Existing comment:
A portrait of Elisabeth Gilman (1867-1950) and her step-mother. Elisabeth Gilman, daughter of the first Johns Hopkins University president Daniel Coit Gilman, became a tireless social reformer. In 1890, she started a boys' club and in 1915, a workshop for unemployed Baltimoreans, In World War I, she volunteered as a nurse in France. Here, she become interested in socialism and labor unions. In 1923, she organized relief efforts for striking West Virginian miners and defended members of the International Workers of the World. In addition, she joined the Socialist Party, ran for governor, U.S. Senate, and mayor of Baltimore. She was a board member of the League for Industrial Democracy, secretary of the Maryland Civil Liberties Union, and founder of the Christian Social Justice Fund. Her home, located on Park Avenue, was a refuge for "feisty communist-leaning reformers." |