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Community Corner

Reading with Jessie B. Ramey

As part of the Women’s History Lecture Series, the author of the innovative study Child Care in Black and White Working Parents and the History of Orphanages, Jessie B. Ramey, will discuss her book examining the development of institutional child care from 1878 to 1929, based on a comparison of two “sister” orphanages in Pittsburgh: the all-white United Presbyterian Orphans’ Home and the all-black Home for Colored Children. Focusing on the agency of poor families who used these institutions in times of family crisis to meet their child care needs, Ramey explores the cooperation and conflict among working parents, children, orphanage managers, progressive reformers, staff members, and the broader community. Drawing on quantitative analysis of the records of more than 1,500 children living at the two orphanages, as well as census data, city logs, and contemporary social science surveys, this study investigates the intertwined hierarchies of gender, race, and class at the foundation of orphanage care. Raising new questions about the role of child care in constructing and perpetrating social inequality in the United States, Ramey’s work provides insight into the lives of working-class families struggling to balance their wage labor and parenting responsibilities in a modernizing industrial economy. Jessie B. Ramey is an ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Women’s Studies and History at the University of Pittsburgh.

Location on campus: Esther Raushenbush Library Meeting Room

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