Teacher June Hopkins
We are pleased to offer a recap of Teacher June Hopkins’ presentation to the Columbia Seminar Seminar on Full Employment, Social Welfare, and Equity (May 12, 2025: “A Social Worker’s Fight for Complete Work.” Professor Hopkins is the granddaughter and biographer of New Deal Relief Administrator and Assistant of Commerce Harry Hopkins. Participating in the presentation were June Hopkins’ son David Giffen, Exec Supervisor, Union for the Homeless, New York City, and six other descendants of Harry Hopkins. Additionally present was President Franklin’s D. Roosevelt’s grand son, Franklin D. Roosevelt, III, Teacher Emeritus of Business Economics, Sarah Lawrence University, a long-time Affiliate of the Columbia University Workshop on Full Employment. Social Well-being, and Equity.
Co-sponsoring this event was Living New Deal, New York City Phase
The Granddaughter of Harry Hopkins, June Hopkins instructed American history at Armstrong State University for 17 years and retired Emerita in 2016 She made a BA in English at UC Berkeley, a MPA from Speed University in New York City, a MA in history from Cal State Northridge and a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown College. Her work experience consists of five years as a social employee in New york city City prior to becoming a chronicler.
June Hopkins has released three books:
Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Bold Radical , St. Martin’s Press, 1999 Released as a book by Palgrave McMillan, January 2009, Globe of the Roosevelts.
Jewish First Better Half, Divorced: The Communication of Ethel Gross and Harry Hopkins Co-editor, Allison Giffen, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, Lexington Books, March, 2003
Harry Hopkins and the Grand Partnership of the Second Globe Battle, Amazon, 2023
A Social Worker’s Fight for Complete Employment
As a social worker that climbed to become one of Franklin Roosevelt’s closest experts, Hopkins committed his job to combating poverty with government-led task production, developing concepts that continue to be quickly relevant today. His core ideology maintained that making certain person welfare via employment represented federal government’s fundamental responsibility, a conviction taken shape during his very early deal with New york city’s Association for Improving the Problem of the Poor.
Hopkins’ ingenious strategy first materialized in 1915 through a pioneering work-relief project at New York’s Bronx Zoo. Challenged with prevalent unemployment during a financial downturn, he protected a contract where private charity funds paid workers to develop public infrastructure. This initiative utilized 231 guys at incomes preventing charitable preconception while completing municipal tasks the city could not pay for. The version developed Hopkins’ lifelong belief in work over cash money relief, asserting that jobs maintained human dignity while promoting regional economies through wage circulation.
When the Great Depression developed an unmatched nationwide situation, Hopkins’ methods gained federal range. As director of New York’s Temporary Emergency situation Alleviation Management under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hopkins had deployed twenty million bucks for joblessness assistance, insisting on socially beneficial tasks paying dominating earnings without discrimination. His success led Roosevelt to designate Hopkins Federal Emergency Relief Administrator in 1933, where Hopkins disbursed half a billion dollars in gives– the initial direct federal aid to states for alleviation– to sustain 4 million households within weeks of taking workplace.
The peak of Hopkins’ achievements emerged with the Civil Functions Administration, released in November 1933 Opposing conventional administrative timelines, he employed 800, 000 workers within two weeks and four million within four months. Half originated from main alleviation rolls while the various other fifty percent represented the surprise jobless who had rejected charity. Projects focused on labor extensive facilities like schools, roads, and airport terminals, with eighty percent of the program’s 9 hundred million dollar budget plan allocated straight to incomes. Hopkins framed this as activating both economic and spiritual pressures, stating purposeful work an autonomous right.
In spite of these accomplishments, Hopkins dealt with substantial setbacks. His proposal for long-term government job guarantee was excluded from the spots 1935 Social Security Act due to monetary problems. When Roosevelt reduced New Offer costs in 1937, activating the Roosevelt Recession, Hopkins said the resort verified his long-held view that only sustained public work might achieve healing. As head of the Works Progress Administration until 1942, he directed eight million employees in varied projects from building and construction to arts programs under Federal One, which employed hundreds of artists, writers, and performers. Doubters disregarded social work as wasteful, however Hopkins maintained that all workers was worthy of food, no matter occupation.
Throughout his job, Hopkins faced ideological opposition with pragmatic resolve. He rejected worries about program prices by highlighting America’s capacity to money societal well-being, famously informing an Iowa questioner that people collectively spend for what they value. Having actually administered over twelve billion bucks without personal wealth– passing away impoverished in 1946– Hopkins symbolized civil service stability. His 1939 address at Grinnell University distilled his vision: federal government needs to ensure economic incorporation to make sure that poverty ends up being indefensible in a country of wealth.
Whereas Hopkins produced firms to utilize Americans, existing plans eliminate public tasks; where he viewed federal government as freedom’s stronghold, contemporary unsupported claims damns public organizations. With being homeless continuing, regardless of employment and earnings failing to cover standard needs, we have to revitalize Hopkins’ sentence that work development continues to be one of the most effective remedy to hardship and misery.