Brooks, John Graham (19 July 1846–08 February 1938), reformer and sociologist, was born in Acworth, New Hampshire, the son of Chapin Kidder Brooks, a merchant, and Pamelia Graham. During his youth he worked at the store owned by his father, who also represented the town of Acworth in the state legislature. After graduating from Kimball Union Academy in 1866, Brooks attended the University of Michigan Law School but soon changed his mind about studying law. He left after a year and taught the next year on Cape Cod. In 1868, after a summer in Quebec perfecting his French, he enrolled in Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio. After graduating in 1872 Brooks returned to New England and enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated with a degree in sacred theology in 1875. He was soon ordained and served as a Unitarian minister in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In addition to his pastoral duties, he involved himself in labor reform and organized classes in history and economics for the workingmen of the neighborhood. His liberal sermons attracted listeners from Cambridge and Beacon Hill. He was soon addressing informal groups on social problems. In 1880 he married the widow of another Unitarian minister, Helen Lawrence Appleton Washburn, who shared his reform impulses; they had three children....
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Brooks, John Graham (1846-1938), reformer and sociologist
James E. Mooney
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Low, Seth (1850-1916), reform mayor and university president
Augustus Cerillo
Low, Seth (18 January 1850–17 September 1916), reform mayor and university president, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Abiel Abbot Low, a merchant, and Ellen Almira Dow. Low’s mother died a week after his birth, and two years later his father married Ann Davison Bedell Low, the widow of Low’s uncle. Low had all the advantages of wealth and social status: he enjoyed a home in fashionable Brooklyn Heights, summers spent in New England, and travel in Europe. After graduating first in his class from Columbia College in 1870, he joined his father’s tea and silk importing firm, A. A. Low and Brothers, eventually becoming a full partner. On 9 December 1880 he married Annie Wroe Scollay Curtis; they had no children....
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Shanker, Albert (1928-1997), teacher and union leader
Edward L. Lach, Jr.
Shanker, Albert (14 September 1928–22 February 1997), teacher and union leader, was born in New York City, the son of Morris Shanker, a union newspaper deliveryman and a former rabbinical student from Poland, and Mamie Burko Shanker, a sewing-machine operator. The son of immigrants whose first language was Yiddish, Shanker grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Queens, where he learned the benefits of trade unionism from his parents and the effects of prejudice from neighbors of predominantly Irish and Italian extraction. He attended local public schools and entered the University of Illinois in Urbana after graduating from Manhattan's prestigious Stuyvesant High School. While attending Illinois, Shanker became politically active by joining the Young People's Socialist League and picketing segregated restaurants and movie theaters in the community....
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