Papers of Leonora O'Reilly, 1861-1928

Leonora O'Reilly was a labor leader, social reformer, a suffragist and peace activist. She was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on February 16, 1870; the youngest of two children born to John O'Reilly, a printer, and Winifred (Rooney) O'Reilly, a garment worker. Her parents were Irish immigrants who used their earnings to open a grocery store, which did not succeed. Shortly thereafter their son died, followed by the death of John O'Reilly in 1871, leaving Leonora O'Reilly and her mother destitute. To make ends meet, Winifred O'Reilly worked long hours and brought home additional sewing tasks. Leonora O'Reilly left public school to work in a collar factory at age 11 and eventually became a skilled shirtwaist maker. In 1886, influenced by family and friends, she joined the Knights of Labor where she met Victor Drury, a socialist and life-long friend. With his support, she formed the Working Women's Society, which focused on the welfare and organization of working women. The club's mission drew the attention and support of many upper class social reformers, including Josephine S. Lowell of the State Board of Charities, Louise S.W. Perkins, and others. In 1888 O'Reilly met Edward King and joined the Comte Synthetic Circle, a positivist group that studied sociological theory.

O'Reilly's interaction with wealthy supporters of progressive reform continued to expand, and in 1894, she was invited to join the Social Reform Club, a group consisting of trade unionists and supporters of labor reform. In 1897 she was elected the Club's vice president. That year she also received financial support of Perkins, Josephine Lowell, and Grace Dodge, which enabled her to take a year off from full-time work as forewoman at a shirtwaist factory in order to focus on labor reform. During that period she and her mother lived at the Henry Street Settlement where O'Reilly operated a young boys' club and took charge of a model garment workers' cooperative. 1898 to 1900, O'Reilly attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and took domestic arts courses that offered training to teach sewing to secondary school students. A year prior to graduation, she became head resident at the Asacog House, a Brooklyn settlement (1899-1902), and following graduation she accepted a position at the Manhattan Trade School for Girls (1902-1909).

In 1903 the National Women's Trade Union League was formed and despite class tensions, O'Reilly served on the WTUL executive committee. Mary and Margaret Dreier, wealthy sisters from a German immigrant family in Brooklyn, were major financial backers of the organization and Mary Dreier and O'Reilly became close friends. In 1909, Mary Dreier presented O'Reilly with a lifetime annuity that allowed her to devote her full attention to the WTUL. As vice president of the New York branch, O'Reilly served as an organizer, recruiter, and public speaker, frequently traveling across the country. She played an instrumental role in the "Uprising of the 20,000," a New York City strike by garment workers and in the aftermath of the tragic March 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, O'Reilly and others WTUL members mobilized support for an investigation of the fire, new government safety regulations, and routine inspections of factories.

In addition to labor reform, O'Reilly also supported early civil rights organizations. She served on the advisory committee of the Constitution League of the United States, founded ca. 1904 for the purpose of highlighting racial bias, lynch law and disfranchisement. She was also a founding member of the National Negro Committee, formed in response to a February 1909 petition, published as The Call, following a 1908 race riot and lynching in Springfield, Illinois. At the urging of William E. Walling, Mary Ovington and others, the petition was written and published by Oswald Villard, president of the New York Evening Post Company and editor of the Nation. The petition was signed by 60 individuals, 19 of whom were women, including O'Reilly; journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett; settlement house workers Jane Addams, Mary Dreier, Lillian D. Wald, Mary W. Ovington; and Mary Church Terrell, a leader of the Black women's club movement. The petition generated a meeting attended by 300 individuals at the Henry Street Settlement House for the purpose of planning a national conference. O'Reilly served on both the Sub-Committee on Plans and Organizations and on the General Committee, responsible for raising funds and recruiting new members. In 1910, the National Negro Committee formally changed its name to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

O'Reilly also played a critical role in bridging the mutual concerns of suffrage and labor reform. She worked with the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, founded in 1907 by Harriet Stanton Blatch (1856-1940), the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Organized for the purpose of recruiting working class women into the suffrage movement, Blatch and O'Reilly held open air meetings, and organized mass parades, demonstrations, and conventions. After joining the Socialist Party in 1910, O'Reilly joined Rose Schneiderman, and Clara Lemlich, also Socialist and labor activists, in co-founding the Wage Earners' League for Woman Suffrage, a short-lived organization that lacked support from their male counterparts. O'Reilly served as the organization's president from 1911-1912 and helped organize a highly successful rally at Cooper Union. In this period, she also served as Chair of the Industrial Committee of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party, widely recognized for aiding the passage of a woman suffrage amendment in New York State. In 1915 the WTUL nominated her as its delegate to the International Congress of Women, which met at The Hague to develop strategies for ending World War I. Facilitated by Jane Addams, president of the Women's Peace, the Congress was attended by more than 1300 delegates representing 12 countries. In 1919 O'Reilly again served as a delegate at the International Congress for Working Women in Washington, DC, convened to address the common concerns of working women, which contributed to the polices of the International Labor Organization.

Despite her many successes, her work activities and personal setbacks took a toll. In 1907 O'Reilly decided to adopt a young girl named Alice who suffered an untimely death in 1911. Soon after, Victor Drury, suffering from poor health, moved into the home O'Reilly shared with her mother and died there in 1918. During the period she worked for the WTUL, O'Reilly began suffering intermittent bouts of ill health and frequently curtailed her work activities to recover. This pattern of failing health continued despite being the sole caretaker of her ailing mother. In 1925 she had recovered enough to teach a course on the theory of labor movement at the New School for Social Research and was working on a book of the same title when she died of heart disease on April 3, 1927, at the age of 57.