Jane Addams
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Jane Addams |
Jane Addams (
September 6,
1860 –
May 21,
1935) was an
American social worker,
sociologist,
philosopher and
reformer. She was also the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and a founder of the U.S.
Settlement House Movement.
Born in
Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams was educated in the
United States and
Europe, graduating from the Rockford Female Seminary (now
Rockford College) in
Rockford, Illinois.
In
1889 she and
Ellen Gates Starr co-founded
Hull House in
Chicago, Illinois, one of the first
settlement houses in the United States. Influenced by
Toynbee Hall in the
East End of London, settlement houses provided
welfare for a neighborhood's poor and a center for
social reform. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around two thousand people. Its facilities included a night school for adults;
kindergarten classes; clubs for older children; a public kitchen; an
art gallery; a
coffeehouse; a ; a girls club; a swimming pool; a
book bindery; a
music school; a drama group; a library; and labor-related divisions.
Hull House also served as a women's
sociological institution. Addams was a friend and colleague to the early members of the
Chicago School of Sociology, influencing their thought through her work in
applied sociology and, in
1893, co-authoring 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
women's rights, ending child-labor, and the
1910 Garment Workers' Strike in which she was a mediator. Although academic sociologists of the time defined her work as "social work", Addams did not consider herself a social worker. She combined the central concepts of
symbolic interactionism with the theories of
cultural feminism and
pragmatism to form her sociological ideas. (Deegan, 1988)
Addams had a stellar reputation for her work with
Hull House, and was respected as a committed humanitarian. However, her staunch pacifist stance on
World War I cost her much support, and she was expelled from the
Daughters of the American Revolution for refusing to back U.S. involvement in that war.
In addition to her involvement in the
American Anti-Imperialist League and the
American Sociology Association, she was also a formative member of both the
American Civil Liberties Union and the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In
1911 she helped to establish the
National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers and became its first
president. She was also a leader in
women's suffrage and
pacifist movements, and took part in the creation of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in
1915. In
1931 she was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, along with American
educator Nicholas Murray Butler.
When she died in 1935 due to poor health, thousands of people went to see her coffin.
In 1998 the British Columbia Branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom commissioned Canadian artist Christian Cardell Corbet to create a bronze medallion of Jane Addams to celebrate her life and achievments. The medallion since has been collected by several important museums.
The
Jane Addams Peace Association together with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom give the annual
Jane Addams Children's Book Awards.
*
Democracy and social ethics, New York:
Macmillan,
1902.
*
Children in American street trades, New York: National Child Labor Committee,
1905.
*
New ideals of peace, Chautauqua, N.Y.: Chautauqua Press,
1907.
*
The Wage-earning Woman and the State, Boston: Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government,
1910s.
*
Twenty years at Hull-House 1910.
*
Symposium: child labor on the stage, New York: National Child Labor Committee, ?
1911.
* 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.
*
Florence Kelley*
Flora Dunlap*
Mary Treglia*
Jane Addams School for Democracy*
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom*
John Dewey* 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.
*
Review materials for studying Jane Addams*
Free ebook of Jane Addams at
Project Gutenberg*
Jane Addams at the Online Books Page
*
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
