|
A Brief Timeline of Social
Work History in the United States
|
|
1848 |
The Seneca Falls Convention, an early and
influential women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York,
set in to motion the American women's suffrage movement. |
|
1865 |
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and
involuntary servitude. |
|
1869 |
The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was
formed in New York City. |
|
1870 |
The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the
United States Constitution prohibited each government in the United
States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's
"race, color, or previous condition of servitude". |
|
1877 |
The first American charity organization society was established in
Buffalo, New York. |
|
1889 |
In Chicago, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr open
Hull House, which becomes one of the most influential social settlement
houses in the United States. |
|
1898 |
The New York Charity Organization started the first school for social
workers.
(The New York School of Philanthropy, which later became the Columbia
University School of Social Work). |
|
1898 |
Mary Richmond publishes Friendly Visiting Among the Poor. |
|
1917 |
Social worker Jeannette Rankin becomes the first
woman elected to the U.S. Congress. |
|
1917 |
Mary Richmond publishes Social Diagnosis. Social
workers use her book as a primary text. |
|
1919 |
The 17 schools of social work that exist in the
United States and Canada form the Association of Training Schools for
Professional Social Work to develop uniform standards of training and
professional education. This group is later renamed the American
Association of School of Social Work (AASSW), eventually becoming the
Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). |
|
1920 |
The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the
United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be
denied the right to vote based on sex. |
|
1931 |
Social work pioneer Jane Addams is one of the first
women to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. |
|
1933 |
Frances Perkins, a social worker, was the first
woman to be appointed to the cabinet of a U.S. President, serving as the
U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945. |
|
1933 |
President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduces the New
Deal, a series of legislative measures aimed at addressing the problems
of the Great Depression. He establishes major social welfare programs to
combat poverty and unemployment. |
|
1933 |
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration establishes public
assistance offices in each state, focusing on alleviating adult
unemployment. Each office is required to have at least one trained
social worker on staff. |
|
1935 |
The Aid to Dependent
Children (ADC) program was created by the Social Security Act of 1935. |
|
1935 |
The Social Security Act is signed into law. In
addition to several provisions for general welfare, the new Act creates
a social insurance program, providing a retirement income to those 65
and older. |
|
1937 |
The AASSW declares that beginning in 1939 the
requirement for social work accreditation will be a two-year master's
degree program. The MSW becomes a requirement to be considered a
professional social worker. |
|
1939 |
American Association of Schools of Social Work, the
accrediting body for social workers, declared MSW degree as the minimum
requirement to be a professional social worker. |
|
1940 |
Mary Parker Follett's posthumous book Dynamic
Administration is published; it becomes an influence in the field of
social welfare administration. |
|
1952 |
The CSWE is formed
through a merger of the AASSW and the NASSA –the two competing
organizations that had been setting standards for schools of social
work. CSWE is soon granted the authority to accredit graduate (MSW)
schools of social work. |
|
1954 |
Landmark U.S. Supreme court case, Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka, outlaws school segregation. |
|
1954 |
In social casework, the so-called "diagnostic" and
"functional" schools begin to merge and lose their separate identities. |
|
1955 |
The Montgomery Bus Boycott began after Rosa Parks,
an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her
seat to a white person. |
|
1955 |
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW)
is created, becoming the first organized social work professional
association. |
|
1956 |
United States Supreme Court decision that declared
the Alabama law requiring segregated-seating on public buses to be
unconstitutional. |
|
1957 |
Dorothy Height was named president of the National
Council of Negro Women, a position which she held until 1997. |
|
1957 |
The United States Civil Rights Act is passed,
outlawing segregation in U. S. schools and in public places. |
|
1958 |
Working Definition of Social Work Practice, headed
by Harriett Bartlett, defines person-in-environment as social work is
comprehensive domain of practice; published in 1970 by Bartlett in
Common Base of Social Work; reaffirmed in two special issues of Social
Work on conceptual frameworks in 1977 and 1981. |
|
1959 |
Social Work Education Curriculum Study, headed by
Werner Boehm, claimed a broad-based orientation for social work that
recognized five specialization methods: casework, group work, community
organization, administration, and research. |
|
1962 |
The Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program is
renamed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), due to
concern that the program's rules discouraged marriage. |
|
1963 |
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, or
"The Great March on Washington", was the largest political rally for
human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic
rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C. on
Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his
historic "I Have a Dream" speech, advocating racial harmony, at the
Lincoln Memorial during the march. |
|
1964 |
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize |
|
1964 |
The Civil Rights Act outlawed major forms of
discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation. |
|
1964 |
President Lyndon B. Johnson launches the Great
Society programs designed to eliminate poverty and racial inequality. |
|
1964 |
The Food Stamp program is enacted. |
|
1965 |
The Voting Rights Act
outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for
the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. |
|
1965 |
The
Delano grape strike began when the Agricultural Workers
Organizing Committee, mostly Filipino farm workers in Delano,
California, led by Philip Vera Cruz, Larry Itliong, Benjamin Gines and
Pete Velasco, walked off the farms of area table-grape growers,
demanding wages equal to the federal minimum wage. One week after the
strike began, the predominantly Mexican-American National Farmworkers
Association, led by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and Richard Chavez,
joined the strike, and eventually the two groups merged, forming the
United Farm Workers of America in August 1966. Quickly, the strike
spread to over 2,000 workers. |
|
1966 |
Peter Buxton, a social worker, tried unsuccessfully to expose the
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. |
|
1968 |
Social worker Peter Buxton tries (again) unsuccessfully to expose the
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. |
|
1968 |
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights
Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 is commonly
known as the Fair Housing Act |
|
1969 |
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous,
violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the
early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the
Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently
cited as the first instance in American history when people in the
homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system
that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining
event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United
States and around the world. |
|
1970 |
The Women’s Strike for Equality was a strike which
took place in the United States on August 26, 1970. It celebrated the
50th anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which
effectively gave American women the right to vote. The rally was
sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW). More than 20,000
women gathered for the protest in New York City and throughout the
country. At this time, the gathering was the largest on behalf of women
in the United States. The strike primarily focused on equal opportunity
in the workforce, political rights for women, and social equality in
relationships such as marriage. It also addressed the right to have an
abortion and free childcare, but these were more controversial positions
which more conservative women, including pro-life feminists, generally
did not agree with. |
|
1972 |
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was brought to
public and national attention when Peter Buxton, a social worker, told a
friend at the Associated Press, who gave information
to the Washington Star and the New York Times. |
|
1974 |
The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act is
signed. |
|
1974 |
Council of Social Work Education, social work's new
accrediting body in the U.S., revises former standard to include the BSW
as a professional social worker. |
|
1975 |
Title XX Social Services Block Grants becomes the
major source of funding for the provision of social services to
individuals. Money is given to states to achieve the following goals:
(1) Achieving or maintaining economic self-support to prevent, reduce,
or eliminate dependency; (2) Achieving or maintaining self-sufficiency,
including reduction or prevention of dependency; (3) Preventing or
remedying neglect, abuse, or exploitation of children and adults unable
to protect their own interests, or preserving, rehabilitating or
reuniting families; (4) Preventing or reducing inappropriate
institutional care by providing for community-based care, home-based
care, or other forms of less intensive care; (5) Securing referral or
admission for institutional care when other forms of care are not
appropriate, or providing services to individuals in institutions. |
|
1979 |
The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act is
enacted, including subsidized adoptions, changes in foster home care and
provision of day care facilities. |
|
1988 |
Deaf President Now (DPN) was a student protest
at Gallaudet University. The university, established by an act of
Congress in 1864 to serve the Deaf, had always been led by a hearing
president. The protest began on March 6, 1988 when the Board of Trustees
announced its decision to appoint a hearing person as its seventh
president. Gallaudet students, backed by a number of alumni, staff, and
faculty, shut down the campus. Protesters barricaded gates, burned
effigies, and gave interviews to the press demanding four specific
concessions from the Board. The protest ended on March 13 with the
appointment of I. King Jordan, a Deaf man, as university president. |
|
1988 |
The Family Support Act of 1988 is signed in to law,
introducing comprehensive child support enforcement laws and the Job
Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program. |
|
1988 |
The Senior Citizen Nutrition Program becomes a part
of the Department of Social Services - Services for Adults Division. |
|
1990 |
The Americans with Disabilities Act is enacted,
outlawing discrimination in the workplace due to disability, and
requiring accessibility to public spaces. |
|
1996 |
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is signed in to law by President
Bill Clinton, which aimed to eliminate the Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC) program. |
|
1997 |
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
program began, succeeding the Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC) program. |
|
1998 |
The social work
profession celebrated its Centennial to commemorate 100 years of
professional social work in the United States. |
|
2005 |
TANF was reauthorized as part of the Deficit
Reduction Act of 2005. |
