Happy Birthday, Jane Addams, First American Woman to Receive Nobel Peace Prize

Laura Jane Addams was the eighth of nine children, born on Sept. 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Ill. Her father, John Addams, was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln and had a long career in public service as a political leader and Civil War officer. Her mother died when she was only a toddler, and her father, whom she adored, compensated by fostering her emotional development and intellectual curiosity, instilling in her the virtues of tolerance, philanthropy and a strong work ethic.

She was the valedictorian of her Rockford Female Seminary high school class, and obtained a bachelor’s degree a year later when the school became accredited as Rockford College for Women. Addams then spent six years studying medicine at Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia.

Depressed after her father’s death in 1881 and complications from surgery to correct her congenital spinal condition, she and a friend went to Europe where they visited Toynbee Hall, a London community committed to serving the poor by living in community with them. According to her biography on Nobelprize.org, it was this experience that inspired her to launch her life’s mission of helping the poor and disenfranchised.

Though Addams’ life was fraught with calamity, she had the inherent ability to transform the “bad” into something “good.” Another pivotal experience in her life was watching her brother suffer from mental illness. On Sept. 18, 1889, Addams and a friend, Ellen Starr, opened doors to the Hull House. Located in a Chicago immigrant pub, the house was “an incubator for social programs,” with the intent to relieve the alienation many experienced from living in poverty, serving as gymnasium, nursery, boarding house and community center.

Addams saw the “value of intelligent leadership” and surrounded herself with literature and people of like minds. Tolstoy’s writings enhanced Addams’ beliefs, and on one of her European trips she sought him out, but his reaction to her was harsh. Critical of her material wealth, he believed it prevented her from being of service to those she was helping and chastised her by saying: “So you are an absentee landlord? Do you think you will help the people more by adding yourself to the crowded city than you would by tilling your own soil?” Addams was apparently “humbled” by this remark, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and returned to the settlement and began working more directly with the people.

Addams took up causes such as the child labor laws, set up the first juvenile court and created housing policies to benefit the poor. She was the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, vice-president of the Campfire Girls association, was involved in the NAACP, was a supporter of women's suffrage and helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union.

During World War I, Addams remained a pacifist, which took a toll on her reputation. In the midst of the “red scare,” J. Edgar Hoover purportedly called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” and some referred to her as a “communist.”

In 1931 Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Addams expressed her love for literature by writing numerous books and articles, her most celebrated work being “Twenty Years at Hull House.” Until her death in 1935, she continued to work for better education and living conditions for the poor, immigrants and women.

Jane Addams’ capacity to deeply empathize with others left a lasting legacy. To perpetuate Addams’ ethos, the original Hull House settlement home is a national historic landmark, now a part of the campus at University of Illinois at Chicago. Its late 19th-century interior was restored for visitors and is known as the “Jane Addams Hull House Museum.”