Topic: Race & Social Justice
Featured
Funding a Social Movement: The Ford Foundation and Civil Rights, 1965-1970
A story recounting many accusations, from rigged elections to the meddling of big private money in grassroots organizing.
The Fairy Godmothers of Women’s Studies
Moving scholarship by and about women from margin to center.
Can Data Drive Social Change? Tackling School Segregation with Numbers
In the years before Brown v. Board, a philanthropic fund hoped research and data would turn the tide on attitudes toward segregation.
Centering Women’s Rights in the Population Field: The Ford Foundation and Sexual Health in the 1990s
A 1994 meeting moved women’s empowerment front and center for grantmaking in global population.
Documenting Injustice: Recording the Histories of the Japanese American Incarceration
The origins and legacy of a research project conducted in the American concentration camps for Japanese Americans.
Early 20th Century Reforms of Medical Education Worldwide
Working to change US medical education was one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s biggest endeavors in the 1910s and 1920s, extending from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to Beijing, China.
Sex Problems as Social Problems: The Bureau of Social Hygiene, 1911-1934
When Dr. Katherine Bement Davis was named general secretary of the Bureau in 1917, her appointment transformed the organization to take into deeper account women’s sexuality.
The Women Pioneers of Global Nursing Education Who Built the Rockefeller Foundation Program
A massive program in nursing education extended to 53 schools across the globe. But it never became a top priority of the foundation that supported it.
The Rockefeller Foundation and Civil Liberties During the Early Cold War
A foundation-supported publication challenged McCarthyism and caused a controversy.
A “Constructive and Important Failure”: A Foundation Funds Job Training in the 1970s and 1980s
Prompted by Reagan-era budget cuts, a new program serving low-income single parents receiving public aid failed to meet its constituents’ needs.
Timeline: A Century of American Philanthropy’s Engagement with Race and Racism
Delving into a century of philanthropic engagement with race, from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights era.
“Highest Standards”: Elite Philanthropy and Literary Black Voices during the Civil Rights Era
Against a backdrop of white, establishment concepts of literary excellence, one foundation struggled to appreciate Black voices.