The American Red Cross is 137 This Year
Following the Civil War, a teacher and government servant who had daringly supported our country during its bloodiest of days by supplying and caring for the troops, and who had lead the search for missing persons in the years that followed, needed an escape. Weary and poor of health, Clara Barton headed to Switzerland to recoup and rejuvenate. There, she learned of the efforts of the International Red Cross.
Returning to America, she promoted the International Red Cross and pushed for the adoption of the Geneva convention. After the first chapter of the American Red Cross was founded in 1881, Clara became its first president. While the American Red Cross received its first official charter in 1900, it was approved by the International Red Cross at the Geneva Convention of 1884.
In 1886, Clara Barton moved to Washington, DC. As a representative of the American Red Cross, she visited a number of our states, returned to Switzerland and traveled to Germany, France, Russia, Cuba, Turkey. She routinely spoke at womens' suffrage rallies, had personal relationships with every US President from Franklin Pierce through William Howard Taft, and wrote several books – most having to do with her own life or with the Red Cross.
In its early history, The American Red Cross provided relief after the Michigan forest fires (1881), Mississippi floods (1882), Ohio floods (1884), New York typhoid fever epidemic (1884), Texas fires (1885), and during The Balkan War (1885). They gave support after the Texas droughts (1887), Illinois tornados (1888), Florida yellow fever epidemic (1888), Johnstown floods (1889), Wisconsin fires, South Dakota droughts, and Midwest storms (1890s); and they came to aid in the Russian famine relief (1892), South Carolina hurricane (1893), Armenian famine relief (1896), Cuban concentration camps (1898), Spanish-American War (1898), explosion of the USS Maine (1898), Texas hurricane (1900), and Pennsylvania typhoid fever epidemic (1903).
Today, The American Red Cross supplies almost 40 percent of our blood and blood products. It responds to an emergency every 8 Mins. It accomplishes this all with a force that is almost 90% volunteer. The most recent version of its charter, which was adopted in May 2007, restates the traditional purposes of the organization, which include giving relief to and serving as a medium of communication between members of the American armed forces and their families while providing national and international disaster relief and mitigation.
Here, you can be confident, whenever disaster strikes, that familiar Red Cross on a white field will show up, have your back and be there to lend support.
Sources:
Women in History—Clara Barton; Alexandra Lee
RedCross.org