Jane Addams

Jane Addams was a seismically huge and influential figure in the American women's suffrage movement. She was also romantically involved with several women over her lifetime, most significantly with Mary Rozet Smith (pictured left, above), who she shared a house with. The women wrote to each other constantly when apart, and the letters show they saw themselves as a loving married couple.

Jane Addams | Smithsonian Institution

Learning to do good from the master.

Most grassroots activism in Chicago is led by women and queer communities of color, yet their work and legacy are often obscured, erased and overlooked. This program will feature local women and queer activists who work towards social change and explore the continuums in social justice organizing. How are these are remembered, documented, made visible and archived?

A progressive social reformer and activist, Jane Addams was on the frontline of the settlement house movement and was the first American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Discover more at womenshistory.org.

Social reformer Jane Addams founded the settlement house called Hull House in 1889 in order to help the underprivileged in Chicago.

The feminist movement has been around for nearly two centuries in the United States now, and if its founding mothers saw what it looked like today, they might have trouble recognizing it at first, but they'd also notice similarities. That's why many…

Only a handful of women have won the Nobel Peace Prize awards, more in recent years than in the early years, though a woman's activism inspired the award.