to give the children the right of education, and argued that children must be nurtured to be intelligent people, beginning with her efforts in Philadelphia and New York.

24.

The breakdown of her marriage led Florence Kelley to flee from New York to Chicago at the end of 1891.

25.

In 1892, Kelley conducted a survey of Chicago's slums at the request of US Commissioner of Labor, Carroll D Wright,.

26.

Florence Kelley became a leader in a coalition of labor and civic groups to campaigning on behalf of the reform legislation.

27.

Later in 1892 Florence Kelley proposed investigating the "sweating system", "the practice of contracting out work to homes of the poor," in Chicago to the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics.

28.

Florence Kelley persuaded the bureau to hire her as a Special Agent to investigate the labor conditions of Chicago's garment industry.

29.

The coalition campaign and Florence Kelley's research led to new state labor reform legislation in 1893.

30.

Florence Kelley chose five women and six men to assist her.

31.

DuBois, Florence Kelley was well known for asking pointed questions to find a course of action.

32.

Florence Kelley noticed a lot of inequitable distributions for white schools as opposed to black schools.

33.

Florence Kelley wanted to add the language that guaranteed equitable distribution of funding regardless of race.

34.

Florence Kelley believed that if anything was added about race to the bill, it would not pass through Congress.

35.

Florence Kelley wanted to get the bill passed and then to change the language.

36.

Unlike her stance on equitable distribution of educational funds, Florence Kelley was not demanding any provisions for equitable distribution, as she knew the bill would never pass if the issue of race was introduced, especially with the opposition already present from southern states.

37.

Florence Kelley believed that it was more important to pass the legislation, even in its limited form, so that the funding would be secured and the primary principle of social welfare would be established.

38.

Florence Kelley used her power in Congress by her personal connections to avoid discrimination from being passed in laws, especially toward expenditure toward school funds.

39.

Florence Kelley is famous for creating the tradition of protest against racial discrimination, which occurred in the mid-20th century.

40.

In 1923, Florence Kelley struggled for admission of the National Association of Colored Women as members of the Women's Joint Congressional Committee, which formed in 1920.

41.

Florence Kelley succeeded by January 1924, when 15 of 17 organizations included NACW members.

42.

Florence Kelley used her direction to raise public awareness and pass state legislation to protect workers, primarily for women and children.

43.

Florence Kelley used the NCL to address her own policies such as local hours and wages of women via data collection and activism.

44.

Florence Kelley served as a mentor to younger activists, such as Mary van Kleeck, who briefly worked for the Consumers League.

45.

Florence Kelley often acted as a representative to address state legislators and expanded the NCL network through women's clubs.

46.

Florence Kelley worked hard to establish a workday limited to eight hours.

47.

In 1909, Kelley helped create the NAACP and thereafter became a friend and ally of W E B Du Bois.

48.

Florence Kelley worked to help improve child labor laws and working conditions.

49.

Florence Kelley's NCL sponsored a "Consumer's 'white label'" on clothing that restricted garment production with child labor and working conditions against state law.

50.

Florence Kelley led the National Consumers League until her death, in 1932.

51.

In 1907 Florence Kelley organized New York's Committee on Congestion of Population, after which she and Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch sponsored an exhibit on the causes and consequences of congestion and methods for alleviating it, catalyzing the first National Conference on City Planning in 1909.

52.

Florence Kelley worked with Josephine Goldmark to provide the information organized by lawyer Louis Brandeis in what became known as the Brandeis Brief to demonstrate the harmful effects of overtime on women's health.

53.

Florence Kelley helped lobby Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916, which banned the sale of products created from factories that employed children thirteen and under.

54.

Florence Kelley died, age 72, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on February 17,1932.

55.

Florence Kelley was named an Angel hero by The My Hero Project.

56.

Florence Kelley argues for this by distinguishing between two types of philanthropy: bourgeois philanthropy and philanthropy of the working class.