Junior League Founder Mary Harriman Will Be Inducted Into the National Women’s Hall of Fame

She added, “Born into a family of great privilege and wealth, Mary took a path that was 180 degrees from what was expected of a woman from one of New York’s most powerful families. While studying at Barnard College, she embraced the settlement house work of Jane Addams and was inspired to do something to better the lives of the largely European immigrants living in squalid conditions on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She rallied her young friends (including Eleanor Roosevelt) and thus was born the Junior League for the Preservation of the Settlement Movement. Today, the organization she founded is now 292 independent Junior Leagues in four countries.”