August 6, 1860– Jane Addams, just in time for Labor Day:
“Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.”
When Jane Addams’ travels took her away from her special close companion, Mary Rozet Smith, she took along a painting of Smith, even though the portrait was kept in a rather bulky piece of luggage.
Addams was a brilliant & an unusually accomplished gay woman for her era. She graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in 1881. She founded Chicago‘s Hull House in 1898, along with Rockford classmate Ellen Gates Star. Hull House was an experimental model of reform to help provide for the neighborhood’s neediest residents. Hull House sought to reduce poverty by offering social services & education to the poor immigrants & laborers of working-class Chicago. They had day-care for children of working mothers, an art gallery, libraries, music & art classes, & an employment counseling. Hull House served over 2,000 residents every week & eventually included a book bindery, gymnasium, swimming pool, residence for working women, theater, labor museum, & a meeting place for trade unions.
Much of the early financial support came from Addams’ very intimate special friend, Smith, one of the richest women in the USA. Addams & Smith traveled together often. Addams would demand a hotel featuring a double bed, instead of a pair of singles. They also shared Smith’s summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine. They were a couple until Smith checked out for good in 1933.
As an educated woman with a free spirit, along with the free time to pursue her own interests, Addams decided to dedicate her life to providing for the welfare of women & children in Chicago, & in locking in legislation for their protection. Addams was also involved in other social issues. Her social reform efforts included: housing for the poor, sanitation issues, factory inspections, immigrant rights, pacifism, & the 8-hour workday.
Addams publicly supported the candidacy of attorney Pearl Hart, a champion of juvenile & women’s court cases. Hart would later become a well-known civil rights attorney in the McCarthy era & a staunch supporter of Gay Rights.
Addams was a pacifist before WW I. She spoke out against Republican President William McKinley‘s decision to go to war after the sinking of the battleship Maine. In 1899, Addams joined Mark Twain, Chicago attorney Clarence Darrow & the gay novelist Henry Blake Fuller in forming the Anti-Imperialist League to protest the war in Cuba & the Philippines. She viewed the USA’s involvement as a “murderous extension of American Capitalism”. One of those trouble making lesbians, Addams was attacked by right-wingers for her public opposition to the war & was expelled from the Daughters Of The American Revolution for her position.
She was a charter member of the National Consumers League, NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union.
Addams lived a life of commitment to making a difference in the lives of the disenfranchised. She received many honors during her lifetime, including the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman to receive the prize.
Addams left this world in 1935, just days after attending a celebratory dinner hosted by another woman who preferred to share her life with a special female companion, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Don’t you think the life of Jane Addams would make an especially fine film? I think it should be one of those terrific HBO event movies, maybe the team that brought us the powerful The Normal Heart (2014), or the sublime Angels In America. Or maybe, having Angelina Jolie-Pitt star as Addams, write & direct, getting the green-light for the project after she signs husband Brad to play Eleanor Roosevelt after I suddenly become unavailable for the role.
“The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.”
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