Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy

by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin

Most people know Jane Addams (1860-1935) as the force behind Hull House, one of the first settlement houses in the United States. She was also an ardent suffragist and civil rights activist, co-founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union. But it was her work as a pacifist that put her in the international spotlight. Although many people labeled her "unpatriotic" for her pacifist activities,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618504362
• ISBN13: 9780618504367
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.7" x 9.7"
• Age Range: 10 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 7

Customer Reviews

Richie's Picks: JANE ADDAMS: CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY

"Visitors often saw just one side of Chicago -- the lovely lakefront, the fabulous mansions of the wealthy merchants, the majestic skyscrapers, and the glittering night spots. "There were entire neighborhoods where the residents lived packed together in filthy tenements and shacks. Many poor Chicagoans had no heat in the wintertime, no running water, and no neighborhood schools. Because the opportunity to bathe was rare for the poor, dirt sometimes accumulated on children until their skin resembled scales. In addition, the milk delivered to poor families was often spoiled. "These unsanitary conditions claimed a large toll, particularly among the very young. In the city as a whole, half the children born in 1889 wouldn't live to celebrate their fifth birthdays. The death toll was even higher in poor neighborhoods, where families might have ten children in the hope that three or four would reach adulthood. Adults also suffered from outbreaks of disease, which included smallpox, cholera, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and dysentery. In 1885, for example, epidemics killed approximately one hundred thousand Chicagoans, or about one in every eight of the city's population." Into this world of squalor and disease stepped the young woman who was determined to change things. I like to think that I am doing my little bit to make the world a better place. I am always advocating loudly for peace and acceptance and equality, doing a lot of education-related volunteer work, drying my clothes in the sun, taking mass transit when practical, recycling and composting and planting trees. But then I read a book like JANE ADDAMS: CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY and am again reminded of what it looks like to REALLY be serious about changing the world: "By the early 1900s, Hull House had grown to thirteen buildings and was home to about forty staff residents, a quarter of them men. Among the residents were physicians, attorneys, journalists, businessmen, teachers, scientists, musicians, and artists. The Hull House settlement had become a vital part of the neighborhood. Of the 70,000 people who lived within six blocks of Hull House around the turn of the century, roughly 9,000 participated in the settlement's programs in any given week." And to think that Jane Addams' work to create Hull House was but the platform from which she then worked -- in the forefront and with every expectation of achieving success -- for world peace, women's suffrage, racial equality, and an end to poverty and child labor. "Jane Addams practiced what she preached. During her forty-six years as director of Hull House, she refused to accept even a penny in salary for herself. She also donated most of her personal funds to the settlement. She had a roof over her head, food, and some of her inheritance left, so why have a large bank account when the money could help the poor." Some of the snapshots of her sharing behavior are truly delightful, being that she would barely have a gift