Her work in social settlements dealt with the problems created by urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. Unlike many other settlement houses, Addams' Hull-House residence provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; and theater, music and art classes. "As the complex expanded to include thirteen buildings, Hull-House supported more clubs and activities such as a Labor Museum, the Jane Club for single working girls, meeting places for trade union groups, and a wide array of cultural events." (UCI, 2005) During this time, Addams also penned books, speeches, and newspaper articles advocating for the rights of the poor to better housing and conditions, as well as for the peace movement. Thus Adams was the first activist to unite social theories about the empowerment of women to the empowerment of the poor, and to the international trade movements for labor rights and world peace.
But perhaps the most impressive unity of life and writings is found in the example of W.E.B Dubois, the founder of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the author of the Souls of Black Folks, an American literary classic collection of African-American folklore,...
During the first half of the 1900's, he became the leading black opponent of politically and legal sanctioned racial discrimination, in contrast to such advocates as Booker T. Washington's policy of conciliation to institutionalized racism. W.E.B. Dubois also won fame as a historian and sociologist. Historians still use the Harvard educated Dubois's research on blacks in American society, and Dubois declared that African-Americans must speak out constantly against discrimination in both academia and in politics. (Rudwick, 2005) According to Dubois, the best way to defeat prejudice was for college-educated blacks to lead the fight against hatred -- unlike the class unity of oppression stressed by Addams, Dubois was more inclined to stress education for a people so long denied access to its fullest fruits.
Works Cited
About Jane Addams." University of Illinois at Chicago. 2005. http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/newdesign/ja.html
Smith, Jason. "Harriet Martineau." Six Sociologists. 2001. http://www.6sociologists.20m.com/martineau.html
Rudwick, Elliott. "Dubois, W.E.B." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc. 14 June 2005. http://www.aolsvc.worldbook.aol.com/wb/Article?id=ar167922.
