Thursday, November 03, 2005

the mother of the settlement movement

my friend Chris recently went to Chicago and he went to hull house, the place where the settlement house movement began. this woman Jane Addams is considered the mother of modern social services and social worker, opened a home where immigrants and needy chicagoan could get a vast number of needs met. it was the original One stop of services. day care, education, after school, recreation, literacy, vocational...etc
so i decided seeing Chris went there to look up the website for HULL HOUSE

Hull House has a website

so i decided to blog about jane addams

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JANE ADDAMS
Born in Cedarville, Illinois on September 6, 1860 and graduated from Rockford College in 1882, Jane Addams founded the world famous social settlement Hull-House on Chicago's Near West Side in 1889. From Hull House, where she lived and worked until her death in 1935, Jane Addams built her reputation as the country's most prominent woman through her writing, her settlement work, and her international efforts for world peace.

Around Hull-House, which was located at the corner of Polk and Halsted Streets, immigrants to Chicago crowded into a residential and industrial neighborhood. Italians, Russian and Polish Jews, Irish, Germans, Greeks and Bohemians predominated. Jane Addams and the other residents of the settlement provided services for the neighborhood, such as kindergarten and daycare facilities for children of working mothers, an employment bureau, an art gallery, libraries, and music and art classes. By 1900 Hull House activities had broadened to include the Jane Club (a cooperative residence for working women), the first Little Theater in America, a Labor Museum and a meeting place for trade union groups.

The residents of Hull-House formed an impressive group: Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Dr. Alice Hamilton, Julia Lathrop, Ellen Gates Starr, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and Grace and Edith Abbott among them. From their experiences in the Hull-House neighborhood, the Hull-House residents and their supporters forged a powerful reform movement. Among the projects that they launched were the Immigrants' Protective League, The Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the nation, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic (later called the Institute for Juvenile Research). Through their efforts, the Illinois legislature enacted protective legislation for women and children and in 1903 passed a strong child labor law and an accompanying compulsory education law. With the creation of the Federal Children's Bureau in 1912 and the passage of a federal child labor law in 1916, the Hull-House reformers saw their efforts expanded to the national level.

Jane Addams wrote prolifically on topics related to Hull-House activities, producing eleven books and numerous articles, as well as maintaining an active speaking schedule nationwide and throughout the world. She also played an important role in many local and national organizations. A founder of the Chicago Federation of Settlements in 1894, she also helped to establish the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers in 1911. She was a leader in the Consumers League and served as the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (later the National Conference of Social Work). She was chairman of the Labor Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, vice-president of the Campfire Girls, on the executive board of the National Playground Association, the National Child Labor Committee and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (founded 1909). In addition, she actively supported the campaign for woman suffrage and the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union (1920).

In the early years of the twentieth century Jane Addams became involved in the peace movement, becoming an important advocate of internationalism. This interest grew during the First World War, when she participated in the International Congress of Women at the Hague in 1915. She maintained her pacifist stance after the United States entered the war in 1917, working through the Women's Peace Party, which became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919. She was the WILPF's first president. As a result of her work, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Jane Addams died in Chicago on May 21, 1935. She was buried in Cedarville, her childhood home.

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