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Essay / Jane Addams and her contributions to social work
For this assignment, I chose Jane Addams, born in the 1860s. Around this time, the abolition of slavery in the United States led to the collapse of the Atlantic slave system. trade. Abraham Lincoln assassinated, the Thirteenth Amendment ratified, Wyoming giving women the right to vote just to name a few. A quote that Jane Addams said that I love is: "Nothing could be worse than the fear of having given up too soon and leaving an effort unused that could have saved the world." This resonated with me because she was one of the first social workers to emerge at that time. Jane was destined for greatness as she was one of her parents' five children who survived childhood out of the nine children of her parents John Huy and Sarah Weber Addams. Jane was born in a small farming town of Cedarville, Illinois. She grew up with privilege as her father owned a mill, fought in the Civil War, and was a local politician. A founding member of the Republican Party and supporter of Abraham Lincoln, he was elected to the Illinois State Senate as a Republican in 1854 and served in that position until 1870. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayIn 1881, Addams graduated first in her class from Rockford Women's Seminary. As part of their new generation of independent, college-educated women, who would later be known as the "New Women", because before, women were expected to cook cleanly and do all household chores while the man took care of the housework. Before finding success as a social worker, Jane Addams had attempted to study medicine, but her own failing medical history prevented her from doing so. Addams then emigrated to Europe where she visited Toynbee Hall, established in response to a growing realization that lasting social change would not be achieved through existing individualized and piecemeal approaches. Once Addams saw this, she vowed to establish something similar in the United States which, at that time, was experiencing escalating industrialization and immigration problems. Once back in the United States, she planted her feet in a deprived neighborhood of Chicago, where she and her friend Starr rented a house which later morphed into Hull House, named after the original owner of the building, where the aim was to provide a center for higher civic and social life. ; to create and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve conditions in Chicago's industrial districts. Where they created kindergartens and daycares for working mothers; provided professional training; English, cooking and acculturation classes for immigrants; created an employment office, community center, gymnasium and art gallery. Addams was a feminist at this time, before women's suffrage, she believed that women should have their voices heard in legislation and therefore have the right to vote, which at that time Wyoming was the first state to grant this right to women. Jane Addams had an army of women behind her supporting Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, Julia Lathrop and Ellen Gates Starr. This helped Jane Addamns launch several important social programs, including the Immigrant Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, which was the first juvenile court in the United States, and the Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic, later called the Institute for Juvenile Research . Overall, these women contributed to the development of protective legislation for..