(inspiring music) - [Narrator] Coming up, Jane Addams.

- Her vision of society was radical.

- She wasn't a temperamental rebel, but she ended up in rebel territory.

- [Narrator] An activist ahead of her time.

- [Louise] Addams thought she would socialize democracy across class lines, across race lines.

- [Narrator] She spearheaded a movement.

- [Stacy] Lobbying Congress and pounding the pavement, cleaning the streets of Chicago, trying to improve the world.

- [Narrator] And amassed an army of women to demand change.

- People are literally starving and they need jobs.

- And the children are slaving in the factories.

- She was quite shocked to see boys in adult jails.

- [Narrator] They pushed boundaries and broke barriers.

- Imagine if someone says, you can't do that because you're a woman.

- [Leigh] These women were not gonna take no for an answer.

- [Stacy] She was uncompromising in what she thought was right.

- [Narrator] And ultimately she would change her city and the world.

- There's no one cooler than Jane Addams.

- [Narrator] Jane Addams: Together We Rise, next on Chicago Stories.

(upbeat music) In the late 19th century, millions of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe came to America.

- This is the industrial revolution.

You see the world moving away from farming, moving into cities for jobs and work.

Factories need workers and people need work.

- [Narrator] Many made their way to Chicago, eager to find jobs in the city's booming industries like sewing in the garment district or butchering in the stockyards.

(cow mooing) Most of the factories were located on the city's southwest side in the 19th Ward.

- People lived in the neighborhood and they worked in the neighborhood.

There was paper making and shoe binding and candy factories.

- There were 20 or more different languages that were spoken on an everyday basis.

- [Narrator] As more and more people flooded into the city, neighborhoods became filthy, overcrowded slums.

In the 19th Ward alone, 45,000 immigrants were crammed into a few squalid square miles.

- [Louise] There were a lot of small wooden cottages.

There was no running water.

Animal waste and human waste was going into the streets because there was no sewer system.

- [Narrator] It was hardly a place where anyone with other options would choose to call home.

But one young woman with an ambitious dream did just that.

In the fall of 1889, it was moving day for 29-year-old Jane Addams.

She had packed up and left her affluent life in Cedarville, Illinois and rented an old mansion that sat between a saloon and a morgue on Halsted Street.

- Halsted was the most active, condensed, urbanized, industrialized area of the city and of the United States.

It was busy, loud, noisy, smelly.

- [Narrator] And that's exactly why Addams wanted to be there.

She was launching an audacious experiment in social reform, a so-called settlement house where she could help improve the lives of the city's immigrant population by living alongside them.

- The word settlement comes from this idea that in order for us to solve the problems, we have to be mixed and immersed in the problems.

- [Narrator] It was a rebellious move for a woman of Addams' time.

- [Louise] The expectation for women, especially of her class, was to marry and have children, but she had other things she wanted to do.

- [Narrator] A trip to London a year earlier had opened Addams' eyes and changed what she saw as her life's purpose.

In the city's East End, she visited Toynbee Hall, the world's first settlement house.

(horse galloping) She was heartbroken to see people living in debilitating poverty.

But she also saw something that inspired her.

- Here were these college educated men living in a working-class neighborhood, and they were offering clubs and classes in the neighborhood, and she thought it all sounded kind of wonderful.

- [Narrator] Upon her return, Addams made plans to replicate what she'd seen overseas.

Her settlement house would be the first in the United States.

She named it Hull House after its original owner, Charles J.

Hull, a philanthropist and real estate developer.

Joining Addams was her 30-year-old co-founder, Ellen Gates Starr.

- Ellen Gates Starr was one of Jane Addams' best friends.

- Ellen was very courageous.

So when Addams said, "I have this idea to start a settlement house," Ellen said, "Great, I'll do it with you."

When I think about Ellen and Jane moving into this house and into this neighborhood, I am very struck, first of all, that they were so brave, but they would've been the first to say they were naive in that they had no idea what they were getting into.

- [Narrator] Addams plan to recruit like-minded reformers to move into Hull House with her and Starr, pay room and board, and work with the immigrant community.

- Many of the Hull House women, Jane Addams included, were part of that first generation of women who were allowed to go to college.

- You're talking about women who wanna go out in the world and do something.

Hull House was an outlet at a time when women didn't have a lot of professional kinds of outlets.

- [Narrator] But as Addams recounted in her memoir, "Twenty Years at Hull-House", initially, her neighbors didn't know what to make of her.

- [Jane] In those early days, we were often asked why we had come to live on Halsted Street when we could afford to live somewhere else.

I remember one man who used to shake his head and say it was the strangest thing he had met in his experience.

- [Louise] Addams thought she would socialize democracy across class lines, across race lines, and that's a very important part of Hull House's work, and she thought of all the people in the neighborhood as friends of hers.

- [Narrator] Shortly after arriving at Hull House, Addams and Starr hosted a dinner party for their new neighbors.

- [Lisa] Ellen Gates Starr writes a beautiful letter home saying, "Oh my goodness, there was this incredible dish that was boiled meat and then we put tomato sauce over it and then we poured it over pasta."

And after that bowl of spaghetti, they understood that they had so much to learn about the neighborhood.

- They thought they were superior to the uneducated neighbors, but of course, the people in their neighborhood had lived full and complicated lives and they had learned a lot of life wisdom.

So they gained a lot of respect for the people in the neighborhood, and that started Addams down the path of her new thinking really.

- [Narrator] It was a path Jane Addams longed to explore.

She had always felt called to a life other than the one she'd been raised for.

Laura Jane Addams was born in the small farming town of Cedarville, Illinois on September 6th, 1860.

Just months before another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, was elected president.

- I think for Jane Addams, Abraham Lincoln feels like a part of her DNA.

One of her first childhood memories was when Lincoln died, and she remembers her father placing the black crepe and the bunting on the house.

- [Narrator] Her father, John Addams, was a successful and wealthy flour and sawmill owner.

But tragedy plagued the family too.

When Jane Addams was just two years old, her mother, Sarah, slipped and fell when she was eight months pregnant.

She died along with her unborn child.

Addams and her four older siblings were left motherless.

- It was a terrible blow.

And she adored him.

She had great respect for him.

His best advice to her, which she never forgot, was that you should always listen and trust the voice inside of you.

And that's such a powerful thing for a parent to tell a child to do, to always trust themselves more than anybody else.

- [Narrator] Addams' father was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party and a state legislator.

- That was something she tremendously admired and it's easy to say that probably laid down the foundation for her interest in politics.

- [Narrator] Like Lincoln, Addams' father opposed slavery.

In her memoir, she wrote about his support of the Underground Railroad.

- She walks into a room one day and her father is seated with a Black man and they're having a conversation.

And he told her that this person was moving from the south, where he had been enslaved, to the north where he would be free.

And Addams never forgot it.

- [Narrator] Addams graduated valedictorian from Rockford Female Seminary in 1881.

She dreamed of a career in social reform, but she felt conflicted.

Her father had insisted that her duty was to her family.

The following summer, while on a family trip to northern Michigan, Addams' life was turned upside down.

- [Louise] As they were climbing around a mine that her father was considering buying, he had a sudden attack of appendicitis.

- [Narrator] John Addams died six days later.

Jane Addams was gutted by the loss of her beloved father and sank into a deep depression.

But his death also created possibilities that had not existed before.

- [Louise] Jane Addams had always wanted to do everything she could to please her father.

When he died, that freed her up to make her own decisions about her future.

And it was a direct rejection of the traditional views on women.

- [Narrator] John Addams left each of his children an inheritance equal to $1.9 million today.

For Addams, it was her ticket to pursue her dream and start Hull House.

(bright music) Finding her purpose had lifted Addams from her depression, but it was also her relationship with Ellen Gates Starr, whose friendship had grown into something more.

- [Lisa] Ellen and Jane made a deep commitment to each other.

- [Louise] They adored and loved one another.

- [Narrator] In the earliest days of Hull House, Addams had modest goals: to enrich the lives of her neighbors and offer some relief after a long day at the factories.

Addams taught literature while Starr taught art appreciation, and eventually opened the city's first public art gallery.

- People would say, "People are literally starving and they need jobs.

Why is it that you have an art gallery?"

- [Narrator] As Addams got to know her neighbors better, she realized they needed more urgent help.

Some parents were forced to leave their children home alone while both went to work in the factories, sometimes tying toddlers to furniture in a desperate effort to keep them safe.

Addams was horrified.

- [Ross] I think they were incredibly struck by the lack of supervision and activity for children from day one.

- [Narrator] Addams got to work recruiting volunteers, and within weeks, she opened a nursery at Hull House and a kindergarten too.

- [Lisa] They opened one of Chicago's first kindergartens and they drew from the immigrant communities.

- [Narrator] But not all of the kids in the 19th Ward were lucky enough to go to school.

- [Jane] The little girls refused to take candy because they said they worked in a candy factory and they couldn't bear the sight of any more.

We discovered these girls worked from seven to seven in sweatshops.

- [Narrator] The 19th Ward's youngest had no idea what it was like to have a carefree childhood like the one Addams had growing up.

- [Ross] Anybody who was able to work in the neighborhood around Hull House worked.

That meant both children and adults.

That was the norm.

That was the status quo.

- [Narrator] Addams wanted to help the children in the 19th Ward, but she and Starr couldn't do it alone.

To recruit more residents, she spoke at colleges and women's clubs.

Her message was inspiring.

And soon, other impassioned reformers came to live and work at Hull House, each bringing a unique set of skills and experience.

Rockford native, Julia Lathrop, was one of the first to answer the call.

- Julia Lathrop was very much, from the beginning, focused on children, and I think a lot of Jane Addams' later thinking about how if you save the child, you save the world.

That's absolutely straight from Julia Lathrop.

- [Narrator] Florence Kelley, an author and political activist, arrived in the winter of 1891.

- Florence Kelley had been working to lobby state legislatures in the east to adopt child labor laws, and she brought this experience to Hull House.

- [Narrator] And later, physician and scientist, Alice Hamilton joined the cause.

- She was a brilliant chemist and somebody who was deeply committed to science as a way of alleviating human suffering.

- [Narrator] Together Addams and this team of women built a social reform movement, the likes of which America had never seen.

- [Stacy] They would've been spectacular on their own, but together these women were way more powerful than the sum of their parts.

(machine humming) - [Narrator] In Chicago, more than 20,000 immigrant women and children worked in the garment industry, sewing in dark and oppressive sweatshops.

- People would set up a factory on the second floor of a house in the slums and people would also live there.

Remember, this was like no public sewage, often no running water, often no electricity.

- [Narrator] Many large manufacturing companies, including department stores like Marshall Field's, relied on this cheap, non-union labor, which in many cases was performed by children.

For the Hull House women, this was unacceptable, but one new resident had the experience and passion to put an end to it.

- Florence Kelley was college-educated from Pennsylvania and had a much greater experience in political action than Addams did.

- [Narrator] With her own three children in tow, 32-year-old Florence Kelley had just fled an abusive husband in New York and arrived in Chicago seeking a divorce.

She landed at Hull House and quickly learned of the plight of the children in the 19th Ward.

- Florence Kelley, she was very consistent.

The children, we have to protect the children.

They can't protect themselves.

- [Narrator] Addams encouraged Kelley to work with the city's trade unions, and together they began advocating for sweatshop reform.

- They knew they had to persuade a lot of people, legislators, but also citizens.

- [Narrator] Addams feared the pushback would be strong from many of the parents in her community.

- [Leigh] A lot of the immigrants, the men and some of the women, depended on their kids either begging, working in the factories, and bringing home the money to the parents.

Florence Kelley writes that the so-called reformers were viewed in the communities often as troublemakers, pests.

- [Narrator] But Addams and Kelley knew the children needed and deserved protection, and that they'd need hard facts if they were going to change hearts and minds.

Kelley persuaded the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics to investigate the sweatshops.

The results were alarming.

Thousands of women and children were laboring in dangerous conditions for 10 or more hours a day, and for as little as 5 cents an hour.

- [Leigh] When you get a description of there is Celia, she is working from six in the morning until 10 o'clock at night and she gets a crust of bread to eat at noon.

That makes a huge difference.

- [Narrator] Kelley and Addams used stories like these to champion change.

- [Louise] They educated people.

They gave speeches where they presented the facts about child labor and about the hours that women were working.

They made it very vivid and real.

- [Narrator] As their movement gained momentum, some opponents tried to derail them.

- [Louise] This factory owner said, "Well, I know how we'll stop this movement."

And he said, "If you would just stop lobbying, in favor of this bill," he said, "I'll give you $50,000."

That's a lot of money in 1893.

- [Narrator] Addams refused the bribe.

- [Louise] And she said, "I don't want the people in the neighborhood to work under these conditions, so no thank you."

(train whistling) - [Narrator] Florence Kelley believed the time was right to travel to Springfield and lobby the state legislature.

- [Leigh] Jane Addams said she was like Athena, charging into battle, and she was just fearless.

- [Narrator] It was a bold move at a time when women didn't even have the right to vote.

- Addams had always thought that women shouldn't have anything to do with politics because they couldn't vote, but she overcame that prejudice.

- And they said, "You have to pass this."

(foot tapping) These women, they were not gonna take no for an answer.

- [Ross] People weren't used to women going into spaces like this and throwing their weight around.

- [Narrator] The all-male legislature was forced to take note.

- [Louise] They educated the legislators and they had facts, they had stories, and those are very persuasive.

- [Narrator] And incredibly, just a few months later, Illinois passed the factory and workshop inspections law, which prohibited the employment of children under the age of 14.

- So it was kind of a remarkable moment in Illinois history.

It was the first state law in the nation to limit women and older children to an eight-hour day.

- [Stacy] It was an immediate effectual way to help the lives of children.

It got them out of the factories and into the classroom.

It is a continuing legacy.

(children singing) I think a lot of the way we think about childhood today is rooted in that early work that Jane Addams did in carving out this period of childhood where children should be protected from the ravages of industry.

(children laughing) - [Narrator] And by 1892, just three years after opening its doors, Hull House was the world's most famous settlement.

Addams and Starr now lived with 13 other residents, which included seven men.

- Addams founded not only the first settlement house in the United States, but the first co-ed settlement house in the entire world.

- [Narrator] That same year when Chicago hosted the World's Fair, Hull House residents gave tours to visitors from around the globe, and reporters frequently dropped by to document the activity.

- [Reporter] "Inside I founded German reception underway in the library and an Italian reception in the dining room."

"A young woman was teaching cooking in the kitchen while a girls club was meeting in one of the halls."

"And in the Butler Art Gallery, a French reading was about to commence."

- [Narrator] Hull House was growing physically too.

Addams worked with architects to design the Butler Art Gallery, a gymnasium, a coffee house, a kitchen, and a theater.

The settlement would ultimately expand to 13 buildings.

Hull House also built the city's first playground in 1895.

But the additions were costly and Addams had sunk most of her inheritance into Hull House.

Keeping it afloat was always a worry.

- [Jane] "We were constantly haunted by the prospect of unpaid bills."

"We kept house, cooked the meals, did repairs when we could, thinking nothing of the hardship as long as it meant saving money."

- [Narrator] Only those in Addams' inner circle truly knew all the responsibilities she carried on her back.

Like 33-year-old Julia Lathrop, who quickly became Jane Addams' right hand.

- [Stacy] Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop had an incredible deep and abiding friendship.

They are little power duo, those two.

- [Narrator] As a volunteer for the state's Board of Charities, Lathrop toured each of the state's 102 institutions including its jails, and reported her findings.

She told Addams about the horrors she had discovered there.

- Lathrop is quite shocked and concerned about the fact that boys were in adult jails.

You don't want children exposed to the criminality of hardened folks in jail.

- [Narrator] Children as young as 10 were being arrested for minor crimes like petty theft and vagrancy, and tried in court as adults.

Most of the kids were immigrants.

If found guilty, their parents were issued a fine, which most could not afford to pay.

As a result, more than 250 children were sitting in the Cook County Jail alongside violent criminals.

- [Miriam] These children needed more time in school.

They needed more wholesome recreation.

They need better community services to the families.

- [Narrator] Addams and Lathrop knew there was a better way and pushed to establish a juvenile court, a first in the nation.

- [Miriam] The purpose was not to punish these kids, but to help them.

Lathrop believed if you expose the facts, then you can get public opinion.

So she did a great deal of publicizing and exposing to put pressure on the governor to get behind it.

- [Narrator] Lathrop built a coalition of support for a juvenile court that included judges and wardens.

Even though the women of Hull House had success lobbying for child labor legislation a few years earlier, Addams knew the all-male state legislature would be reluctant to support a bill brought by a woman.

- [Louise] Jane Addams understood the patriarchy.

She understood the power of men.

- [Miriam] Julia Lathrop had a huge role in drafting the bill, but she said this will never go if it's considered a woman's bill.

And so, she enlisted the Chicago Bar Association.

- [Narrator] In 1889, their efforts paid off.

The Cook County Juvenile Court, the first of its kind took root in Chicago, right across the street from Hull House.

A crucial part of Lathrop's plan depended on the women of Hull House.

- [Stacy] The women agreed to be the probation officers.

- For the first seven, eight years, there was no funding for these probation officers.

It was the probation officers, Lathrop herself, early on, was sitting with judges and helping them adjudicate the situation.

If possible, the solution would then be not to put these kids in jail, but to keep them in their homes.

- [Narrator] The volunteer probation officers visited the children and helped them access social services.

Today, we know these advocates as case managers.

By 1925, almost every state in the nation had adopted some form of the juvenile court system founded by the women of Hull House.

Every victory in their fight for social reform brought a sense of accomplishment and the settlement had far surpassed Addams' initial modest goals.

But the number and scale of problems facing the immigrant community was staggering, and the work was never ending.

But dedicated reformers continued to arrive at Hull House, each bringing something different to the mission.

28-year-old physician and scientist, Alice Hamilton, joined the cause in 1897.

Hamilton hailed from upper middle class roots in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and initially she didn't feel suited for settlement life.

- It was loud.

It was chaotic.

It was crazy.

9,000 visitors a week, doors open in the morning, closed late at night.

And a lot of the Hull House residents, they thrived in that environment.

For others like Alice Hamilton, it was more of a struggle.

- [Narrator] Eventually, Hamilton found her footing.

And in her 20 years at Hull House, she would become an unlikely blend of scientist and crusader.

- She was a thinker ahead of her times on social issues and an early proponent of public health and the importance of public health.

- [Narrator] Most immigrants in the 19th Ward couldn't afford to see a doctor, so Addams encouraged Hamilton to open a well baby clinic to treat the most vulnerable.

That's when some patients pleaded with her to help their husbands, factory workers who were getting sick from mysterious illnesses that left some severely disabled.

(machine pounding) (men shouting) - You had patients with wrist drop, which was a peripheral neuropathy where the nerves were impacted and the patients came in like this and they couldn't manipulate their fingers.

- [Narrator] Hamilton suspected lead poisoning was the culprit.

- [Peter] At a time when the industrial revolution was really taking off in this country, lead exposure was coming from a variety of sources.

- [Narrator] In 1910, Hamilton led a statewide study of lead poisoning, the first of its kind.

- [Peter] Her appointment allowed her access to workplaces with heavy lead exposures.

- [Narrator] Hamilton uncovered dozens of factory operations involving the use of lead, and nearly 600 cases of lead poisoning.

- She was able to identify the source of lead exposure and then trace it as the cause.

It caused sterility.

It caused birth defects in the next generation, and it caused hematologic abnormalities, which we now know also included cancer.

- [Narrator] Thanks to Hamilton's groundbreaking work, Illinois passed the first workers' compensation law in U.S. history.

One year later, the nation followed suit.

- [Peter] The state said, if you cause the disease, you need to be compensating the workers.

Now, that was precedent setting in this country.

- [Narrator] Jane Addams had become nothing short of a legend.

- Anybody who's doing anything in America, politicians, business people, reformers, they want to meet Jane Addams.

It's a partly reflection on what Hull House is doing and all of the amazing people that are there.

But Jane Addams is that gravity.

- [Narrator] By 1910, the author had published four books, including her widely read memoir, "Twenty years at Hull-House".

And she would go on to write seven more.

- In those books is a world of understanding about need and inequality and injustice and Jane Addams' ideas about how we might solve these problems.

- [Narrator] Over the years, Addams founded dozens of organizations.

Among them, the Immigrants Protective League, the Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, and she helped establish the school of social work at the University of Chicago, creating a new profession for women.

- People admired her a great deal because she knew so much about so many things.

The people she was talking to could shape policy.

- [Narrator] And her dream of building a team of like-minded reformers and allies at Hull House, had long been realized.

- [Stacy] And the core group of women who lived there and worked there, really thought of themselves as family.

- [Louise] These are women who made each other laugh, who challenged each other intellectually.

They argued with each other.

- That's the only possible way that you could sustain decades of really hard, serious efforts to change the world is through fierce friendships with one another.

- [Narrator] But as some bonds strengthened, one broke.

Addams had become estranged from her partner, Ellen Gates Starr.

- They were growing apart.

Jane didn't need Ellen's sort of bold, courageous belief in the project.

Jane's life had become much more complicated.

She needed a sympathetic kind person to be her shelter emotionally, and that's what Mary Rozet Smith offered to her.

- [Narrator] Mary Rozet Smith was volunteering in the kindergarten at Hull House when she first caught Addams' attention.

- She was pretty and she was bright and soft-spoken and kind.

And Mary Smith becomes for Jane Addams, a crucial domestic private balance to the chaos that is her public life.

- [Louise] Mary Rozet Smith and Jane Addams did become life partners.

They clearly considered themselves devoted to each other for the rest of their lives.

- [Narrator] Smith hailed from a wealthy Chicago family and she would become one of Hull House's biggest benefactors.

Her resources also allowed Addams to occasionally escape the demands of settlement life.

- [Louise] They traveled together.

They owned a cottage together where they spent summers.

- [Stacy] They were each other's family and support system.

They took care of each other.

- [Narrator] Smith was there for Addams after the death of her oldest sister Mary, who died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 49.

Addams became guardian of Mary's two youngest children, Esther and Stanley.

- [Stacy] Jane Addams wasn't a mother herself, but she was a surrogate mother, and I do believe she felt a real heart connection to her nieces and nephews.

- [Narrator] 11-year-old Stanley suffered from health issues and Addams' concern for him motivated her to take on her next cause: garbage.

Garbage in the 19th Ward was among the leading causes of diseases like scarlet fever and tuberculosis.

The unsanitary and filthy conditions were killing children.

- [Louise] There was inches thick garbage, overflowing garbage bins in the alleys.

- [Narrator] The garbage was scheduled to be collected three times a week, but it was removed just twice a month.

The person in charge was Alderman Johnny Powers, one of the most influential and corrupt politicians in the city.

Powers handed out contracts to his cronies who were happy to pocket the money for doing little or no work.

- He hired people to remove the garbage who didn't really remove the garbage.

And so Addams was beginning to see how local politics affected her neighbors.

- [Narrator] Addams was ready to get her hands dirty.

She researched garbage collection in other big cities and presented a bid to the mayor, proposing herself as garbage collector.

She didn't win the bid.

But the following year, a new progressive mayor, George Swift, appointed her garbage inspector of the 19th Ward.

Addams had become the first woman in Chicago's history to hold the post, but her appointment upset the political machine, and Alderman Johnny Powers was outraged.

She received hate mail, even death threats from his supporters, but Addams would not be intimidated.

- Addams followed these wagons around.

She made sure they went all the way to the dump.

She said, "We need more wagons."

"The city needs to pay for more wagons."

She really rode herd on the whole operation and the place got cleaned up.

- [Narrator] Less than a year later, the streets were cleaner and the death rates from disease had dropped.

It was yet another accomplishment in an extraordinary and by now, celebrated life.

The press would nickname her, "Saint Jane".

- Jane Addams was deeply pragmatic about her fame.

She knew how to deploy it in order to create more social good.

- Addams and Hull House were world famous, but for the tens of thousands of immigrants who came through its doors, the settlement remained what it had always been.

Hilda Polacek, a Polish immigrant who spent nearly every evening at Hull House as a teen, described it as "an oasis in the desert of boredom and monotony."

- [Hilda] "It was the university, the opera house, the theater, the gymnasium, the library, the clubhouse of the neighborhood."

"It was a place where one could become rejuvenated after a day of hard work."

- [Lisa] For certain people, it was just a place to take their first music lessons.

It was also a place where people could date people from different backgrounds.

So it was really everything to a lot of different people.

- [Narrator] But Addams, who had long advocated to improve the lives of immigrants and children, would be criticized for not helping another marginalized group: Chicago's Black community.

- Jane Addams was a radical in her time in so many ways, but she was, you know, what we might think of today as a white liberal.

And so issues around race is where her thinking about democracy didn't always align with the people that most needed her support.

- [Narrator] A public exchange between Addams and civil rights activist Ida B.

Wells would highlight her shortcomings when it came to race.

In 1901, Wells asked Addams to speak out against the horrors of lynching.

In response, Addams wrote an article condemning lynching as a means of punishment.

But she made the assumption that the victims were guilty of the crimes they'd been charged with.

- [Jane] "The bestial in man, that which leads him to pillage and rape, can never be controlled by public cruelty, and dramatic punishment."

- Ida B. Wells-Barnett said this is terrible.

You don't say the most important thing, which is that these are innocent people and it's our racism that is actually causing us to go and lynch innocent people.

- Ida B.

Wells says, okay, whoa, that's not true.

And she writes a rebuttal to the argument.

- [Narrator] Wells argued that lynching had become "America's national crime".

Addams' interaction with Wells proved she had much to learn.

- She had gaps in her thinking.

She had blind spots.

But the key thing was that she was listening carefully and close enough so she could learn over time.

- [Narrator] Despite their differences, Addams and Wells worked together for the next decade on causes that furthered racial equality.

- I would not say that they were friends, but I think they had a great deal of respect for the other one, which allowed them to come together in crisis situations.

- [Narrator] Addams and Wells helped block efforts to segregate public schools in Chicago, and they joined forces again in 1909 to co-found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP.

For all of the progress the women of Hull House had made, Addams knew it would only go so far until women had won fundamental right.

(horses galloping) The suffrage fight began long before Addams officially got involved in 1906.

But she became one of its most fierce and influential champions.

- Jane Addams always believed that women should be able to vote, but it just doesn't become central to her work until she's got a lot of experience in trying to change the world.

- [Narrator] Addams began headlining marches and rallies, and she wrote a column for Ladies Home Journal that was read by millions.

Without the vote, Addams argued, women could not perform their basic duties.

- [Jane] "A woman's simple duty, one would say, is to keep her house clean and wholesome and to feed her children properly."

"Yet, if she lives in a tenement house, as so many of my neighbors do, she cannot fulfill these simple obligations by her own efforts because she's utterly dependent upon the city administration for the conditions which render decent living possible."

- [Stacy] She's saying, look, we just want to take care of our families.

It's motherhood writ on a large scale, and it becomes a brilliant argument, and it convinces a lot of men to allow women to have the right to vote.

- [Narrator] It took another 14 years, but on August 18th, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote, 42 years after the bill was first introduced in Congress.

Jane Addams never sought fame, but at age 55, she had achieved it and was known and beloved around the world.

And at the height of her popularity, she was about to risk it all.

- She believed in freedom of speech as what she called an essential principle of democracy.

And when people tried to tell her to be quiet and she felt she had a right to speak.

(people clapping) - [Narrator] Addams spoke before a large audience at New York City's Carnegie Hall on July 9th, 1915 to voice her opposition to America's involvement in World War I.

- She was very concerned that there be a way to end the war as soon as possible through mediation.

She believed in mediation.

- [Narrator] Addams had hosted a peace conference in Europe where the war was already raging, and she was haunted by accounts from the troops fighting on the front lines, who described the horrors of trench warfare.

- [Jane] "We heard in all countries similar statements in regard to the necessity for the use of stimulants before men would engage in certain bayonet charges that they gave them rum in England, an absinthe in France."

- [Louise] They were given liquor by the government because you had to be drunk basically to wanna go and murder some other human being that way.

She didn't say it quite that bluntly, but she made it clear.

- [Narrator] Addams urged President Woodrow Wilson to lead the world toward a peaceful resolution instead of going to war.

- [Stacy] You cannot speak against the war.

People are being arrested.

Free speech is at issue during the war.

- [Narrator] The American press attacked her, calling her speech unworthy, untrue, and ridiculous.

- And that was the beginning of the tumble downwards of her magnificent national reputation.

- [Narrator] But Addams didn't let up.

Eventually, she lost speaking engagements and Hull House lost donors.

- (Stacy) Some people could not abide at all by her speaking peace in the middle of American involvement in the war.

So, she did lose support.

She put Hull House in jeopardy.

There's absolutely no doubt about it.

- [Jane] "In the hours of self-doubt and self-distrust, the question again and again arises, has the individual a right to stand out against millions of his fellow countrymen?"

- She was very brave and she understood that in the end, she had to be true to her conscience.

That's what her father said.

Be honest with yourself inside.

- [Narrator] Even after the war ended three years later, Addams' reputation still suffered and she was branded a radical.

- Jane Addams was rather radical.

Her vision of society was radical.

She wanted immigrants to be fully incorporated.

She didn't want there to be racist policies.

She wanted women to have equality.

Those were radical ideas.

- One of the labels that Addams famously earned was the most dangerous woman in America.

- [Narrator] In 1924, the FBI launched a treason investigation into Addams and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the organization she helped found.

- (Louise) It was a very hard time for her because nothing was going progressive anymore.

That was when the defense department drew lines between all the progressive reformers like Jane Addams and showed how they were interlinked at some kind of radical socialist network.

- [Narrator] Feeling unwelcome in her own country, Addams left Hull House in the care of trusted associates and spent most of the next six years in Switzerland, where she continued advocating for disarmament and peace.

- She was uncompromising in what she thought was right.

- [Narrator] In the years after the war, Addams found more support for her efforts as American attitudes towards pacifism began to shift.

- This delegation, bringing a petition for disarmament to President Hoover is but one of 30 delegations, which I'm meeting in various countries of the world.

- [Narrator] Shortly after her birthday in 1930, Addams wrote to a friend.

- [Jane] "I had a very fine 70th birthday party and feel like a very old woman."

(Jane chuckles) - [Narrator] Age and failing health had forced her to slow down, but Addams still continued fighting for the causes that were important to her.

And in 1931, Jane Addams, who had been branded a traitor a decade and a half earlier, became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

- People in time will develop the talents which will make war impossible.

- She didn't win that peace prize for just one accomplishment.

It's because of her incredibly capacious understanding that it isn't just one action that is actually going to create a true and lasting peace.

It's us addressing the radical roots of what causes problems.

- [Stacy] This woman was engaged for 40 years in reform work, lobbying legislatures in Congress, and pounding the pavement, cleaning the streets of Chicago trying to improve the world.

- [Narrator] Many of Addams' closest friends had long moved on from Hull House and they continued breaking barriers.

In New York, Florence Kelley headed the National Consumers League, which was founded by Jane Addams.

She encouraged Americans to buy from companies that treated their employees fairly.

- [Jane] "To live means to buy.

To buy means to have power.

To have power means to have responsibility."

- [Narrator] Kelley would spend the rest of her career working to enact legislation that banned child labor for good.

And in 1938, six years after her death, the Fair Labor and Standards Act did just that.

In 1912, Julia Lathrop became the first woman to head a federal agency when she was appointed chief of the Children's Bureau of the United States by President William Howard Taft.

Lathrop created a nearly all-female agency and passed the first piece of federal social welfare legislation in U.S. history, which provided funds for prenatal and infant care.

- Lathrop provided hundreds and hundreds of jobs for women, so it was an enormously important vehicle for employment.

- [Narrator] Alice Hamilton lived at Hull House until 1919 when she accepted a faculty position at Harvard Medical School, making her the first and only woman on staff.

When she retired in 1935 at the age of 66, it would be another decade before the school admitted women.

Hamilton is remembered for advancing the cause of workers' rights and saving millions of lives from the dangers of lead poisoning.

Addams' life partner of nearly 40 years, Mary Rozet Smith died of complications from pneumonia in 1934.

The following year, Jane Addams succumbed to abdominal cancer.

She was 74 years old.

As was characteristic of her, she worked up until the day of her death.

More than 20,000 people came to pay their respects as Addams lay in state at Hull House.

- I think it's amazing that we're still talking about Jane Addams almost 90 years after her death.

- [Narrator] Paul Fry was a family friend and served as a pallbearer at Addams' funeral.

- I'm on the middle of the left side of the casket.

I was 12 and a half.

Yeah.

- [Narrator] Addams was buried with her family in her hometown of Cedarville.

After Addams' death, new generations of activists carried on her legacy and work through the Hull House Association, which continued until 2012.

During its more than 120 years of operation, Hull House served millions of people and launched countless social reforms.

Among them: an eight-hour workday, juvenile court, the right for every child to go to school, workers compensation laws, championing women's right to vote, and more.

Since 1963, the Hull House building on Halsted Street has been managed by the University of Illinois at Chicago as the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

But the museum doesn't merely memorialize Addams' life, it reminds us how relevant she remains today.

- We also are focused on really connecting Jane Addams' legacy, the legacy of Hull House with contemporary social justice movements and organizers, and making sure that the relevancy of the past remains really visible.

(people shouting) - [Lisa] I think the legacy that Jane Addams of Hull House leaves with us is everyone needs to be committed to addressing systemic change.

- Shut it down!

- So you can't address problems with policing, without looking at the problems of public education, and you can't understand that without understanding gender equity and immigrants' rights.

And these were the same issues that Jane Addams and the other social performers were grappling with, and I think at times doing much more wisely than we are today.

- Her vision of the possibilities of American promise: equality, inclusion, humanity.

It's an opportunity for us to think about her as a person who might have some ideas for the problems that we face in our modern society.