Was Jane Addams LGBTQ? If So, Does It Matter in 2019?
By Susan Murrie Macdonald
{image via Bain News Service}
Jane Addams (1860–1935) was the first American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and only the fifth American to do so. She was a feminist and a social reformer, best known for founding Hull House in Chicago.
It’s impossible to grow up in northern Illinois and not learn about Jane Addams. When I was in grade school, someone in my classroom asked if Jane Addams was married. The teacher told us she was too devoted to her career helping poor people to have time to get married. No other possibility was mentioned for why a woman might not want a husband. Researching female role models for another project, I remembered what I’d learned about Jane Addams as a girl. With the hindsight of adult experience, for the first time I “read between the lines” and wondered if she might have been Lesbian.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to wonder. The staff at Hull House, Addams’ great legacy, researched the matter and couldn’t come to a firm conclusion. Lisa Lee, the director of the Hull-House Museum at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said, “I would never be able to answer [the question, was Addams Gay?] with a yes or no, and that’s what I’ve learned from this whole experience. Personally, I have no problem calling her a Lesbian, but I would have to qualify that and say, `I don’t think she would identify as a Lesbian in the way the word is used now.’ But because of her long relationships with initially [Hull House co-founder] Ellen Gates Starr, and with Mary [Rozet Smith], I would say that I think she was.”
Given that Jane Addams has been dead and buried almost a century, it’s easy to say what does it matter now if she was Lesbian. It’s no one else’s business. But Alexandra Silets, one of the producers of the film, Out & Proud in Chicago said, “In not revealing this part of Jane Addams’ life, you’re denying the rest of us a role model.”
Jane Addams co-founded Hull House in 1889 with her college friend Ellen Gates Starr (1859–1940). The two were the first residents of Hull House. They traveled to Europe together and visited Toynbee Hall in London, the first settlement house. Settlement houses were designed to allow people of different social classes to mingle as equals, and for the wealthy privileged upper classes share their educational and cultural advantages with the poor.
Jane Addams later developed a deep friendship with Mary Rozet Smith, who became a financial benefactor of Hull House. Their relationship lasted over thirty years.
Does it matter in 2019 if Jane Addams was Gay almost a century ago? It’s the 21st century, other than the vice-president and the misnamed One Million Moms, most people don’t think being LGBTQ is a sin anymore. Nor is it illegal in most states although, in many states, it is perfectly legal for employers and landlords to discriminate against LGBTQ workers and tenants. However, as Alexandra Silets pointed out, if we deny this piece of Addams’ life, we deny young Lesbians a role model.
