Jane Addams

Jane Addams (b. 1860–d. 1935) is considered one of the founding figures in American pragmatist philosophy, social work, and sociology. The daughter of a prominent American politician from Illinois, Addams grew up in a privileged environment that included graduating from college, an opportunity not afforded most women at the time. Addams co-founded one of the earliest social settlements of the Progressive Era, Hull House in Chicago. The settlement began with an unfocused commitment to social amelioration and would evolve into a dynamo for progressive social projects. Living there for the remaining nearly fifty years of her life amid one of the most significant migrant influxes that the United States has known, Addams led a community of mostly women who pioneered improving community welfare in education, recreation, labor, sanitation, health, criminal justice, and the arts. An accomplished writer and speaker, Addams engaged the public through academic articles, popular articles, books, and speeches amid her community activism. She would become a friend and colleague of John Dewey, William James, and George Herbert Mead, influencing them as much as they did her. A dominant theme of her work is that democracy is more than a system of government and entails a moral way of being with one another. Addams’s first book was Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), and the title reveals her abiding belief that democracy is a social morality that requires ongoing enrichment. A relational social democracy underpins Addams’s social analysis. Her writings address various social and political subjects, including education, peace, labor organizing, child labor laws, race, women’s rights, philanthropy, sex trafficking, and familial relations. Internationally, Addams is best known for her work on peace. She was the first American woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Able to adapt her message to audience and context, Addams also wrote about events such as the Pullman Strike of 1894 and the murder trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti during the 1920s, as well as about people such as Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, and Julia Lathrop. In the spirit of American pragmatism, Addams would draw more prominent social themes from individual experiences she confronted, as she did in finding psychosocial forces at work in the proliferation of “Devil Baby” stories among immigrant populations in the summer of 1916. Consistently recognized for her outstanding activism, prominent male figures overshadowed her intellectual legacy during most of the twentieth century. However, a reclamation of Addams’s unique contribution began in the 1990s, and in the 2020s, Addams studies are growing as more scholars find inspiration in her methods and writings.