Ruth L. Bennett Home
216 Reaney Street
Ruth L. Bennett, from naacpchesterpa.org
Ruth L. Bennett is the most recognizable among a long list of women activists and organizers who tackled poverty, inequalities in housing and education, and other issues of social justice in Chester. Arriving in Chester during the height of the Great Migration, she founded the Ruth L. Bennett Improvement Club “for the purpose of doing uplift work” among Black women and girls, offering classes in cooking, housekeeping and ‘home economics’ – skills that would position newly arriving women favorably for domestic jobs. She successfully fundraised to purchase a home on Reaney Street to house the Ruth L. Bennett Home for Women & Girls. The Home hosted the Improvement Club’s domestic/home economics, music, and current events classes, social services, job placement and a growing number of subsidiary groups.
In 1925, Bennett founded the Wilson Memorial Nursery, named after local businessman and contributor William Wilson. The Nursery addressed the lack of childcare for working mothers and the need for safe housing for orphans and children removed from their homes by court order. Donations from within the community and Mr. Wilson’s large contribution to purchase the property adjoining the Home came on the heels of a tragic house fire which took the lives of two children at home alone while their mother worked.
The impact of the Bennett Home and Wilson Nursery was significant. By 1940 more than 2,000 girls and young women sought shelter at the Home and the services provided by the Improvement Club. World War II reignited Chester’s industries, bringing a new round of Southerners to Chester and newcomers to the Bennett Home and nursery. Women residing at the Home and employed as shipyard welders were referred to as the “Bennett girls.” The Home and the Wilson Nursery continued to operate through the 1990s, when deindustrialization and suburbanization transformed Chester.
Watch Finding Home: The Ruth L. Bennett Story a short documentary produced by Twyla Simpkins
Visit Chester’s Ruth L. Bennett a YES Center website devoted to Bennett’s activism and her legacy in Chester