Nurses and Babies in front of Neighborhood House
Nurses and Babies in front of Neighborhood House. Neighborhood Union collection, ca. 1908-1935. Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center
Background
The Atlanta Neighborhood Union was founded by Lugenia Burns Hope and a coalition of middle-class Black women in 1908. At the time of its founding, there was no organization offering social work support for the Black community of Atlanta, which faced ongoing racist oppression under Jim Crow era policies. In her youth, Lugenia had studied social work under Jane Addams in Chicago. She wanted to apply what she had learned to uplift the Black community in her home city.
The Union divided Atlanta into five “neighborhoods” and conducted interviews to learn what services people in each neighborhood needed most. Then the Union leaders mobilized middle-class volunteers and the local Black colleges and universities to address their needs. They also taught community members how to organize and lead their own projects. Early Union pamphlets describe an array of goals, from providing better educational opportunities and building playgrounds to paving roads and improving sanitation. The Atlanta Neighborhood Union model still inspires community organizing efforts around the world today.
For more information about Black women’s clubs and organizations, watch the video below:
This video is from “Women Have Always Worked,” a free massive open online course produced in collaboration with Columbia University.
About the Resources
This photograph shows one of the neighborhood houses built by the Atlanta Neighborhood Union. The Union built a neighborhood house in each of the five Atlanta neighborhoods. The houses served as the hub for all community organizing and social services conducted by the Union in that neighborhood.
Vocabulary
- Jim Crow: The name for the many laws, rules, and customs that maintained segregation after the Civil War, often through violence and intimidation. The original Jim Crow was a minstrel character performed by a white actor in blackface to ridicule Black Americans.
- social work: Work aimed at improving the lives of people.
Discussion Questions
- Why do you think the Atlanta Neighborhood Union built a neighborhood house in every neighborhood? How does this align with its approach to social work?
- Based on this photograph, what kind of services were available at a neighborhood house?
- Why do you think the Atlanta Neighborhood Union decided to approach the question of social equality from the ground up?
Suggested Activities
- Compare this resource to Life Story: Jane Addams and consider how Lugenia Burns Hope adapted Jane Addams’s approach to social work.
- Pair this resource with the Tulsa Massacre to illustrate the realities of racial violence during this period.
- Pair this resource with the following resources to consider how racial politics defined the 1900s:
Themes
ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL CHANGE; POLITICS AND SOCIETY
