Progressive activist Jane Addams, front row second from left, joins other delegates en route to the 1915 International Congress of Women at the Hague. (Library of Congress) 

Jane Addams, Secular Saint, Scorned During WWI 

By J.D. Zahniser
via the HistoryNet.com web site

On Sunday morning, June 10, 1917, well-known activist Jane Addams stood at the podium of First Congregational Church in Evanston, Illinois. The atmosphere was electric. The pacifist sentiments Addams had long espoused had been drawing more and more criticism as the war in Europe ground on. In April, to her dismay, America had thrown in with the Allies against the Central Powers. Addams nonetheless was holding to her path, delivering speeches like the text before her on the rostrum entitled “Pacifism and Patriotism in Time of War.”

Addams had come to First Congregational knowing full well that she would encounter skeptics. This day was no different and yet more intense. As the activist spoke, her listeners, who included longtime friend and ally Orrin N. Carter, chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, sat in hostile silence until Addams delivered the line “Opposition to the war is not necessarily cowardice.”

Justice Carter sprang to his feet.

“Anything that may tend to cast doubt on the justice of our cause in the present war is very unfortunate,” the jurist declared. “No pacifist measure, in my opinion, should be taken until the war is over.”

Addams had heard worse, but now she was enduring what may have been the most discomfiting public moment in a life that until recently had been one of fulfillment, accomplishment, and above all popular approval. A staunch progressive, Addams had won Americans’ hearts by founding Hull House, a pioneering social action center in Chicago, by being a force on behalf of woman suffrage, by speaking out against imperialism, and by advocating for workers. Now pacifism had made her a pariah, a role for which nothing in decades of public service and public approbation had readied her.

Read the entire article on the HistoryNet web site here:

External Web Site Notice: This page contains information directly presented from an external source. The terms and conditions of this page may not be the same as those of this website. Click here to read the full disclaimer notice for external web sites. Thank you.