Over the years, The Junior League has been the subject of two books definitely worth a read, The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service and The Volunteer Powerhouse.
Loaded with important history, profiles of inspiring women, and compelling coverage of significant accomplishments with great relevance to The Junior League of today (and an occasional bit of juicy trivia), the titles are increasingly tough to get your hands on, so we decided to serialize them, chapter by chapter, here on connected to make them more accessible to members.
For the first installment, we’ve opened up the first chapter of The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service, which was published in 2001 to commemorate The League’s Centennial. Following an introduction, which provides a helpful annotated timeline, the first chapter, entitled “New Century, New Needs, New Women,” covers the decade from 1900 to 1910 and discusses the awakening of young women with means to the dire (and unaddressed) social causes in their midst, the early rumblings of the suffrage movement, and the founding by Mary Harriman of The Junior League for the Promotion of Settlement Movements, the organization that would ultimately become The Junior League.
Here’s a noteworthy piece of trivia: As a student at Barnard, Mary Harriman drove her own carriage to campus and regularly hitched her horse several blocks away so that she could arrive on foot to avoid being identified as a member of the privileged class.
Please wait while the Introduction and Chapter One of The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service loads below, or download the PDF now.
The Junior League: 100 Years of Volunteer Service, Chapter 1