Jane Adams

Jane Addams was born on September 6^th 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois.  In her teens Addams had big dreams and wanted her life to make a difference.  After graduating at the top of her class in 1881, she and a friend, Ellen Gates Starr, she traveled Europe. It was here that she had her initial encounter with the indigent in the East End of London.  It had a profound impact on her.  Upon returning home Jane was determined to make a difference.  She and Ellen purchased and moved into a dilapidated mansion in Chicago’s Nineteenth Ward which was teeming with poor immigrants. They made repairs on the house with their own funds and the house became the residence of about twenty five women.  Hull House was born in 1889. At its height they were visited each week by about two thousand people.  The facility included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes. Clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffee house, a gym, a girls club, a boathouse, a book bindery a music school, a drama group, and a library as well as labor related divisions. Her night school was the forerunner of the continuing education classes offered by many universities today. Eventually Hull House became a thirteen building settlement complex with a playground and a summer camp.

Her autobiography was published in 1910 and sold more than 80,000 copies during her lifetime.  In 1910 she was the first woman to be awarded an honorary degree from Yale.  She was active in woman suffrage and the peace movement; served as president of the Woman’s International League for Peace and Freedom.  In 1920 she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. Her efforts were officially recognized in 1931 when she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with a professor from Columbia.  She died in 1935 where her body lay in Hull House for two days as most of Chicago filed by, as many as 2,000 per hour.