Community Work
As a freelance writer, community organizer and activist, Mrs. Murphy was devoted social, racial and economic justice through her use of the written word and via various forms of civic engagement. During her sixty years in Baltimore, she participated in numerous community organizations. As a resident of Cherry Hill, she ran unsuccessfully for City Council. And over a span of 26 years, she was involved in some capacity with 14 different political campaigns.
After having been a volunteer for fifteen years, she was appointed director of community services for the Cherry Hill Community Presbyterian Church, where she served from 1959 to 1969. In that position, she developed programs in literacy, political education, and youth development. The church served as a last resort for many Cherry Hill residents in need of food, clothing, counseling, job placement and was a location of community organizing around the issues facing welfare recipients and the lack of affordable housing. Under her leadership, this organizing led to the creation of a state-funded day care center in the church for welfare recipients and job training program participants.
Mrs. Murphy organized one of the first contingents of neighborhood VISTA volunteers, a group that later became active in the National Welfare Rights Organization and tenant organizing. During her life, she mentored many African-American women in Baltimore from childhood through college and beyond. Admirably, her community work was both personal and public, and grassroots as well as civic.
Mrs. Murphy served as a charter commissioner on the governing board of the city of Baltimore's Anti-Poverty Program (headed by the late Parren J. Mitchell), worked on the Community Action Commission, and from 1969 to 1972, became a training officer in the Community Action Agency (the predecessor to the Urban Services Agency). She also coordinated a freshman sociology course at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, called “Perspectives on Race”, from 1970 to 1972.
Read more about this topic: Madeline Wheeler Murphy
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or work:
“The community and family networks which helped sustain earlier generations have become scarcer for growing numbers of young parents. Those who lack links to these traditional sources of support are hard-pressed to find other resources, given the emphasis in our society on providing treatment services, rather than preventive services and support for health maintenance and well-being.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)
“Our kids will develop a work ethic only if we require them to pay a portion of the cost of some of the things they want. They’ll learn to defer gratification the moment we stop routinely pulling out our wallets. And they’ll learn self-discipline only if we care enough to enforce reasonable limits.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)