YWCA of Summit County

At the headquarters of the YWCA on Exchange Street, there's lots going on.

Pre-schoolers in the day-care center giggle as they try out a new game, listen to a story or just play with their friends.

Up the hall, it's a different story. A rape victim gets counseling at the county's Rape Crisis Center. Meanwhile, volunteers go through training so they can staff the 24-hour hot line or answer an emergency call at one of the area hospitals.

Around the corner, there's a Career Clothing Bank, where a woman "shops" for just the right dress to wear for her first job interview in years.

The conference room has a "meeting in progress." A small committee is hashing out the final details for the city's first suffrage march in decades, or working on the event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Sojourner Truth "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, or scheduling a series of workshops training women how to run for political office, or planning the gala for the YW's 100th birthday.

In the administrative wing, a small staff figures out how to run the branches, the 12 day-care centers, the two recreation centers, the special teen programming and still remain financially solvent.

It's just a typical day at the YWCA of Summit County -- and it's a far cry from the YWCA that started in Akron 100 years ago.
Akron came late to the YWCA movement.

The YWCA movement started in London in 1855 when a group of women organized the English Prayer Union. The idea was simple. The group would minister to the many needs of the growing number of employed women in the city within a safe, Christian environment. That idea spread quickly throughout England. By 1859, the movement, the activism and the organization had a new name, the Young Women's Christian Association.

The YWCA movement also spread to America. In 1858, Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts organized the Union Prayer Circle in New York City. Later that year, the group adopted the name, the Ladies' Christian Association, but the mission remained the same: "to labor for the temporal, moral and religious welfare of young women dependent on their exertions for support." The next year, Boston had a group -- this one named the Young Women's Christian Association -- committed to the same mission.

The Civil War interrupted the spread of the YWCA movement in America -- but only temporarily.

After the war, an almost religious zeal to help employed women burned in America -- and especially in Ohio. In 1868, both Cleveland and Cincinnati had YWCA associations. By 1870, Dayton had its own. The YW moved quickly to organize in small college towns -- Otterbein had a association in 1882; Wooster in 1883; Mt. Union and Ohio Northern in 1884. There were so many city and college associations and so much YW activism in the state that Ohio formed a statewide group in 1884, only the second state in the U.S. to do so.

As Ohio cities, towns and campuses organized their YWCA groups, there was little -- if any -- discussion about starting one in Akron. Nonetheless, Akron seemed the ideal location for a YWCA association, well before the 1901 founding.

By the late 1870s, Akron had all the ingredients for a successful YWCA: a history of reform and women's rights; a co-ed college; a growing pool of employed women, and a group of female activists committed to civic improvement.

Akron's ties to reform and women's rights dated back to at least 1851 when the city hosted the second women's rights convention. It was there that freed slave/Abolitionist/women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth gave the "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, which linked Abolitionism with women's rights with powerful Biblical appeals.

The Civil War did not halt the quest for women's rights; it was merely refocused to suffrage. By 1894, Akron women had the right to vote in school board elections and the suffrage movement flourished in the city.

The city was also the home of Buchtel College (now The University of Akron), founded by the Universalists in 1870. Drawing on the denomination's liberal heritage, the College admitted women on the same basis as men from its beginning. The College had a strong enrollment of women from the start.

Akron was also the home of a growing population of employed women. These women held traditional female occupations -- teaching, child care and housekeeping -- but more were finding jobs in the factories of the city.

In the late nineteenth century, women worked 60-hour work weeks at low wages in the rubber, cereal and pottery factories. They labored in crude working conditions, without benefit of protective labor legislation or a union. They also faced much criticism in the city. Comments by the Rev. J.S. Rutledge were typical. According to his sermons to the Methodist-Episcopal congregation on Main Street, factory work destroyed the very core of womanhood. "There is not much of the mother left in those who are employed in the factory," the Rev. Rutledge asserted.

In the post-Civil War period, also, the city had many civic-minded, affluent, benevolent women -- but they were busy with other causes. The Women's Benevolent Association held mother's meetings for needy women and ran a kindergarten and industrial department for girls; the Union Charity Association relieved cases of destitution; Akron Day Nursery cared for the children of unmarried working women; the Busy Bee Hive of the Maccabees pioneered insurance for women and organized girls clubs; the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) combated the ills of drink especially within the growing immigrant communities, and others addressed different community problems. In addition, every religious denomination had its own women's organizations committed to some form of faith-based activism.

It was this far-flung activism that led to the organization of the Council of Women made up of delegates from women's societies across the city in 1894. It was probably this move that made the Akron YWCA, which drew its membership from every denomination as well as a wide variety of different women's societies across the city, possible.

From its start in the WCTU rooms, Council delegates set priorities for the women in the city. In 1894, the group agitated for free kindergartens in schools and library reading rooms; in 1895, the focus was on a police matron in the city prison; in 1897, the group endorsed improving sanitary conditions for the schools.

A YWCA for Akron...

In 1900, the Akron Council of Women noted that the city desperately needed a YWCA.

Thus, in November 1900, when Chalista Wheeler, wife of an executive at Citizens National Bank, called together a small group of her friends to her Fir Hill home to look into the need and interest in starting a YWCA organization in Akron, she already had an endorsement from the Council of Women.

Wheeler had a personal reason for pushing to start a YWCA in Akron. Both her daughters, Ruth and Jane, had been students at Hiram College and were members of the YW there. They told her about the benefits of the YW to them personally and to employed women in cities generally. With the growing number of employed women in Akron, especially in the factories, the time seemed right -- if not overdue -- to start a YW association in the city.

The November meeting at Wheeler's home combined two forces, a small group of committed Akron women with professional YWCA organizers; Helen Barnes, national secretary for the YWCA, and Nellie Adams Lowry, state secretary, both attended. Under the tutelage and advice of these professional organizers, the Akron women went out to count the women interested in joining the YW and eventually passed out pledge cards and canvassed for potential members. The group also set out to determine the number of employed women in the city.

By March 1901, they had their answers. Akron did, indeed, have a large pool of women working outside the home. The survey revealed that 1500 worked in factories, 700 were teachers and telephone operators and 500 were clerks or stenographers.

The 181 pledge cards returned seemed to indicate a widespread interest in a YW organization for Akron. The charter membership list read like a Who's Who of Akron. It included wives and daughters of industrialists Seiberling, Miller, Manton, Schumacher, Andrews, Adamson, Chamberlain, Kile, Robinson and others, many of whom employed women in their factories. Wives and daughters of executives, bankers, physicians, attorneys, city officials, and college professors rounded out the list. No one Protestant denomination predominated but one socio-economic class did. Most of the charter members were affluent matrons. Few were employed outside the home.

On March 25, 1901, the Akron YWCA held its first meeting at the First Congregational Church on South High Street. Akron's YWCA was finally and formally organized on an evangelical basis. At that meeting, the leadership was elected -- Chalista Wheeler became president -- and the board of directors was selected.

The original board of directors included well-known benevolent women who reflected the Protestant diversity of the city. The women shared an upper socio-economic class and most had already proven their organizational abilities and civic commitment in a variety of other women's organizations. Among the original board of directors were Virginia A. (Mrs. W.B.) Conner, wife of a successful dentist, who gained her experience through the Women's Relief Corps.; Mrs. A.K. Fouser, wife of a prominent physician/surgeon, who remained active in the Frances Williard Union of the WCTU; Mrs. Isabel Berry, a widow, who was one of the founders of the Council of Women; Julia (Mrs. L.S.) Ebright, wife of the Postmaster, who remained active in the Akron Day Nursery, and Mrs. Etta Work, wife of the superintendent of the Akron Rubber Works, who also served the city's Culture Club and the Council of Women.

From the beginning, Akron's YWCA was committed to the enlightenment of the city's young women. Board member Mrs. Harriet Wright put the Akron YWCA's mission this way: "to advance the physical, social, intellectual, moral and spiritual interest of young women and the ultimate purpose of all its efforts shall be to bring a knowledge of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, as means for the individual young woman's fullness of character, and shall make the organization as a whole an effective agency in bringing in the kingdom of God among young women."

The Akron organization embraced its mission with a religious zeal. What it needed, however, was a professional staffer to convert the high-minded mission into workable programs. In 1901, the organization hired a general secretary (akin to today's executive director), Rosalie (also identified as Rosetta and Rosella) Meredith, to tend to the day-to-day running of the organization and the supervision of the enthusiastic volunteers. By September, Meredith and her committed band of volunteers were taking the YWCA into the Akron Cereal Mill and the Baker-McMillen factory. One volunteer recalled that while the employed women ate lunch, YWCA volunteers "would sing hymns, say a prayer, and then give them a little talk about the Y's work to try to get them to join." There is no report of the reaction of the female factory workers.

Meredith and volunteers started reaching out to women in other factories as well, by putting up posters inviting them to social events at the YW's "headquarters" in the basement of the Garfield Building on South High Street.

The YW was already serving low-priced lunches to women there -- no men were allowed at the time. Board members brought beans, tomatoes and carrots in from their gardens to keep expenses down. The Y also kept expenses down by paying low wages to staff. Indeed, the high turnover in the early staff -- the Akron YWCA went through five general secretaries in the first three years of its life -- may have reflected the low wages paid and the long hours required.

By 1902, Akron's YWCA, by then offering Bible classes and a "physical culture" program, seemed to be an unqualified success. The Beacon Journal called the organization a "Lusty Infant" with an insatiable appetite for members. The leadership of the national YWCA pointed to the Akron YWCA as a "model" for others to emulate.

In the first five years of life, the Akron YWCA suffered from all the problems that afflict young, growing community organizations. The organization quickly outgrew its basement headquarters in the Garfield Building. The Akron headquarters moved to the Doyle Block (Wilcox Building) on South Main Street. But the YWCA soon outgrew those rooms as well. In 1906, the organization's space problems were solved, at least temporarily, when the Union Charity Association donated the Grace House. The gift came with strings attached. The YWCA had to continue the Penny Savings program, use the Grace House name and teach domestic training classes. The Union Charity Association soon after disbanded.

After making extensive renovations to the building, the YWCA moved in to the Grace House in 1907. It was the ideal location for the YWCA; the Akron Times Press wrote, "beautiful, cozy and a refuge to the tired and weary, and a place where counsel and comfort can always be had merely for the asking." The Rev. F.W. Luce gave the dedication speech, warning that American morals were declining because of the "non-Anglo-Saxon foreigners" moving into the city and urged YWCA members to control that evil.

That speech seemed strangely out of step with the philosophy and programming that the Akron YWCA pursued during its early days. The Akron organization seemed to be committed to expanding and diversifying its membership to different groups, including the very "non-Anglo-Saxon foreigners" that the Rev. Luce feared.

The Akron YWA had been built on a Protestant evangelical foundation. There is no evidence to indicate that Catholics had been invited to participate. However, in 1902, the national secretary visited Akron and reminded the women that Catholics as well as Protestants could be members of the YWCA.

Less affluent Catholics -- and Protestants -- in the city benefited from the relatively inexpensive membership category designed to bring in less prosperous, employed women. However, the extent of the input these women had depended upon which membership category to which they were assigned. There were two $1 membership categories: one was "active" and allowed to vote and hold office; the other was "associate" not allowed to vote or hold office. Both categories required that the woman be of upstanding moral character. The only difference between the two categories, aside from the ability to vote and hold office, was religious affiliation. To be an "active" member, a woman had to be a member of a Protestant evangelical church in the city. The "associate" category did not. Thus, all Catholics, most newcomers to the city and those who had not yet affiliated with one of the designated Protestant churches were relegated to the "associate" category and had no real say in how the Akron YWCA was run. Thus, the Akron YWCA had created a two-tier membership system.

But the category did its job. By 1911, the membership of the Akron YWCA had grown to over 1600 and the very character of its membership was changing.

The affluent matrons remained the foundation of the Akron YWCA, its leadership and its volunteers but working women were starting to take advantage of the low rates and the improved facilities at the Grace House. According to statistics published in the Beacon Journal, 7 percent of the Y's membership were teachers, 6 percent were factory workers, 14 percent were clerical/stenographic workers, 5 percent were saleswomen, 5 percent were nurses, 1 percent were milliners, 5 percent were telephone operators and 2 percent were dressmakers. The membership of the Akron YWCA would remain diverse, drawn from a range of socio-economic, native, religious and, later, racial backgrounds.

The early programming of the Akron YWCA encouraged this diversity.

Factory women were especially targeted once the position of "extension secretary" was created in 1903. In 1904, the YWCA began teaching English lessons to women working in factories. In 1906, YWCA lessons, including a literature class, were offered at these factories and mills -- Baker-McMillen, Whitman Barnes, Akron China and Great Western Cereal Mill.
At the YWCA headquarters, the women offered a range of classes -- from the practical (Sewing, Cooking and Millinery) to the refined (French, Music and Drawing), from the academic (Arithmetic) to the vocational (Telegraphy), from the athletic (Swimming and Hockey) to the religious (Bible and Mission) and morally uplifting (Motherhood). In its early catalog of classes, there was something for the factory girl, the clerical worker, the teacher, the immigrant, the new mother and the affluent matron.

Education was only part of the early Akron YWCA activities, however. Women also relaxed at the popular YW-sponsored socials; they prayed together at the Sunday vespers.

Women who needed jobs also turned to the YWCA. In 1908, the Akron YWCA opened its first employment bureau. (The YWCA had earlier established a nursing registry in the city and would re-open its employment bureau in times of economic distress in the city.) The YWCA kept track of all the pertinent information on every woman who said she needed a job: name, address, kind of work desired, wages expected, Protestant or Catholic, nationality, appearance and work history. Women paid only a small fee for the services; prospective employers paid more.

Offering an employment service seemed a natural development for Akron's YWCA. Indeed, the organization had close links with the factory owners who employed women. The YWCA's membership included the wives and daughters of these industrialists. The YWCA relied on the goodwill of the managers to grant them access to the female employees at lunchtime. Branches were being formed at the factories, especially in the rubber factories. The owners of factories financially supported the YWCA and served on its Board of Trustees.

That relationship sometimes put the leadership of the YWCA -- the wealthy members of the board -- at odds with the staff and the working members. No where was that conflict more apparent than in 1912, when women workers at the rubber factories and YWCA staffer Berenice Brown took the low wages, inadequate housing and substandard working conditions to the public in the pages of the Akron Times Press.

Brought into the city by the rubber companies' recruitment, the women were disillusioned with what they found in Akron -- unfit conditions at work and inadequate, expensive housing. The YWCA industrial liaison Brown sided with the women, emphasizing she had pleaded with the rubber companies to install rest rooms for women and build dormitories for working women but to no avail.

Akron YWCA President Harriet Wright claimed such allegations were slanderous, that the working women of Akron were well paid, faced sanitary conditions at work, enjoyed the benefits of restaurants, rest rooms and trained nurses in the factories, and took advantage of the many opportunities at the YWCA after hours. "The Y.W.C.A. and the employers work hand in hand," Wright emphasized.

That might have been part of the problem, one woman responded. She invited Wright to come to work in a rubber shop and "see how she would like to work for 10 cents an hour and work 10 hours. And then pay $4 a week to board in a respectable place."

That exchange set the tone for the remainder of Wright's administration. In January 1913 Professor Rauschenbusch of the Rochester Theological Seminary addressed the Akron YWCA and said that women deserved less pay than men because they were less skilled and had no families to support. The Akron organization also had nothing to say during the month-long IWW strike against the rubber shops that same year.

The public disagreement, the speech and the lack of support during the disastrous IWW strike did not stop the growth of the YWCA in the factories or its popularity among factory women, however. By World War I, almost every rubber shop in the city had some connection with the YWCA and many factory women frequented the organization's classes, vesper services and "physical culture" program.

The Evolving Akron YWCA...

World War I was a turning point in the YWCA's development in the city.

During the war, the YWCA provided much needed resources for women in the city, of course; but it also established programs, policies and philosophies that would dictate the direction of the organization for decades.

During World War I, the Akron YWCA was under new leadership. YWCA President Mrs. C.H. Case, wife of the owner of the Akron Veterinary Hospital, had deep roots in the community. She was active in the Akron Home and School League, Century Club and Story Tellers League as well as the women's organization of the First Congregational Church. She was helped by an able, experienced general secretary, Edith M. Nash, a graduate of Oberlin College.

The new direction committed the YWCA to diversity -- diversity of age with the creation of the Girl Reserves (later called the Y Teens) for those 12 to 18; diversity of nationality with the start of the International Institute, and diversity of race by admitting African Americans initially into segregated groups then integrating clubs and facilities later.

At the same time, the YWCA committed itself to providing inexpensive, safe, Christian housing by opening dormitories and residences for employed women and women visiting the cities (transients), although such housing came with rules that many would find oppressive.

Photos courtesy of The University of Akron Archives

More YWCA history