Twenty Years at Hull-House, 1910

Jane Addams’s global advocacy for women’s economic, educational, and social equality made her the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In her autobiography Twenty Years at Hull-House, Addams recounts her domestic activism as the founder of the second and most innovative settlement house in the U.S. Originally conceived in 1889 as a space where women of privilege could share their knowledge in humanistic fields such as art, literature, and music with the less fortunate, Hull House rapidly transformed into a community support system where working women could learn practical job skills, obtain medical and legal services, and locate affordable housing. Addams’ two decades working in inner-city Chicago ultimately inspired her to take a global approach to advocacy; and she founded the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom in addition to serving as President of the Woman’s Peace Party. The enclosed Night Lettergram to Elsie M. Hill documents this work, as Addams writes in her hand, “Will you strengthen the appeal to be made next Friday by Ethel Snowden of England and Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary to President Wilson by telegramming him immediately at Washington somewhat as follows: ‘We urge a conference of neutral nations dedicated to finding a just settlement of this war.’ Jane Addams, President, Woman’s Peace Party.”

Women at the Hague, 1915

In April 1915, the International Congress of Women convened in the Netherlands, drawing women’s rights activists from around the globe. Among those delegates who gathered to discuss women’s diplomatic importance to the post-WWI peace process were the two who would become the first American women to win the Nobel Peace Prize: Jane Addams and her protégé Emily Balch. With their co-author Alice Hamilton, Harvard’s first female professor, these American representatives published Women at the Hague to present the outcomes of the congress to their national audience. Sophinisba Breckinridge, affectionately known as “Miss Nisba,” was another of Addams’ protégés. One of the earliest U.S. female lawyers and PhD recipients, she was active in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom [WILPF]; and she became the first professor to teach a women’s studies course. Signing her name “Miss Nisba,” she presented this book to Henry McDowell Bullock, descendant of the infamous “Great Compromiser” Henry Clay.