Relationships of Reform: Frances MacGregor Ingram, Immigrants, and Progressivism in Louisville, Kentucky, 1900-1940
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the life of Frances MacGregor Ingram, a progressive reformer in Louisville, Kentucky. It follows Ingram’s career in social work at the Neighborhood House settlement and the Progressive reform movements in which she held leadership positions from 1905 to 1939. This project concentrates on Ingram’s involvement in reform movements pertaining to tenement housing, garbage collection management, dance hall regulation, juvenile delinquency, mental hygiene institutions, probation, wholesome recreation, child welfare, child labor, women’s working conditions, unemployment, and Great Depression relief. Most Progressive Era scholarship concentrates on northern cities and reformers, such as Jane Addams at Hull House. But much of the literature overlooks southern contributions to the settlement house movement and progressive reform as a whole. This dissertation serves three purposes. First it helps fill the gap in scholarship on southern progressivism. Reformers in the urban South were not limited to charity work and prohibition. They engaged in complex and dynamic social reforms. Incredibly diverse in scope, Kentucky’s reform history should be understood in the context of southern society and politics, which impacted which progressive reforms were successful and which were not. Second, it builds on other women’s reform scholars by expanding previous conceptions of the Progressive Era to include the 1930s. By doing so, it provides a better understanding of women’s reform activism. Third, this dissertation provides a more balanced approach by emphasizing the alliances Ingram formed with immigrant communities. With a few exceptions, settlement literature primarily focuses on the movement leaders. Unlike some settlements, Neighborhood House Americanization programs via clubs, recreation, and citizenship classes were negotiated between the settlement and its neighbors. Through the lens of Ingram’s urban reform experience in Kentucky, this dissertation uses gender, class, race, ethnicity, and region to unpack the complicated relationships between reformers like Ingram, working-class immigrants, and male political officials.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Gabin, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Social research|American history|Biographies|Social work|History|Political science|Sociology
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.