Jane Addams - (1860 - 1935)
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Belleville Township High School East in Belleville, Illinois
I. Upbringing, Education, and Professional Life
(Laura) Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois as the eighth of nine children. Her parents, John and Sarah, moved to Illinois from Pennsylvania. Her father was a prosperous miller and also served sixteen years in the U.S. Senate. Later an officer in the Civil War, he also boasted a friendship with one of this country's greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln. Jane Addams was born with a congenital spinal defect, which prevented her from being very active as a child. At the age of two, her mother died and her father remarried five years later. Her stepmother, Anna H. Haldeman, enrolled Addams in the Rockford (Illinois) Female Seminary at the age of seventeen. After graduating as valedictorian, she attended the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1881. Unfortunately, she was forced to drop out a few months later due to poor health.
At the age of twenty-seven, Addams began her second tour of Europe with her friend Ellen Gates Starr. During her travels, she visited a settlement house in London's Industrial District known as Toynbee Hall, which catered to the needs of the local poor. Enthralled at the concept of such an establishment, she decided to begin such a house in the United States.
After searching for possible sites of her project, she came across a mansion in Chicago built by wealthy real estate man Charles Hull. Located at 800 S. Halsted Street, Addams established Hull House in 1889 with the intent "to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts in Chicago" (Nobel 1). Hull House offered college-level courses covering a variety of subjects as well as training in art, music, and crafts of the day such as bookbinding. It also provided a gym, daycare, a community kitchen, and a boarding club for working girls. Along with the multitude of services it offered, Hull House also sponsored a small theater group known as the Hull House Players. Not only did Hull House help meet the needs of the underprivileged, but it also helped train many of the leading social workers of the day. The attraction of such renowned social workers and reformers such as Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, and Grace and Edith Abbot augmented the success of Hull House.
Addams began writing soon after the establishment of Hull House. In 1902, Democracy and Social Ethics was published when she was forty-two. While some of her writings retold her experiences at Hull House, she wrote about a variety of topics ranging from World War to prostitution. Some of her writings dealt with war, a popular topic in the early twentieth century. For example, her book Peace and Bread in Time of War chronicled her experience as Herbert Hoover's assistant in a relief effort which supplied the women and children of war torn nations with food and supplies. In another attempt to keep the nations at peace, she wrote the book Newer Ideals of Peace. Most of the book's material was a compilation of her anti-war lectures at the University of Wisconsin in 1906.
Although Addams scarcely wrote about it in book form, she was a strong advocate of women's suffrage. In 1915, she was elected chairperson of the International Congress of Women at The Hague. Throughout her life she gave numerous speeches on women's rights. "Jane Addams was an ardent feminist by philosophy. ...She believed that women should make their voices heard in legislation and therefore have the right to vote, but more comprehensively, she thought that women should generate aspirations and search out opportunities to realize them" (Nobel 1).
A progressive and staunch activist such as Addams was sure to earn numerous awards and honors. She was appointed to the Chicago Board of Education as well as elected chairperson of the International Congress of Women at The Hague, the School Management Committee, and the Women's Peace Party. She was also elected President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Addams also set a few precedents as the first woman president of both the National Conference of Charities and Corrections and the National Conference of Social Work. In 1910, she was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Yale University, and in 1931 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
II. Local Significance
Hull House is located at 800 S. Halsted Street in Chicago.
III. Publications
Democracy and Social Ethics (1902)
Newer Ideals of Peace (1907)
The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909)
Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes (1910)
A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912)
The Long Roal of Woman's Memory (1916)
Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922)
A Second Twenty Years at Hull-House: September 1909 to September 1929 (1930)
The Excellent Becomes Permanent (1932)
A Centennial Reader
Philanthropy Social Progress
My Friend, Julia Lathrop
Jane Addams on Education
IV. Links
Additional information on Hull House.
Chicago Public Library Chicago: 1889 Jane Addams Hull House
A collection of various writings of Addams, with some for sale. UMI® Research Collections: The Jane Addams Papers, 1860-1960
A letter from Addams to her sister.
http://www.binghamton.edu/~womhist/wilpf/doc9.htm
V. Sources "Addams, Jane." Encyclopedia Britannica.1989 ed.
Nobel Foundation. Biography of Jane Addams. 27 Oct. 1999
Chicago Public Library. Chicago: 1889 Jane Addams Hull House. 27 Oct. 1999
http://cpl.lib.uic.edu/004chicago/timeline/hullhouse.html
Whitman, Alden. American Reformers. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1985. Brainerd, Gertrude P. Patterns for Your Future
. Chicago: American Association of University Women, 1979. This essay was submitted by students of Kimberly Richey, a teacher at Belleville Township High School East in Illinois.