Clara Barton Humanitarian Entrepreneur Part 3

The Red Cross workers who were living out on the plantations where the Sea Islanders lived in cabins and tents distributed weekly rations. They then made people work for a lot of their meals in order to engage the people in work. They provided clothing and they had sewing circles to mend the donated clothing. And in some ways you could call this paternalistic, a little bit condescending, the way they supervised the distribution of goods and tools and supplies. For example, the Red Cross distributed turnip seed and 900 bushels of Irish potatoes for planting. But for fear that the people might eat the potatoes rather than planting them, Barton gathered the women of the islands in the Red Cross warehouse and supervised them while they prepared the potatoes for sewing. But you have to remember the people were really hungry, I mean they were eating one meal a day. Now, the Red Cross justified this supervision as necessary given its tight resources. But you couldn't really take this situation away from its historical and social context. Barton's attitude reflected the attitude of the abolitionists who'd come to the Sea Islands 30 years before to supervise the former slaves on cotton plantations which had been seized by the Union during the Civil War. And these abolitionists were seeking to prove to the world that former slaves would still be productive as free labor and could be educated. And Barton had actually participated in this project and had taught some young former slaves to read while she was working there during the Civil War. So this came 30 years later. And in the intervening time, white planters had seized much of the land in the south, but the Sea Islands was still an exception. And as late as 1890, black residents owned three-fourths of the land. And so these circumstances, you could argue, really did not justify this kind of condescending attitude. But at the same time, the American Red Cross can be really commended because they actually organized committees of Sea Islanders to decide for themselves who received what type of longer term aid and what kinds of rations. And the committee men picked up and distributed food, tools, supplies, and clothing and learned about planting seeds from the Red Cross workers as well as organizing group efforts to rebuild damaged homes. The Red Cross really wanted to leave the Sea Islanders in a position of independence. And they actually got some criticism from this because some of the mainlanders who happened to be white, criticized the ARC for favoring black Sea Islanders over them and for also appointing what they called, quote, a committee of Negroes to whom your fellow citizens were expected to go and tell their sufferings. They didn't want to go to this committee to tell their sufferings. So there was some, really, we talk about the, you know, the boundaries. We didn't have national boundaries, but you had some hostile boundaries between different racial groups. And the Red Cross here was able to apply neutrality and to persevere. Although the Sea Islanders continued to struggle after this, the organization demonstrated it was capable of offering neutral, humane, equitable assistance to people regardless of race or political affiliation. And in this way, the Sea Islanders' relief really exemplified Barton's vision of the American Red Cross. Now, Barton's vision, as I wrap up, had its limits, namely, she was limited in her ability to raise funds and to organize large groups of people. And by the time she got into her 80s, she was having difficulty keeping a precise accounting of how the funds were spent. So for this reason, there were people who wanted to get her to resign from the Red Cross, beginning in about 1900. And she was eventually pushed out, very, in a very difficult and combative environment at age 83, by a woman named Mabel Boardman, who was a well-connected Washington, D.C. socialite. And Boardman really built the Red Cross organizationally to make it into a multimillion-dollar institution. Now, when I told the story of Barton and Boardman in my book, I brought in this house, because this is where Barton and Boardman first met. Boardman had been named to the Board of Incorporators of the American Red Cross in 1901, and she started her involvement in the Red Cross by helping Barton, who'd been sick, with the annual report that she was required to submit to Congress. Now, this report was actually a product of Barton's success, because she had gotten the American Red Cross a congressional charter, which really made it the official disaster relief and wartime voluntary aid society. And part of this charter meant that the American Red Cross had to submit detailed annual reports to Congress. And so Mabel Boardman came out here to Glen Echo to help with this report. And let's just say she was not favorably impressed with Barton and her capabilities. And not only that, she came to the conclusion that Barton was hiding something. Now, it's hard for me, it was hard for me to understand, how did Boardman, okay, I could see Barton had been sick, she had been struggling with the finances and getting an annual report together, but why did Boardman take this other leap and think this woman, who was a national hero, who'd done so much work to organize the American Red Cross, to be a humanitarian entrepreneur in so many ways, how did she come to this negative conclusion that she was hiding something? Well, I had to go back and look at their differences, and their different generational differences, and their class differences, and look at this house, and look at Mabel Boardman's house, which is on P Street, it's a mansion. And Boardman had grown up in affluence. She had inherited money. And she didn't really understand how Barton could live on this shoestring of investments. And based on evidence I've collected from the National Archive, Boardman was also very personally conservative. She was a product of the Victorian era. And she lived with her parents in their home. She never married. She attended the National, she was actually influential in founding the National Cathedral. And I think she was somewhat taken aback by Barton's unorthodox living arrangements. That she shared her home with Dr. Hubble, who was shockingly not a relative, and not her husband, as well as with several other people of both sexes. And this was just scandalous in the Victorian view. And in fact, Boardman hired a private investigator to go into Barton's hometown and find out about her family, and to show that Barton had not inherited wealth. And then Barton, Boardman, and Boardman found that, but in fact, Barton had been, if anything, giving too much of her own money to the American Red Cross, rather than taking from it. And Boardman pushed for a Congressional investigation into Barton and the American Red Cross. And her conviction was that if they dug deeply enough, they'd find that Barton had, you know, some smoking gun about Barton. Well, indeed, all the evidence I have reviewed points to the fact that Barton did not embezzle, did not use the Red Cross for her own gain, and to the contrary, that again, she often gave much of her own savings. She certainly gave her entire life to the organization. And while she may have, toward the end, had limits in her accounting skills, and entrusted accounting to some people who were less than ideally competent, she really was, she was an entrepreneur who had started the whole thing, and would not have been able to start without her. And when, in May 1904, Boardman's continuing inquiries and pressure for additional investigations, after Congress had said, listen, this is inconclusive, we're just going to wrap up here, Boardman kept pressing. Eventually, in May 1904, Barton decided to resign. Now what's amazing is, even after this, being pushed out at age 83 from the organization that she founded and she loved, Barton still came back, and she founded the National First Aid Society, and she continued to work on this through her 80s. Now Henry Dunant's story followed a similarly uneven trajectory. He was obviously the visionary behind the Red Cross movement, but went bankrupt in the late 1860s, which was something that was considered shameful for a Swiss to go bankrupt. And he actually became homeless for a time, and was only located in the 1890s, living a barest existence. In his later years, his reputation was rehabilitated, and he actually won the very first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. Now Barton unfortunately did not live to win a similar honor, but I think we can, it's safe to say that her reputation as a pioneering humanitarian, as a pioneering entrepreneur in humanitarianism has been restored, and that she lives on in the continuing work of the American Red Cross and humanitarian organizations everywhere. And we can learn from Barton's story that being an innovator, being an entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur, a humanitarian entrepreneur, carries risks. Sometimes innovators are not necessarily the best institution builders, and often they're not recognized for all they have done. Moreover, Barton's story offers lessons that can be applied even today, if you want to start an organization, or you want to start something new. First, that it's important to communicate persuasively and passionately. And second, that it's important in the face of obstacles, even ones that may seem overwhelming, to persist with your ideas. And third, that when you hit a wall, you turn sideways. All right, thank you very much.