WHO? SMH
Carrie Crawford Smith — Her Employment Agency Standards and Principles
I lived in Nashville for over 30 years, and never heard her name until this week. Whyyyyyyy? Carrie Crawford Smith. Whooooo? How could I not know of this amazing woman? I am shaking my head in disappointment —disappointment in myself and in history.
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Carrie Crawford Smith was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1877. She attended Fisk University, and taught school in Tennessee and Florida. In 1917, she moved to Evanston, Illinois, on Chicago’s North Shore, and started an employment agency, Smith Employment Agency. She coordinated placement activities between households and household help. She operated her employment service for nearly 40 years.
Mrs. Smith insisted that everyone in the employers’ households treat the service workers provided by her company with dignity and respect. To this end, she established a “code of conduct” known as Smith Employment Agency Standards and Principles. Her son, Melvin Scribner Smith, a Chicago newspaper publisher, described her standards as “back door leadership.”
I am in total awe of this Tennessee woman, moving to Chicago when she did — and starting her own company at a time when women didn’t dream those dreams, let alone live them. And it is equally impressive that she used her position to improve employment conditions and to impose behavioral standards on employers, protecting the women who worked for them and with her.
Thanks to National Women’s History Museum and their publication, A Different Point of View, focusing in the current issue on women in business. https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/carrie-crawford-smith/
