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Definition: Addams, Jane from Philip's Encyclopedia

US social reformer. In 1931, she became the first US woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing the prize with Nicholas M. Butler. In 1889, she founded Hull House, Chicago, an early social settlement house. Addams pioneered labour, housing, health, and legal reforms, and campaigned for female suffrage and pacifism.


Addams, Jane

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Jane Addams, social reformer, settlement house leader, and peace advocate, was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois, a little town near the Wisconsin border. A member of the first generation of college women in the United States, she graduated from Rockford [Illinois] Female Seminary (later Rockford College) in 1881. She floundered for the next eight years while she tried to find something useful to do with her life. She resisted attempts to make her a teacher or a missionary, and, like more than fifty percent of the first generation of college women, she never married. Finally in 1889, together with Ellen Gates Starr, a college classmate, she founded Hull-House on the west side of Chicago. Inspired by Toynbee Hall, which she had visited on one of her European trips, Hull-House quickly became the most famous social settlement in America and a center that promoted many of the most important social reforms of the Progressive Era. Jane Addams attracted talented and powerful…
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Jane Addams (The Library of Congress)
(Laura) Jane Addams (1860–1935), a social reformer, internationalist, and feminist, was the first American woman to win the Nobel prize for peace. Best known as the founder of Chicago’s Hull House , one of the first social settlements in North America, she was widely recognized for her numerous…
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Full text Article Addams, (Laura) Jane (1860 - 1935)

From World of Criminal Justice, Gale
(Laura) Jane Addams (The Library of Congress)
(Laura) Jane Addams was a social reformer and a pacifist, a woman ahead of her time in realizing that caring intervention may be the best crime deterrent. She is known as the founder of Hull House in Chicago, one of the first social settlements in North America. Addams was the co-winner, with…
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Full text Article Addams, Jane

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American settlement founder and social reformer. She was born in Cedarville, Illinois, and brought up by her widowed father, a banker, state senator, abolitionist and friend of Abraham Lincoln. She was educated at Rockford Female Seminary until 1877, and after her father’s death in 1881 she attended…
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Full text Article Jane Addams

From Chambers Classic Speeches
Jane Addams (1860-1935) was born in Cedarville, Illinois, and attended Rockford College, Illinois. In 1899 she founded the first US settlement house, Hull House in Chicago, dedicated to work among the immigrant poor, where she made her home. Addams worked to secure social justice by sponsoring…
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Full text Article Addams, Jane

From The Great American History Fact-Finder
Social worker, reformer, and peace activist. Addams helped found Hull House (1889) in Chicago, where immigrants and the homeless found shelter, education, and medical assistance. Her autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910), explained her philosophy of social reform. Her opposition to World…
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Full text Article Addams, Jane

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article Addams, Jane (1860–1935),

From The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History
peace and social activist. Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams was raised by her father, the agricultural businessman and state politician John Huy Addams, and, after her mother's death—which occurred when she was two years old—by her stepmother, Anna Haldeman Addams. Addams was a highly…
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Full text Article Addams, Jane (1860-1935)

From From Suffrage to the Senate: America's Political Women
Addams, Jane (1860-1935)
A leader in the settlement house movement, Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889, perhaps the best known of the settlement houses in the United States. Addams created an environment at Hull House that nurtured the development and activities of immigrants, political activists, artists, …
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Full text Article ADDAMS, JANE (1860–1935)

From Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements
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Full text Article Jane Addams (1860–1935)

From The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame
Jane Addams (1860–1935)
Jane Addams with Hull House children, 1933. C redit : Associated Press Jane Addams was a key Progressive Era reformer, the founder of the settlement house movement, the "mother" of American social work, a champion of women’s suffrage, an antiwar crusader, and the 1931 winner of the Nobel Peace…
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