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Guardians. In 1927 she helped to open the Lake County
Children's Home, and she served as its director for three years. She was one of the founders of Gary's Interracial Commission in 1924, and served on the board of the John Stewart Social Settlement Center, a settlement house serving African-Americans in Gary. She organized the Business and Professional Women's Club in Gary. She spoke at the National Negro Business League conference in St. Louis, Missouri in 1927. She was vice-president of the Gary Council of Social Agencies, and active in the city's YWCA.
123:, the daughter of Horace Ferdinand Edwards and Anna Bell Johnson Edwards. Her grandparents were runaway slaves who migrated from Missouri to Illinois. Edwards' mother was a teacher in Wharton County. Both of Edwards' parents were involved in community work and social reform. The Edwards family later relocated to Houston.
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European social movements, such as the rise of communism and socialism. The
European Seminar of International Relations traveled to Spain, and the Soviet Union, which was a “safe haven” for black radicalists at the time. Edwards attended the International Congress against Anti-Semitism Racial Discrimination.
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In the early 1930s, Thyra
Edwards traveled to Europe for work in international affairs. Edwards visited Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and France. In Paris, Edwards led a travel seminar, The European Seminar of International Relations, an international group of social workers who were involved in
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Thyra
Edwards graduated from Houston Colored High School in 1915. While Edward was in high school, she held close friends with black and white girls her age. She recalls her personal interracial friendships and noticing how their skin-tones were a determining factor in their daily experiences. She
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She was based in
Indiana for the next twelve years, working as a teacher, social worker, and juvenile probation officer, interracial activist, while lecturing and becoming more active in labor and civil rights work. In 1925 she became a child placement specialist with the Lake County Board of
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In the early 1930s, Edwards traveled to the Soviet Union to "explore for the soviet promise of a better society”. Edward’s trip to the Soviet Union was a significant adventure for her and supported her views, like the value of communism to civil rights and sexual liberation.
243:, whom she described as "tall and black and real and beautiful and poised, and wrapped in flame", and "Negro Literature Comes to Demark", her 1936 report from the International People's School. She wrote about the Spanish Civil War in a series of articles for the
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during World War II, she taught about the Soviet Union at the Carver School. In 1944, she was heralded as "one of the most outstanding negro women in the world." At the end of World War II, she became the
Executive Director of the Congress of American Women.
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Thyra
Edwards felt that she had an international approach to social work, and engaged in journals, engagement in communities, and union organizations. Her social work career focused on a perspective that modern day social workers call "work systems theory."
263:
Thyra J. Edwards married steelworker James
Malcolm Garnett in 1924; they divorced a year later. She married again, to Murray Gitlin, in 1943. They lived in Italy after 1948, where he was working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
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Thyra
Edwards supported the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, and used her role to not only travel to Europe and the Soviet Union, but also to Mexico to further her work. Because of this, the FBI monitored Thyra's work until she died.
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In 1946, Edward’s was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She was then later diagnosed with breast cancer. Thyra
Edwards Gitlin died in New York, 1953, aged 55 years, from breast cancer. The Thyra Edwards Papers are archived at the
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Edwards traveled in Europe in 1929, and moved to Chicago in 1931, to be a social worker with the Joint Emergency Relief Commission, while living at the Abraham Lincoln Centre, a settlement house. She soon became active with the
212:. She worked alongside her academic peers, surveying colonies of children who were evacuated and relocated due to the war. When Edwards returned to America she continued pursuing her organizing work for Spain with the
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when it formed in 1918. In 1919, she began working for the Houston Social Service Bureau as a family visitor, where she began her work in social work. The next year moved to Gary, Indiana with her sister, Thelma.
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Her social work viewpoint focused on advocating for at-risk populations and predisposed disadvantages, the injustices affecting the well-being of women and working with and uniting diverse populations.
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Edwards was a caseworker for the Joint Emergency Relief Commission. In mid-1930s, she traveled in England, Scandinavia, Austria, Germany, and the Soviet Union, then on the Spain to work with child
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During this time in the history of America, it was believed that black social workers should only help the blacks, but Thyra Edwards helped people of all races, nationalities and ethnicities.
173:, a black union based in Chicago, and with the Progressive Miners of America in southern Illinois. In 1933 she was part of forming the Chicago Scottsboro Action Committee.
223:
During her time traveling in Europe, in 1953, she organized the first Jewish child care program in Rome to assist the children who had fallen victim to the Holocaust.
239:. She wrote from her travels for African-American periodicals including a 1932 report on a homeless men's shelter in Chicago, a 1933 interview with Nigerian lawyer
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107:(December 25, 1897 – July 9, 1953) was an African-American educator, social worker, journalist, labor and civil rights activist, and women's rights activist.
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While Edwards was studying organizing and studying in Europe, she traveled to Spain, where she spent a significant amount of organizing during the
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Edwards started as a teacher in Texas, right after high school. She became a charter member of the Houston chapter of the
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Phillips, Michael (July 2012). "Review of Book "Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle"".
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trained as a social worker at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. She also studied labor politics at
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272:. Actor William Marshall was Thyra Edwards' nephew, the son of her sister, Thelma Edwards Marshall.
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The Depression Comes to the South Side: Protest and Politics in the Black Metropolis, 1930–1933
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Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism
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365:"Community Bonds in the Bayou City: Free Blacks and Local Reputation in Early Houston"
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416:"Thyra J. Edwards – #DiversityInHealthcare | Health Sciences Library Blog"
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Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International
522:"Hermina Huiswoud, "Thyra Edwards," Women I Have Known Personally"
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291:"Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle"
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Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting
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Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle
255:, saying of the latter ideology that "Fascism degrades women".
247:. Edwards used these articles to express her support for
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As a journalist, Edwards wrote news articles for the
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677:. Duke University Press. pp. 68, 106, 108.
98:journalist, educator, social worker, activist
16:American educator, social worker and activist
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35:Thyra J. Edwards, in an undated photograph.
464:"Thyra J. Edwards Diversity in Healthcare"
180:. As head of the women's committee of the
119:Thyra Johnson Edwards was born in 1897 in
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593:Thyra J. Edwards, "Chicago in the Rain"
214:Negro Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy
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607:Reed, Christopher Robert (2011-10-05).
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567:Hamilton, John Maxwell (2011-08-15).
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750:20th-century African-American people
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220:admired, and acknowledged her work.
745:20th-century African-American women
651:"Negro Literature Comes to Denmark"
293:. The Journal of Southern History.
171:Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
715:African-American women journalists
441:VCU Social Welfare History Project
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635:"Stella Thomas: King's Counselor"
487:Southwestern Historical Quarterly
369:Southwestern Historical Quarterly
178:refugees of the Spanish Civil War
671:McDuffie, Erik S. (2011-06-27).
337:. University of Missouri Press.
462:Lapka, Stefanie (2020-11-09).
133:International People's College
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363:Marks, John Garrison (2014).
331:Andrews, Gregg (2011-06-14).
720:African-American journalists
443:. VCU Social Welfare Library
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640:(December 1933): 368-369.
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730:American social workers
468:Health Sciences Library
182:National Negro Congress
129:Brookwood Labor College
735:American anti-fascists
270:Chicago History Museum
237:Associated Negro Press
538:10.1353/pal.2020.0010
520:Donlon, Anne (2020).
495:10.1353/swh.2012.0057
472:University of Houston
381:10.1353/swh.2014.0022
253:opposition to fascism
105:Thyra Johnson Edwards
45:Thyra Johnson Edwards
755:Female anti-fascists
656:(May 1936): 140-141.
597:(May 1932): 148-149.
90:Thyra Edwards Gitlin
725:American educators
649:Thyra J. Edwards,
633:Thyra J. Edwards,
684:978-0-8223-5050-7
620:978-0-253-00552-6
580:978-0-8071-4486-2
344:978-0-8262-1912-1
210:Spanish Civil War
137:Elsinore, Denmark
111:, and communist.
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638:Opportunity
595:Opportunity
139:, in 1933.
79:Nationality
699:Categories
654:The Crisis
421:2021-04-19
299:1143640889
276:References
115:Early life
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546:2165-1612
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489:: 88–89.
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231:Writing
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158:NAACP
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