Jane Addams

Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois, in 1860, the daughter of a miller and state senator. After visiting Toynbee Hall in London, she and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull-House in an immigrant district of Chicago in 1889. It grew into a center offering classes, clubs, a public kitchen, a library and other services, and became a base for research and reform. Addams served on Chicago's Board of Education, helped found the Progressive Party in 1912 and chaired the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague. She led the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and in 1931 shared the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 1935.

Addams is widely regarded as a founder of American social work and a leading Progressive Era reformer, and philosophers now read her as a significant pragmatist thinker. Admirers credit Hull-House with pioneering services and research that fed into child labor laws, juvenile justice and public health measures. Her opposition to World War I drew vicious, often gender-based criticism: she was attacked in the press, her popularity fell sharply and the Daughters of the American Revolution expelled her. Her standing recovered, and in 1931 she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.