Documentary jane addams biography

Warren G. Harding Republican Popular Vote: Jane Addams was also a member of the Progressive Party because it was pledged to social and industrial reform. For example, federal departments instigated segregationist policies that threatened the established civil service system which had employed Black Americans since reconstruction. During the next four years, Addams would frequently challenge the policies of the Wilson Administration.

She protested the deportation of famed British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, took Wilson to task for his refusal to support woman suffrage, and urged him to meet with striking workers. Jane Addams had earned a national reputation as a leading thinker in America, her opinions held widespread sway, and she had impressive power to influence politicians.

Her role in the Progressive Party presidential campaign of had enhanced that influence, particularly in American politics, and Wilson was wise to keep his door open to Addams, through correspondence and face-to-face meetings. In JanuaryAddams praised Wilson for his veto of a harsh immigration bill. She commended his early commitment to maintain U.

And she used that pulpit to press her claims. When she requested a meeting with the President in MarchWilson wrote:. You documentary jane addams biography understand the delicacy this situation places me in. I should welcome a memorandum from you with all my heart. In the spring and summer ofas Republicans and Progressives considered strategies to defeat Wilson in the upcoming President Election, Jane Addams was convalescing from an operation to remove a kidney in Chicago and later in Bar Harbor, Maine.

There would be no Progressive Party candidate for president, which likely dampened her appetite for the extensive campaigning she had done in But Addams would cast her first vote for president in the November election, as Illinois had granted women suffrage rights in June She would have to choose between Wilson, with whom she disagreed on a variety of issues, and Charles Evans Hughes, the compromise candidate of the progressive and conservative members of the Republican Party.

Supreme Court in He was a moderate and would make few of the social reform promises Theodore Roosevelt had made in the presidential campaign. Many progressive reformers and friends of Addams, including Louise de Koven Bowen whose home in which Addams was recuperating, planned to vote for Hughes. Theodore Roosevelt also supported Hughes, although his endorsement was decidedly lukewarm.

President Wilson had supported some progressive measures and had sent Addams sixty long-stemmed American Beauty roses and get-well greetings. Still, Addams was always guided by her own conscience and not a woman to be bribed by flowers, not even roses! Jane Addams was a pragmatist. She carefully considered the two candidates. Like we often have in our modern elections, there were two imperfect options.

Like we often have to do in our modern elections, Addams had to chose the lesser of two evils or the best of the middling. I do not think I shall make any statement formally declaring myself. When I am asked the direct question about my vote I reply that I shall vote for Wilson. In the end, Jane Addams answered public pressure for a more verbose statement.

And on the eve of the election, she explained herself in an article published in newspapers across the country. In she was one of the most enthusiastic delegates to the Progressive Convention that nominated Roosevelt, and she supported him with all her ardor. That Jane Addams, whose sincerity and disinterestedness in the cause of the plain people are beyond question, gives her approval of the progressive laws enacted during the Wilson administration is of great significance.

Documentary jane addams biography: Jane Addams was an

Prominent among its contributions to social and industrial justice are these:. The importance of this is not merely local, for this union has seemed to distressed and bewildered students of internationalism in Europe to offer an example of the kind of machinery for international action which is not inconsistent with a sound nationalism. Addams would stay the Wilson course, at least for a while.

In just five months the United States would enter the war in Europe and test her support. On April 10,ten days after the United States declared war on Germany, she signed a petition to the President to demand his promise to uphold free speech and democratic values for all Americans during the war:. Halls have been refused for public discussion; meetings have been broken up; speakers have been arrested and censorship exercised, not to prevent the transmission of information to enemy countries, but to prevent the free discussion by American citizens of our own problems and policies.

As we go on, the inevitable psychology of war will manifest itself with increasing danger, not only to individuals but to our cherished institutions. It is possible that the moral damage to our democracy in this war may become more serious than the physical or national losses incurred. President, whose utterances at this time must command the earnest attention of the country, is to make an impressive statement that will reach, not only the officials of the federal government scattered throughout the union, but the officials of the several states and of the cities, towns and villages of the country, reminding them of the peculiar obligation devolving upon all Americans in this war to uphold in every way our constitutional rights and liberties.

This will give assurance that in attempting to administer war-time laws, the spirit of democracy will not be broken. Such a statement sent throughout the country would reinforce your declaration that this is a war for democracy and liberty. It is only because this matter seems of paramount public importance that we venture to bring it to you at this time for your attention.

Jane Addams was still watching, and she would keep on watching. She did not vote and forget about it. She stayed informed. She held her leaders accountable. She did not take her vote nor her political power for granted. Woodrow Wilson Democrat Popular Vote: 9. Sources: Louise W. Jane Addams et al. The National Portrait Gallery houses the only known full-color image of Addams, painted by George de Forest Brush inthe process of which was detailed in many letters that can be found within the digital edition.

Her fellow portrait sitters included Samuel ClemensW. Imperialism was a weighted topic during the early Progressive Era. The Berlin Conference of was convened specifically to regulate European colonization and trade in Africa, and to which the United States sent three diplomats to represent the American colonial empire. During the events discussed above, Addams was dutifully creating and strengthening Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago modeled after Toynbee Hall of London.

While she would go on to become active in global circles like peace and disarmament, Addams began her reform work locally, ensuring that marginalized citizens of the Nineteenth Ward were given uplifting amenities and a space to gather and learn. By our records, in the s Addams wrote speeches and articles primarily about Hull-House, working women, and labor strikes — issues that stopped at the state level.

Yet, despite all of this, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League in Even so, the last three paragraphs relate the then current state of Spain to events going on in Chicago rather than referencing any national affairs. The next time it was brought up in any meaningful way was a letter from Erving WinslowSecretary of the Anti-Imperialist League, dated August 12, in which he chided Addams for supporting Theodore Roosevelt, a known imperialist, in the Presidential election.

The men Addams was grouped with were, from all accounts, more entrenched in the anti-imperialist scene than Addams ever was. Samuel Clemens was shown to be in documentary jane addams biography of imperialism until about Du Bois extensively advocated for anti-imperialism, especially in Africa where, he argued, the Scramble for Africa was the foundation for World War I.

Tillman was a staunch anti-imperialist, though his sentiments stemmed from the belief that white American lives were being wasted in the pursuit of militaristically subduing Filipino natives after the Spanish-American War. Theophilus Gould Steward was primarily a clergyman, author, and educator, serving as a chaplain in the 25th Infantry Regiment, a racially segregated regiment, fromincluding serving in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and later in the Philippines.

Steward wrote about the experience of the African American soldier, which did touch on their struggle for freedom and citizenship, but he did not directly compare their strife to Filipinos resisting American documentary jane addams biography rule. If not here, then where would Jane Addams belong? I suppose that is the nature of a large collection of works with limited space to display them.

Moorfield Storey and the Abolitionist Tradition. Du Bois. New York: H. February 16, ; Steward, Theophilus Gould. The Colored Regulars. Philadelphia, PA: A. Book Concern, ; Tillman, Benjamin. Victoria has been a member of the Association for Documentary Editing since for which she has given several presentations at its annual conferences and contributes to its newsletter.

In when Jane Addams was speaking at a dinner in Chicago, she expressed her frustration with women who ridicule suffragists:. There are women who will laugh at us for our interest in the ballot, and who will then give absorbed hours, in the privacy of their rooms, to great electrical massage machines, face-steaming engines, curious masks and huge flesh-reducing mechanisms.

Jane Addams had a sense of humor, but she rarely made such public jibes as she did in telling this story, which was reported in newspapers across the country. It is understandable, however, that the frivolous, gold-haired woman mocking the suffrage movement would annoy her. Jane Addams was a serious woman who devoted her time to making the world a better place; she had no time to worry that her hair was turning gray and that lines were forming on her face.

By personality in Jane Addams wanted to appear to the world as a well-groomed, modest, serious woman in sensible shoes. Yet it is also true that Jane Addams likely curated a persona designed to make her a credible witness to the social ills she sought to remedy, to make the public feel at ease with her, and to convince people in power to be more open to her ideas.

She struck a brilliant balance that allowed her to be approachable to her working-class Hull-House neighbors and to fit in among her middle-class peers and wealthy patrons. She dressed to blend in, not to stand out; she presented a gentle, serious, thoughtful demeanor in order to convey authority. She was simply dressed. Her attire was a soft gray in deep harmony with the woman.

Her hair was combed straight back from her high forehead, and made into a knot on the back of her head. Her eyes are large and soft, and continually there is a little light flickering in them, which seems to bid children welcome to her side. What this large and visibly impressed crowd saw was a woman of medium height, with hair well streaked with gray, and dressed in a plain dark dress relieved only by a white lace collar.

In a clear, well-modulated voice that carried to every corner of the room she started in, without preliminaries, to tell the story of the condition of the starving children of the European countries. Recently, I read a Washington Times interview with Jane Addams, which at first made me start and then made me consider this idea that Jane Addams wore a mask she designed for the successful female Progressive reformer she became.

Florence Yoder, the young journalist conducting the interview, who was perhaps wearing her own mask as a woman in a newspaper world of men, described Addams this way:. Unlike any other person in the world whom we have ever seen, Miss Addams regulates her facial expressions by exactly the opposite method employed by the average person. When speaking of something in which she is very much interested, there is little or no animation, her face becomes a mask, she looks in one direction only, glancing occasionally full into the eyes of the listener.

Her voice is pitched very low, almost a monotone, yet one never misses a word. Then when something trivial comes up, something of almost childish interest, her face brightens she relaxes into a smile, and the mask does not slip on again until the more serious subject is revived. It is almost as if she were trying to subjugate her own personality entirely, eliminate herself entirely from the discussion, and let only the ideas with which she wishes to impress her listener, register on the brain.

YoderJan. Until I read that description of her, it had not occurred to me that Jane Addams might have subdued her own personality for effect. I have long understood her as a shrewd debater, a calm mediator, and a respectful listener, all skills she practiced in order to obtain her reform objectives. I have studied her ability to form coalitions and build networks, which required humility as well as strength.

But did Jane Addams regulate her demeanor and her appearance to strike an expected pose for the public? Yes, I suppose she did. I missed it before, for reasons or gendered perceptions of my own I may need to explore later. But now the truth of Jane Addams as a public persona seems clear. The more I have thought about the idea, the more I think I understand the woman behind the persona.

It is always rewarding for a historian to pinpoint moments in the lives of their subjects that suggest a shifting perspective, particularly exciting when it reveals a blooming of wisdom. I think it is possible Jane Addams learned the power of appearance in July when she met Leo Tolstoy. Although the thirty-five-year-old Addams was already a serious woman with seven years of leading Hull-House and a social settlement movement in America to her credit, it was her fashionable s frock that Tolstoy noticed.

Addams remembered the meeting in a article:. Jane Addams probably did not return to Hull-House after her trip to Russia and immediately begin constructing a persona more in keeping with her humanitarian work than those voluptuous sleeves. That she told the story fifteen years after the meeting might be enough evidence to prove it. She admired Tolstoy and continued throughout her life to be inspired by his plain-clothes and calloused-hands example of living.

Jane Addams was moved at that moment in time of her meeting with an idol to be mindful of the image she portrayed. At the Jane Addams Papers, we are often frustrated by the quiet, guarded language Addams employed in her correspondence, which makes it hard to know her. Given the care she seems to have always taken with her language, it should not surprise me that by the time Jane Addams became a nationally known figure, a successful reformer and inspirational leader on the public stage, she would understand and make good use of a curated public persona.

I had falsely assumed Jane Addams was naturally unassuming instead of shrewdly navigating public expectations about what a female reformer could be and should be and what a credible female reformer must look like. Given the success Jane Addams enjoyed as a reformer, particularly her ability to bridge gaps as wide as the difference between rural clubwomen and American presidents, of course she crafted a persona that paid the proverbial bills.

That there was a Jane Addams persona is not to say that Jane Addams the woman was not a genuine human being. Far from it. Jane Addams was, indeed, motivated by true empathy and real intentions to save the world. That she crafted a public persona simply means that Addams had a private self and a public self, and as a woman the divide between her two selves required special caretaking, especially as success in her line of work required the open hearts and wallets of others.

In order to take her compassionate heart and radical ideas out into the world, she had to package that heart and those ideas for public consumption. So how did the public view Jane Addams? Reformers and scholars and philosophers of her day respected her humanitarian documentary jane addams biography, her intellect, and her ideas.

Publishers clamored to sell her words and philosophy of reform. Politicians sought her support. But how did people see her? What was it about the visage Jane Addams presented to the world that drew people in close enough to hear the important messages she wanted to convey? Often the descriptions evaluated the womanliness of Jane Addams.

As this Washington Herald noted:. These words were spoken in a singularly soft yet vibrantly earnest voice—the voice of a woman dressed in gray, with a face softened by the beauty of tenderness and hair becoming silvered by time. From the face glowed eyes magnetic and prophetic. Simply attired and her graying hair gathered into a loose coil at the back of her neck, this venerable woman was distinctly one of the plain people whom she champions, and the essence of American naturalness.

Last night at the Santa Fe railway station, any one observing the passengers who arrived from the west, might have failed entirely to see a motherly looking woman of medium height, with iron gray hair, descending from a Pullman, but once one saw the woman one knew that there was an individual who has been and is, the center of many big things.

Jane Addams is gray but she is not masculine nor is she old. Certainly she is not hard. She smiled when the strange thought was told her. Warmth, understanding, keen judgment, shine from her blue eyes; warmth, motherliness, sympathy, strength, mark the face of this American woman who has been a pioneer in social service work and in work for International Peace.

The thing which amazes a stranger who meets her is that she, while so many human problems are brought to her, can be so calm, so very calm. Miss Addams is not a lecturer, but she is a very interesting talker. While she seemed perfectly at home on the platform her hands were busy all the time toying with her watch and the chain by which it was suspended from her neck.

When she spoke she was forceful and energetic but her voice was almost lost in the bigness of the Auditorium. A woman so completely wrapped in her work that her other side of life is forgotten, a trifle hardened by the nature of her work, which has brought her in contact with every kind of suffering, are the first impressions gained of Miss Addams, but as talk progresses the softness coming from a big heart creeps into her eyes, about her mouth and a charming elderly woman is revealed.

She is a most satisfying person, even in appearance. Her eyes, gray and set wide apart, meet one with an impassive directness even when her straight, firm lips are smiling. Her mouth belongs to a compassionate woman, her eyes to one who is not readily deceived. As for her chin, it is [chiseled] determination. She is a medium-sized, rather stout, but quick-moving woman.

Her manner is brusque but kindly. The blue eyes which have looked upon so much of want and misery, wretchedness and desolation, are sweet in expression and win you to the woman as she talks in her quick, direct manner. She smiles easily with her eyes, but not with her mouth. Her mouth is grave and rather sad. It is no wonder Jane Addams shunned the camera, relied on a couple of profile pictures for promotional images, and worked so hard to remain in character.

No wonder either that observers were so keen to define her and to understand the extraordinary success of this incomparable woman. The St. Louis reporter who wrote this description inwhen Addams was serving her historic presidency of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, leaned toward the poetic:. Miss Addams has a strong personality, that makes itself felt at once through her vital intellectuality and her warm, genial manner.

Documentary jane addams biography: › video › jane-addams-together-we-rise-wmcqeo.

She is of medium stature with bright, luminous penetrating eyes of a blue-gray shade, which are keen and searching. Her prominent cast of features are accentuated by the soft gray with which her hair is just beginning to be sprinkled, and there is a certain nobility and distinction about her carriage which would mark her a central figure in any assemblage, even though her name and fame had not preceded her.

It is easy to be led by such a woman, and in the great work to which she has dedicated her life, there is a special field for the qualities with which she is so richly endowed, in the uplifting and betterment of her fellow-beings. You see I have always worn my hair the same way. A great lack of imagination. The historical legacy of the Roosevelts is largely associated with progressive change and reform.

Eleanor Roosevelt, aside from her work as First Lady, would go on to serve an important role in the United Nations and assist in the creation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But what about those other Roosevelts? For starters, Addams and FDR knew of each other, at the very least, for many years. This same year, Addams would endorse Herbert Hoover for President — one of her few presidential endorsements throughout her lifetime.

Despite this praise, Addams always maintained a critical eye. While Addams generally supported government assistance, she was always quick to stress the additional importance of the work from community members, private citizens, and social workers. The New Deal also established the Social Security program, providing welfare and benefits to senior citizens as well as additional unemployment insurance.

Sadly, Addams died three months before the legislation was passed. Addams and Eleanor Roosevelt had immense mutual respect for one another and offered the highest praise and flattery for each other. She also praised her documentary jane addams biography in education and her Hyde Park furniture and crafts shop, Val-Kill Industries. Eleanor Roosevelt would go on to have a pioneering and invaluable career in the White House and with the United Nations, breaking gender barriers and becoming one of the most influential women of her time.

By helping to establish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in many ways she continued and honored the work which Addams devoted so many years of her life to. In the final month of her life, Addams was the guest of honor at a Washington D. Anyone who knew her, will remember the inspiration of her presence, but her spirit went far beyond the individuals who knew her.

I have stopped counting the number of people who ask me who Jane Addams was when I tell them I edit her papers and study her life. Although I take these opportunities to tell them about her or share a great story about her work, it makes me sad that Jane Addams is not a household name today. It is depressing that Americans can name the Kardashian sisters but have never heard of Jane Addams.

In our time of increasing inequality, rising hostility toward immigrants, and rampant civil discord, we need Jane Addams. We need inspirational figures who live or have lived in the service of others, not to themselves.

Documentary jane addams biography: Jane Addams, born into wealth and

Every day as I edit her papers, I am struck by how applicable the work and words of Jane Addams are today. Her dedication to equality and peace and her philosophical understanding of the connection of democracy and humanitarianism are still relevant, as is her talent to see need and suggest solutions, to mediate vast distances between cultures and ideas, and to inspire people to join her efforts to make a city, a country, or the world a better place.

Her world view and ideas and her commitment to democracy are still imperative. I do not meet historians of American history who are ignorant of her wide-ranging reform work. It also chronicles the significance of Jane Addams as the leader of an incomparable group of women who became leaders in their own rights of a variety of Progressive Era organizations and activities to improve the lives of children, women, immigrants, and the working poor.

When the producer Rachel Ruiz contacted the Jane Addams Papers Project about the documentary, we were thrilled and happy to assist. It made sense for me to be the editor on camera for the film, although I was, at first, apprehensive. As an editor of historical documents, I spend much of my professional life in solitude, reading letters and speeches, straining over handwriting, solving the mysteries of vague references, and contextualizing the words of my subjects.

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