Hale, Clara (‘Mother’) (1905-1992)

US childcare activist. In 1968, living in Harlem, New York City, she began to take in babies suffering the effects of birth to drug-addicted mothers. In 1973 she formally founded Hale House to put her program on a sounder financial basis. By the 1980s an increasing number of the babies were afflicted with AIDS. She was born Clara Mcbride in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Widowed in 1932, she supported her family by offering home child care, becoming a foster mother to some 40 children. President Ronald Reagan awarded her the Medal of Freedom in 1985.