Jane Addams
Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 - May 21, 1935) was an American social worker and reformer.
Born in Cedarville, Illinois, she was educated in the U.S. and Europe. In 1889 she co-founded (with Ellen Gates Starr) Hull House in Chicago, which was one of the first settlement houses in the United States. Influenced by Toynbee Hall in the East End of London (founded by Samuel Barnett in 1884), settlement houses like Hull House were a type of welfare house for the neighborhood poor and a center for social reform. She was a member of the American Anti-Imperialist League, and a founder of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP.
In 1911 Addams also helped found the National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, and she was its first president. She was also a leader in women's suffrage and pacifist movements. She received the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize (shared with American educator Nicholas Murray Butler).
The Hull House could boast a group of about 2,000 people a week. It had facilities including: a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, a swimming pool, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor related divisions.
External links
- Bruderhof Peacemakers Guide profile on Jane Addams
- eText of Twenty Years at Hull House, one of Addams' books, at Project Gutenberg