Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children (Louisville, KY)
(start date: 1909 - end date: 1937)Charles Henry Parrish, Sr. was the founder of the Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children; in 1909, Mr. O. Singleton was the superintendent. After a few months, Singleton was replaced by Parrish.
In 1910 the Kentucky General Assembly passed an act for the benefit of the organization, providing "the sum of five thousand dollars per annum payable annually, for the benefit of the Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children...." The sum was raised to $10,000 per year in 1912 and $15,000 in 1920.
The Kentucky Home for Colored Children, located at 825 S. Sixth Street in Louisville, KY, housed some of the children described as "defective" and "hard to place" in buildings at the former Eckstein Norton school in Cane Spring, KY. The Sixth Street location was managed by Bessie Allen at some point during the time blues singer Mary Ann Fisher was one of the children at the orphanage.
The care of the children and the condition of the facilities were always in question. In 1937, the state funding was withdrawn, and the Home Society was reorganized with the children being removed and placed in boarding homes under a state-employed supervisor.
A newly-created section for Colored children was developed in the Division of Child Welfare of the State Department of Welfare. In 1938 a consultant from the Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor was loaned to the Kentucky Division of Child Welfare to conduct a study of resources for the care of Colored children, followed by a conference of representative Negro citizens held in Louisville to discuss the results.
For more see Acts Passed at the ... Session of the General Assembly, Chapter 34 (1910), J. Bradford, printer to the Commonwealth; Child Welfare Services Under the Social Security Act, by the U.S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, Title 5, part 3, Development of Program 1936-38, Bureau Publication No. 257; "Other sources...," Box 12, Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children, 1936-38 at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives; and Chapter V, "Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children," in Child Welfare Work in Louisville, by W. H. Slingerland.