Happy Birthday, Jane Addams

Laura Jane Addams was the eighth of nine children, born on Sept. 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois. 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 her surgery to correct a 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. The experience 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 acted on her belief that, “action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics,” and she 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. Although Hull House had a farm, Tolstoy felt that Addams wasn’t exactly “getting her hands dirty,” and chastised her further, 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 to work regularly in the bakery and teach English classes, deliver babies and provide counseling.

Within the first year of opening, encouraged by the 50,000 residents and participants of the Hull House programs. Addams took up causes such as the child labor laws, set up the first juvenile court and created housing policies to benefit the poor. From 1915 to 1929, Addams served as president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and in 1931 was the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

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.”

 Addams expressed her love for literature 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 remarkable 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.”