The American Red Cross

Clara Barton had already earned the name Angel of the Battlefield nursing wounded soldiers during the Civil War when, traveling in Europe, she encountered the International Red Cross and its work in wartime. Convinced her own country needed such an organization, she founded the American Red Cross in 1881 and led it for more than two decades, broadening its mission beyond war to the floods, fires, and epidemics that struck in peacetime.

The young organization proved itself in disaster. When the Johnstown Flood killed thousands in Pennsylvania in 1889, the Red Cross mounted one of its first great relief efforts, and a pattern was set: wherever catastrophe struck, its volunteers would arrive with shelter, food, and medical aid. In 1900 Congress granted the organization a federal charter, giving it a semi-official role in responding to national emergencies that it holds to this day.

The World Wars turned the Red Cross into a mass institution. It mobilized armies of volunteers, staffed hospitals, sent aid to soldiers and prisoners, and pioneered the large-scale collection and banking of blood that would save countless lives in war and peace. Its nurses and its blood supply became fixtures of the American war effort and, afterward, of the civilian medical system.

Today the American Red Cross is woven into the nation's response to crisis, supplying a large share of the country's blood, sheltering the victims of hurricanes and wildfires, and teaching first aid and lifesaving to millions. Part of a worldwide humanitarian movement yet distinctly American in its reach, it carries forward the conviction that moved Clara Barton — that suffering, whether from war or disaster, demands an organized answer.