Jane Addams - Legacy

Legacy

Hull House and the Peace Movement are widely recognized as the key tangible pillars of Addams' legacy. While her life focused on the development of individuals, her ideas continue to influence social, political and economic reform in the United States as well as internationally.

Willard Motley, a resident artist of Hull House, extracting from Addams' central theory on symbolic interactionism, used the neighborhood and its people to write his 1948 best seller, Knock on Any Door.

Addams' role as reformer enabled her to petition the establishment at and alter the social and physical geography of her Chicago neighborhood. Although contemporary academic sociologists defined her engagement as "social work," Addams' efforts differed significantly from activities typically labeled as "social work" during that time period. Before Addams' powerful influence on the profession, social work was largely informed by a "friendly visitor" model in which typically wealthy women of high public stature visited impoverished individuals and, through systematic assessment and intervention, aimed to improve the lives of the poor. Addams rejected the friendly visitor model in favor of a model of social reform/social theory-building, thereby introducing the now-central tenets of social justice and reform to the field of social work.

Hull House enabled Addams to befriend and become a colleague to early members of the Chicago School of Sociology. Her influence, through her work in applied sociology, impacted their thoughts and their direction. In 1893, she co-authored the Hull-House Maps and Papers that came to define the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including promoting women's rights, ending child labor, and mediating during the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike.

Addams worked with labor as well as other reform groups toward goals including the first juvenile-court law, tenement-house regulation, an eight-hour working day for women, factory inspection, and workers' compensation. She advocated research aimed at determining the causes of poverty and crime, and supported women's suffrage. She was a strong advocate of justice for immigrants and blacks, becoming a chartered member of the NAACP. Among the projects that the members of the Hull House opened were the Immigrants' Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the United States, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic.

Addams' writings and speeches, on behalf of the formation of the League of Nations and as peace advocate, are well documented; influencing the later shape of the United Nations.