Grace Abbott (November 17, 1878 – June 19, 1939) was an American social worker who specifically worked in advancing child welfare. Her elder sister was a social worker Edith Abbott.
Abbott was born in Grand Island, Nebraska. Abbott graduated from Grand Island College in 1898. Before embarking on her future career in social work, she worked as a high school teacher in her hometown through 1906. In 1902, she started graduate studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In 1907, she moved to Chicago, where she began her career in social work. She took up residency in the Hull House, an urban center for women engaged in early proto-feminism and social reform, as well as a safe haven for the poor. In 1909, Abbott received a Ph.M. in political science from the University of Chicago.
Abbott served on several committees and organizations for advancing the societal cause of the child welfare, including the Immigrants' Protective League (1908-1917), Child Labor Division of the U.S. Children's Bureau (1921 to 1934), and was also a member of the Women's Trade Union League.
Abbott was an author of several sociological texts, including The Immigrant and the Community (1917) and The Child and the State (1938, 2 volumes). She was also responsible for incorporating social statistics and research into legislative policy-making as well as investigating child labor violations in shipbuilding plants and other factories across the United States.
Abbott pioneered the process of incorporating sociological data relating to child labor, juvenile delinquency, dependency and statistics into the lawmaking process; she spent much of her time as a political lobbyist for social issues in Washington, D.C.. She was associated with the Social Security Administration from 1934 until her death in 1939; during that time period, Abbott helped in the drafting of the Social Security Act and chaired several government committees on child welfare and social issues.
She was the first woman to be nominated for a Presidential cabinet position, but was not confirmed. Her mother was a Quaker and her father, Othman A. Abbott, was the first Lt.Gov of the state of Nebraska. She never married.
During a 1938 health checkup, doctors discovered that she was suffering from multiple myeloma. The disease caused her death one year later.
Abbott is a member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
Famous quotes containing the words grace and/or abbott:
“I thus could not live, and I admitted it, unless on the entire earth, all creatures, or at least the greatest number, were turned toward me, eternally vacant, deprived of an independent life, ready at any moment to respond to my call, given to sterility until the day I deigned to grace them with my light. In short, for me to live happily, it was necessary for those chosen by me not to live at all.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“It’s all sorts of middle-aged white men in suits—forests of middle-aged men in dark suits. All slightly red-faced from eating and drinking too much.”
—Diane Abbott (b. 1953)