The modern organizations in brief · leagues, clubs and professional women

1941 – today

The club movement's descendants: the Junior League of Fort Wayne was formed in 1941 — the League's own date; its federal recognition followed in December 1942 — and has invested, by its own account, more than a million dollars and uncounted volunteer hours in the community since; in October 1993 the League founded Erin's House for Grieving Children, the first of its kind in Indiana. The Cosmopolites Business and Professional Women's Club was founded on 7 November 1957 by ten women, a Black professional women's organization whose civic and scholarship work — including the Arneater Martin Pearson Scholarship Fund — continues; the Allen County Public Library's Genealogy Center holds its digital collection of photographs, scrapbooks and minutes. The League of Women Voters, the suffrage movement's successor nationally (founded 1920), was active in Fort Wayne until the 1970s and then dormant; a reactivation begun in 2008 won recognition in 2009, and the League of Women Voters of Fort Wayne marked its fifteenth anniversary in August 2024 with a visit to Mayor Tucker. The Fort Wayne Woman's Club of the 1925 entry persisted at 402 West Wayne Street into the modern period, and a branch of the American Association of University Women is documented in the city in the modern period (its Fort Wayne bulletin of April 2021 carried the suffrage centennial program); the branch's founding record was not reached for this branch and is listed among the gaps. The professional and civic present — the women who hold the city's offices and run its institutions now — is in the Current chapter.

Sources: Business People, "5 Questions With…" (the Junior League's 1941 formation and million-dollar figure, as the League states them); Internal Revenue Service nonprofit records as compiled (the December 1942 ruling date, carried as the variance); Truitt Law Offices, community spotlight (Erin's House, October 1993); Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, via the Allen INGenWeb clubs page (the Cosmopolites, 7 November 1957, and the ACPL collection); 96.3 XKE, 12 August 2024 (the League of Women Voters of Fort Wayne — active until the 1970s, the 2008 reactivation, the 2009 recognition, the fifteenth anniversary); AAUW Fort Wayne Branch bulletin, April 2021.