Jane Addams, the pioneer American peace activist

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrageand world peace. She created the first Hull House. In an era when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. She helped turn America to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed to be able to vote to do so effectively. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities. She is increasingly being recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of philosophy. In 1889 she co-founded Hull House, and in 1920 she was a co-founder for the ACLU. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States.

In 1898 Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League, in opposition to the U.S. annexation of thePhilippines. A staunch supporter of the 'Progressive' Party, she nominated Theodore Roosevelt for the Presidency during the Party Convention, held in Chicago in August 1912.  She signed up on the party platform, even though it called for building more battleships. She went on to speak and campaign extensively for Roosevelt's 1912 presidential campaign.

In January 1915 she became involved in the Woman's Peace Party and was elected national chairman.  Addams was invited by European women peace activists to preside over theInternational Congress of Women in The Hague, 28–30 April 1915, and was chosen to head the commission to find an end to the war. This included meeting ten leaders in neutral countries as well as those at war to discuss mediation. This was the first significant international effort against the war. 

Addams damned war as a cataclysm that undermined human kindness, solidarity, civic friendship, and caused families across the world to struggle. In turn her views were denounced by patriotic groups and newspapers during World War I (1917–18). Oswald Garrison Villard came to her defense when she suggested that armies gave liquor to soldiers just before major ground attacks. "Take the case of Jane Addams for one. With what abuse did not the [New York] Times cover her, one of the noblest of our women, because she told the simple truth that the Allied troops were often given liquor or drugs before charging across No Man's Land. Yet when the facts came out at the hands of Sir Philip Gibbs and others not one word of apology was ever forthcoming."  Even after the war the WILPF's program of peace and disarmament was characterized by opponents as radical, Communist-influenced, unpatriotic, and unfeminine. Young veterans in the American Legion, supported by some members of the Daughters of the American Revolution(DAR) and the League of Women Voters, were ill prepared to confront the older, better-educated, more financially secure and nationally famous women of the WILPF. Nevertheless, the DAR could and did expel Addams from membership in their organization.  The Legion's efforts to portray the WILPF members as dangerously naive females resonated with working class audiences, but President Calvin Coolidge and the middle classes supported Addams and her WILPF efforts in the 1920s to prohibit poison gas and outlaw war. After 1920, however, she was widely regarded as the greatest woman of the Progressive Era.  In 1931 the award of the Nobel Peace prize earned her near-unanimous acclaim.