Papers of Ida Pruitt and Marjorie King, 1891-1994

Writer, educator, and social worker Ida Pruitt was born in China on December 2, 1888, the daughter of American, Southern Baptist missionaries, Cicero Washington and Anna Seward Pruitt. She lived in Hwanghsien, a village in Shantung Province, until she was twelve and then went on to be educated in the United States. 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. In 1912, Pruitt returned to China as an adult to become a 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 of China in the 1930s, Pruitt and social reformer, Rewi Alley, organized Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (CIC), an international committee that worked to promote Chinese self-sufficiency. She also served as executive secretary (1939-1952) of Indusco, the American fundraising arm for the CIC, and was an author and translator of several books including A China Childhood (1978) and Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Working Woman (1945). Pruitt died in Philadelphia on July 24, 1985; she was survived by two adopted daughters, Kuei-ching Ho and Tania (Cosman) Wahl.

Marjorie King is a historian and Ida Pruitt's biographer. The two women met in the 1980s while King was working on her dissertation about Pruitt at Temple University (Ph.D., 1985). That project was entitled "Missionary Mother and Radical Daughter: Anna and Ida Pruitt in China, 1887-1939." King continued her research about Pruitt as a visiting scholar in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. She later published a biography of Ida Pruitt entitled China's American Daughter: Ida Pruitt, 1888-1985.