Ethel Moore
# Ethel Moore

Ethel Moore (March 6, 1872 - October 4, 1920) was an American civic, education, and national defense work leader. As a national authority in playground work, as one of the two women to be recognized by California Governor William D. Stephens when he named the state council of defense; as trustee of Mills College and sponsor of its building program; as director in public health work, Moore was for many years a recognized leader on the Pacific coast.

## Early life and education

Ethel Moore was born in Oakland, California, March 6, 1872. Her parents were Albert Alfonzo Moore and Jacqueline Anne (Hall) Moore. Ethel had five younger siblings: Albert A. Moore, Jr., Carmen Moore, Stanley Moore, Jacqueline Anne Moore, and Margaret Moore.

Moore graduated from Oakland High School, later attending the University of California for two years before she entered Vassar College. She graduated with the class of 1894.

## Career

Her contact with a woman's college stimulated her interest in the welfare of women and children, which showed itself on her return to Oakland in co-founding the Oakland Social Settlement, which gave a generation of adults and children opportunities for study and recreation. She was a member of the board for 20 years, a part of which time she served as president.

Simultaneously, among her friends and neighbors, Moore became the first president of the Home Club, original in its planning for a more cordial and democratic social intercourse of family and community.

In 1911, Moore contributed much of the vital force which brought to California women the right of suffrage. In that years, she was elected Director of the College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California.

Following this, her attention turned to the education of women for civic as well as domestic efficiency. She had always been a leader in her own college club; now, she began to help educational legislation and summoned the alumnae of institutions throughout the country to join in raising the standards of education in the U.S. She became sectional vice-president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae for Arizona, Nevada, and California, and traveled from Imperial Valley to Seattle preaching to women the need of higher educational standards and the practical application of knowledge to daily living. Her vision of the relationship between differing group efforts was shown in her participation in the State Conference of Social Agencies. She brought into this California body the organized college women of the State, on the thesis that education is the greatest of the social agencies.

This same interest made her accept the responsibility for planning playgrounds in Oakland. These soon were notable from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific as touching the lives of children and parents in a more helpful manner than any other system in the country in that era. Mayor Frank K. Mott appointed Moore to the first playground commission created by the city ordinance in December 1908. When the new city charter created the recreation department, Moore was reappointed in 1911, serving eight years. Her term expired in 1919. Her efforts received national recognition and Oakland became known for its model recreational work.

Moore was elected trustee of Mills College in 1915, and was instrumental in accomplishing the appointment of Dr. Aurelia Henry Reinhardt as president.

She served on the Local Section of May Wright Sewall's Home Advisory Board in preparation for the International Conference of Women Workers to Promote Permanent Peace, held in San Francisco in July, 1915.

To every effort for relief in Europe during World War I, for mobilization at home, for economy, patriotism, and participation, she applied herself. Governor Stephens made her one of the two women members of the California State Council of Defense. She was a chair of the Oakland Council of Defense, director of the Hoover Relief Commission for starving Belgium, an organizer of the Women's Land Army, a national director of Girls' Clubs for Community Service, and a member of the National Committee to Secure Military Rank for Army Nurses.

Realizing that problems of health need more than recreational measures, she became one of the founders of the Alameda County Society for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis on whose board she served for 12 years. The acquiring of summer camps for children and for adults grew out of contact with the needy in the Playground organization and the Tubercular Clinics. There her ready sympathy saw the broader more inclusive possibilities for better health in the Alameda County Health Center, and to its organization, she gave her assistance. Recreational possibilities turned her creative energies on the one hand to bringing to California the work of The Drama League and the American Playground Association, and on the other, to the constructive social of associated charities.

Shortly before her death, Moore became a member of the Woman's Faculty Club of the University of California. She traveled extensively. Since the death of her mother a few years before her own, she was a constant companion of her father, A. A. Moore.

## Death and legacy

Ethel Moore died in San Francisco, October 4, 1920.

The Ethel Moore Residence Hall at Mills College, built in 1926, in named in her honor.

