Pruitt, Ida

Writer, educator, and social worker Ida Pruitt was born in China on December 2, 1888, the daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries Cicero Washington and Anna Seward Pruitt. She spent the first twelve years of her life in Hwanghsien, a village in Shantung province. She attended Cox College in College Park, Georgia (1906-1909), received a B.S. from Columbia University Teachers' College (1910) and studied social work in Boston and Philadelphia. Pruitt returned to China as teacher and principal of Wai Ling School for girls in Chefoo (1912-1918); the Rockefeller Foundation later appointed her chief of the Department of Social Services, Peking Union Medical College (1921-1939). During the Japanese occupation she and Rewi Alley organized Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, an international committee that set up cooperatives with the aim of making the Chinese self-sufficient; she served as executive secretary (1939-1952) of Indusco, the American fundraising arm for the CIC. She was the author and translator of a number of books, including Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (1945), Yellow Storm (1951), and China Childhood (1978). Pruitt died in Philadelphia on July 24, 1985; she was survived by two adopted daughters, Kuei-ching Ho and Tania (Cosman) Wahl.

From the description of Papers: Series I-IV, 1870-1992 (inclusive). (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 122470889

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