Jane Addams

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Jane Addams
Born	September 6, 1860(1860-09-06) Cedarville, Illinois
Died	May 21, 1935 (aged 74) Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	Activist
Parents	John H. Addams and Sarah Weber

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a founder of the U.S. Settlement House movement, and one of the first American women to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

[edit] Biography

Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams was the eighth of nine children born into a prosperous, loving family.^[1] Although she was the eighth child, three of her siblings died in infancy, leaving only six to mature. ^[2] Her mother, Sarah Addams (née Weber), died from tuberculosis during pregnancy when Jane was just two years old. Jane's father, John H. Addams, was the President of The Second National Bank of Freeport, the Senator of Illinois from 1854 to 1870, and owned the local grain mill; he remarried when Jane was eight. Her father also was a founding member of the Republican Party and supported Abraham Lincoln. Jane was a first cousin twice removed to Charles Addams, noted cartoonist for The New Yorker.^[3] She was born with Pott's disease which caused a curvature of the spine and health problems for Jane throughout her life.

Addams' father encouraged her to pursue a higher education, but not at the expense of losing her femininity and the prospect of marriage and motherhood, as expected of upper class young women. She was educated in the United States and Europe, graduating from the Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford College) in Rockford, Illinois. After Rockford, she spent seven months at the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, but dropped out. Her parents felt that she should not forget the common path of upper class young women. After her father's sudden death, Jane inherited $50,000. In 1885, Jane set off for a two year tour of Europe with her stepmother, returned home, and felt bored and restless, indifferent about marriage and wanting more than just the conventional life expected of well-to-do ladies. After painful spinal surgery, she returned to Europe again for a second tour in 1887, this time with her best friend Ellen Starr and a teacher friend. During her second tour, Jane visited London's Toynbee Hall which was a settlement house for boys based on the new philosophy of charity. Toynbee Hall was Jane's main inspiration for Hull House.

[edit] Hull House

Jane Addams in a car, 1915

In 1889 she and her college friend, Ellen Gates Starr,^[4] co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, the first settlement house in the United States. The house was named after Charles Hull, who built the building in 1856. When starting out, all of the funding for the Hull House came from the $50,000 estate she inherited after her father passed away. Later, the Hull House was sponsored by Helen Culver, the wealthy real estate agent who had initially leased the house to the women.^[5] Jane and Ellen were the first two occupants of the house, which would later be the residence of about 25 women. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around 2000 people. Its facilities included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor-related divisions. Her adult night school was a forerunner of the continuing education classes offered by many universities today. In addition to making available services and cultural opportunities for the largely immigrant population of the neighborhood, Hull House afforded an opportunity for young social workers to acquire training. Eventually, the Hull House became a 13-building settlement and included a playground.

The Hull House neighborhood was a mix of various European ethnic groups that had immigrated to Chicago beginning at the turn of the nineteenth century. The Bethlehem-Howard Neighborhood Center Records memorializes that mix of immigrants that made up the social laboratory upon which the social and philanthropic elitists comprising Hull House's inner sanctum tested their theories and based their challenges to the establishment. "Germans and Jews resided south of that inner core (south of Twelfth Street)…The Greek delta formed by Harrison, Halsted, and Blue Island Streets served as a buffer to the Irish residing to the north and the Canadian–French to the northwest."^[6] Italians resided within the inner core of the Hull House Neighborhood...from the river on the east end, on out to the western ends of what came to be known as "Little Italy."^[6] Greeks and Jews, along with the remnants of other immigrant groups, began their exodus from the neighborhood during the early part of the 20th century. The Italians were the only ethnic group that continued as a thriving community until the demise of Hull house proper in 1963.

[edit] Peace Movement

Delegation to the Women's Suffrage Legislature Jane Addams (left) and Miss Elizabeth Burke of the University of Chicago, 1911

The harsh criticism received by Addams, both for her outspoken pacifism during World War I and her defense of immigrants' civil rights during a period when anarchism and socialism were greatly feared in the United States, never stopped her from putting forth a great amount of effort and energy into Hull House. She even had the time to work on international peace efforts. She spoke and campaigned extensively for Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 Presidential campaign on the Progressive Party, but was disillusioned in his 1916 campaign when he abandoned his earlier reform platform.

Jane was elected president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom which entailed her to travel often to Europe (both during and after World War I) and Asia. During these travels, she would spend time meeting with a wide variety of diplomats and civic leaders and reiterating her Victorian belief in women's special mission to preserve peace. Recognition of these efforts came with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Addams in 1931. As the first U.S. woman to win the prize, Addams was applauded for her "expression of an essentially American democracy."

[edit] Personal relationships

Throughout her life Addams was close to many women and was very good at eliciting the involvement of women from different classes in Hull House's programs. Her closest adult companion and friend was Mary Rozet Smith, who supported Addams's work at Hull House, and with whom she owned a summer house in Bar Harbor, Maine.

The exact nature of their relationship has become a controversy after her death, with some historians believing Addams was a lesbian and in love with Smith, and others calling their relationship a romantic friendship, saying that while the women loved each other and lived together, that did not necessarily indicate a sexual relationship.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

[edit] Legacy

Hull House and the Peace Movement serve as the pillars to the legacy left by Jane Addams. Jane Addams' legacy goes beyond those two pillars. Her legacy, her life’s work, like a body of water, touched upon many shores. She leaves a legacy that spans a spectrum that ranges from the development of a single human being and the creation of the subcultures that harbor them...to the social, political and economic reforms inspired by her sociological ideas.

There are others who suggest that her legacy is analogous to a river, a tributary, if you will, to the mainstream of social issues prevalent during her day. Her legacy is much like the Gemma, which forever changes the course of the Ganges river on its journey to the sea…ultimately influencing the landscape of distant shores. Her social theories influenced future writers and theorists who continue to grope for an understanding of human behavior; i.e., how it is that we become what we become…how it is the destiny of individuals are fashioned by their subcultures or perhaps forged by forces beyond our ability to measure and comprehend. Her theories influenced the social and political landscapes for decades beyond her time. Her influence was felt by researchers and social scientists as recent as Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel--1997), whose theory on the Fates of Societies, confirmed in part by Jane Addams hypothesis, suggests how geography influences the direction of societies and how it is that we become what we become---and Pulitzer Prize winner E. O. Wilson (On Human Nature---1979), who theorized upon the inherent behavior of Groups. Willard Motley, a resident artist of Hull House, extracting from Addams' central theory on symbolic interactionism, used the neighborhood and its people to write his 1948 best seller, Knock on Any Door--1948. Motley’s best selling novel became a popular manifest on human behavior, furthering the concept and acceptance of socio-behaviorism and the role of society in the development of individuals and the subcultures from which they evolve.

Social workers and social theorist simply observed communities. Never before Jane Addams had social worker or social theorists lived in the communities they either served or observed. Jane Addams was unique in that respect. She lived in a community that became her laboratory. A community that she both served and observed.

Hull House, serving as a women's sociological institution, enabled Addams to befriend and become a colleague to the early members of the Chicago School of Sociology. Her influence, through her work in applied sociology, impacted their thoughts and their direction. In 1893, she co-authored the Hull-House Maps and Papers that came to define the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including promoting women's rights, ending child labor, and mediating during the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike.

Although academic sociologists of the time defined her work as "social work," Addams did not consider herself a social worker. Cast into the role of inheriting the primary responsibility for the well-being of the immigrants that comprise the slums of the Hull House neighborhood, Addams shunned the band-aid role of social worker in favor of that of a socio-economic theorist. Intent on understanding the forces that influenced the development of that subculture, which she came to name as "The Hull House Neighborhood," and its impact upon those immigrant families, she combined the central concepts of symbolic interactionism with the theories of cultural feminism and pragmatism to form her sociological ideas. [12] Favored with a social laboratory and resources at her disposal, she was able to move beyond understanding the impact and the development of the neighborhood residents to improving the living standards of the neighborhood...and ultimately, to controlling and predicting the living standards and subsequently the self-concept and aspirations of the neighborhood residents. The challenges hurled at the establishment by Hull House derived their support from the theories that evolved from her association with sociologists and from her empirical observations of the living conditions to which the immigrant residents of the neighborhood were subjected.

Addams worked with labor as well as other reform groups toward goals including the first juvenile-court law, tenement-house regulation, an eight-hour working day for women, factory inspection, and workers' compensation. She advocated research aimed at determining the causes of poverty and crime, and supported woman suffrage. She was a strong advocate of justice for immigrants and blacks, becoming a chartered member of the NAACP. Among the projects that the members of the Hull House opened were the Immigrants' Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the United States, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic.[13]

One cannot discount Jane Addams influence as a peace advocate. Her work as a peace advocate began prior to WWI. Her writings and her speeches, on behalf of the formation of the League of Nations, are well documented. One must concede that part of the Jane Addams legacy, that part which is analogous to a river, must include her role in the eventual formation of the United Nations…nearly a half century beyond her time.

[edit] Memorials

In 2007, a joint resolution of the Illinois General Assembly renamed the Northwest Tollway as the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway.^[12]

Jane Addams House is a residence hall built in 1947 at Connecticut College.

Hull House had to be demolished for the establishment of the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois in 1963 and relocated. The Hull residence itself was preserved as a monument to Jane Addams.

Jane Addams Business Careers Center is a high school in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Jane Addams Trail is a bicycling, hiking, snowmobiling, and cross country skiing trail which stretches from Freeport, Illinois to the Wisconsin state line. It is 12.85 miles (20.68 km) long, and is part of the larger Grand Illinois Trail, which is over 575 miles (925 km) long. ^[13] The trail is located near her birthplace of Cedarville, Illinois.^[14]

Jane Addams has been immortalized further with the naming of a Jesuit Volunteer Corps Southwest community. The house or "casa" as it is known in the organization, is located in Sacramento, California. Located in the city's renowned, Oak Park, seven Jesuit Volunteers live in Casa Jane Addams every year.

[edit] See also

• Florence Kelley
• Flora Dunlap
• Mary Treglia
• Jane Addams Burial Site
• Jane Addams School for Democracy
• John H. Addams Homestead
• John Dewey
• Community practice social work
• Stanton Street Settlement
• Progressive Party (United States, 1912)

[edit] References

Jane Addams on a US postage stamp of 1940

[edit] Further reading

• Bowen, Louise de Koven. Growing up with Pity. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926.
• Deegan, Mary. Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892-1918. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, Inc., 1988.
• Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Polacheck, Hilda Satt. I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
• Stiehm, Judith Hicks. "Champions for Peace : Women Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.” Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.

[edit] External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about:

Jane Addams

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jane Addams

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jane Addams

• Jane Addams entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Maurice Hamington Looks at her as "the first woman 'public philosopher' in United States history".
• Works by Jane Addams at Project Gutenberg
• Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. Women Working, 1870-1930. Jane Addams (1860-1935). A full-text searchable online database with complete access to publications written by Jane Addams.
• Works by Jane Addams listed at the Online Books Page
• Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
• The Bitter Cry of Outcast London by Rev. Andrew Mearns
• Online photograph exhibit of Jane Addams from Swarthmore College's Peace Collection
• Gay Great article in Fyne Times magazine
• Taylor Street Archives; Hull House: Bowen Country Club

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