Reconsidering Jane Addams: A Portrait of Anti-Imperialism?

Jane Addams (1906) Oil on canvas, by George de Forest Brush. National Portrait Gallery.

Last July marked another passing of the Association for Documentary Editing’s yearly conference, this time taking place in Washington, D.C. Our nation’s capital has endless museums, attractions, and performances to explore, but there was only one woman I wanted to meet: Jane Addams, of course. The National Portrait Gallery houses the only known full-color image of Addams, painted by George de Forest Brush in 1906, the process of which was detailed in many letters that can be found within the digital edition. It took some work getting to her – the front desk claimed Addams’s portrait was not currently on display even though I had pulled up a location on the Gallery’s website. Not one to be told “no,” I scoured the nooks and crannies of the museum, looking for Jane nestled among peace activists, child or immigrant welfare reformers, or suffrage protesters. Instead, I found her with what I believed to be a sort of motley crew in a section titled “Republic or Empire?” that detailed America’s thoughts on Spain’s involvement in the destruction of the USS Maine. Her fellow portrait sitters included Samuel Clemens, W.E.B. Du Bois, Benjamin Tillman, Moorfield Storey, Queen Lili’uokalani, and Theophilus Gould Steward, gathered together under the roof of “anti-imperialism.” Since visiting the Gallery, I’ve been wondering: Does Jane Addams truly belong among these figures, or would she be better represented elsewhere?

Queen Lili‘uokalani (c. 1892) Oil on canvas, by William F. Cogswell. Hawai’i State Archives.

Imperialism was a weighted topic during the early Progressive Era. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 was convened specifically to regulate European colonization and trade in Africa, and to which the United States sent three diplomats to represent the American colonial empire. In 1887, the US renewed the Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, further increasing American economic influence in Hawaii. This renewal set the stage for the overthrowing of Queen Lili’uokalani, the last reigning sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1893. In the 1890s, the “Scramble for Africa” continued, with Egypt overtaken by the British in 1882, and Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda subjugated in the 90’s and early 20th century. These global events culminate in the Gallery section’s primary focus, the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine, then stationed in Havana Harbor, Cuba to protect American interests during the Cuban War of Independence.

Admittedly, I am not an expert in Progressive Era imperialism, but I like to think I know Jane Addams quite well. During the events discussed above, Addams was dutifully creating and strengthening Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago modeled after Toynbee Hall of London. While she would go on to become active in global circles like peace and disarmament, Addams began her reform work locally, ensuring that marginalized citizens of the Nineteenth Ward were given uplifting amenities and a space to gather and learn. By our records, in the 1890s Addams wrote speeches and articles primarily about Hull-House, working women, and labor strikes – issues that stopped at the state level. Her interest in international affairs wouldn’t manifest fully until the onset of the first World War. Yet, despite all of this, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1899.

It was in this same year that Addams gave her first signs of anti-imperial sentiments, with an article for the Central Anti-Imperialist League titled “Democracy or Militarism.” In it, she shows contempt toward countries with “an increased standing army, the soldiers of which are non-producers and must be fed by the workers.” She goes on to scorn the idea of “protecting the weak” as the excuse of a ruler to invade and subjugate outside nations, and shows disapproval toward the recent Spanish-American War. Even so, the last three paragraphs relate the then current state of Spain to events going on in Chicago rather than referencing any national affairs. After this, Addams didn’t discuss imperialism, anti or pro, much, if at all. The next time it was brought up in any meaningful way was a letter from Erving Winslow, Secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League, dated August 12, 1912 in which he chided Addams for supporting Theodore Roosevelt, a known imperialist, in the 1912 Presidential election.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1907) Gelatin silver print, by James E. Purdy. National Portrait Gallery.

The men Addams was grouped with were, from all accounts, more entrenched in the anti-imperialist scene than Addams ever was. Samuel Clemens was shown to be in favor of imperialism until about 1900. From then until his death in 1910, Clemens spoke and wrote often about his thoughts on the Treaty of Paris and the burgeoning Philippine-American War, and he was vocally critical of foreign countries’ imperialism as well. Du Bois extensively advocated for anti-imperialism, especially in Africa where, he argued, the Scramble for Africa was the foundation for World War I. Tillman was a staunch anti-imperialist, though his sentiments stemmed from the belief that white American lives were being wasted in the pursuit of militaristically subduing Filipino natives after the Spanish-American War. Moorfield Story was the Anti-Imperialist League’s second and last president from 1905-1920, and believed in a connection between America’s imperialistic endeavors and the country’s persecution of minority races. Queen Lili’uokalani had the most direct impact of the Age of Imperialism, deposed in 1893 by a group of sugar and pineapple businessmen. If Lili’uokalani was the most directly impacted, Steward was the least involved. Theophilus Gould Steward was primarily a clergyman, author, and educator, serving as a chaplain in the 25th Infantry Regiment, a racially segregated regiment, from 1891-1907, including serving in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and later in the Philippines. Steward wrote about the experience of the African American soldier, which did touch on their struggle for freedom and citizenship, but he did not directly compare their strife to Filipinos resisting American colonial rule.

Alice Hamilton (1947) Charcoal and chalk on paper, by Samuel Johnson Woolf. National Portrait Gallery.

If not here, then where would Jane Addams belong? The National Portrait Gallery holds over 20,000 pieces in their various collections – certainly some of those could fit better with Addams’s narrative. To represent women building Chicago, they own a portrait of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve on a cabinet of a US President and a Hull-House volunteer, Alice Hamilton, a Chicago doctor and Hull-House volunteer, or Nettie Fowler McCormick, a Chicago philanthropist. In a wider perspective, outside her Chicago colleagues, there is Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, Martha Carey Thomas, second president of Bryn Mawr College, and Julius Rosenwald, co-owner of Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and philanthropist.

At the end of the day, Jane Addams’s portrait is no longer on display. Neither Clemens’s, Du Bois’s, Tillman’s, Storey’s, Lili’uokalani’s, or Steward’s portraits are currently available to view in person. I suppose that is the nature of a large collection of works with limited space to display them. Even so, this also means that Addams could be displayed along with any number of her peers at any point in time, perhaps to help tell an entirely different story about America’s elaborate history.

 

Victoria Sciancalepore

Assistant Editor

 

Other Sources: “Berlin West Africa Conference.” Encyclopædia Britannica, February 19, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-West-Africa-Conference; Hixson, William B. Moorfield Storey and the Abolitionist Tradition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972; Jane Addams. “Democracy or Militarism.” Liberty Tracts, no. 1 (1899): 35–39; “Joint Resolution to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (1898).” National Archives and Records Administration, February 8, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/joint-resolution-for-annexing-the-hawaiian-islands; Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois. New York: H. Holt, 1993; “Maine Blown Up at Havana.” New York Tribune. February 16, 1898; Steward, Theophilus Gould. The Colored Regulars. Philadelphia, PA: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1904; Tillman, Benjamin. “Policy Regarding the Philippine Islands.” Congressional Record 32, no. 2 (February 21, 1899): 1529–33; Twain, Mark. “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” The North American Review 172, no. 531 (February 1901): 161–76.

The Addams Papers Goes International!

Connemara, Ireland.

The Third Women’s History in the Digital World conference was held on July 6-7, 2017 at Maynooth University in Ireland and the Jane Addams Papers presented a panel on our digital edition. Editor Cathy Moran Hajo, Assistant Editor Victoria Sciancalepore, and our web developer Anneliese Dehner combined to present three aspects of “Editing Jane Addams.”

Cathy led off the panel talking about the “Big Picture: Conceiving a Digital Edition of  Jane Addams’ Papers,” providing a short history of the Addams Papers microfilm and book projects, and the process that went into deciding to digitize the microfilm edition. The decisions to be made involved thinking through the audience for the edition and what kinds of tools and resources they needed. In addition, Cathy discussed the decision to use the Omeka database-driven platform for the digital edition rather than using text encoding using XML. Going with a web-publishing friendly system allowed the Addams Papers to design a site that not only provides deep metadata, but also manages the project’s internal workflow, tracking information on each document as it passes through our permissions and copyright checks, metadata and transcription, and proofreading. Cathy also talked about her desire to see the Addams Papers edition be flexible enough that scholars and students can use its materials to build their own research projects.

Cathy talking about biographical resources.

Tori’s talk, “The Nuts and Bolts: How an Omeka-based Digital Edition Works,” brought us into the back end of the project, showing how we defined the metadata and relations between the 21,000 eventual documents, and the entries on people, organizations, publications, and events that are discussed in them. She described the use of the Items Relations Omeka plugin, which we tweaked some, to build an edition that lets users move flexibly between drafts and final versions, letters written by and to a person, and individuals who were members of an organization, or participated in an event.  She also talked about how we decided on a transcription policy.  Because we make the images of the documents available on the site, we wanted our transcriptions to be more useful as a search mechanism. We decided to standardize our transcriptions  (converting British spellings, archaic spellings, and misspellings) as long as we used brackets to signal that the editors had changed the text. Readers who want to see the original need only click to see the manuscript image. She also discussed our student workers at the Addams Papers–the engine that keeps the project moving. With editors focused on training and quality control, it is a cadre of 10-15 Ramapo College undergraduates that are entering and transcribing documents and researching and writing identifications.

Anneliese, Cathy, and Tori after the session at Kilmainham Gaol Museum

Anneliese discussed “Designing a User Interface for a Digital Edition.” Coming from the perspective of a digital library developer, Anneliese talked about her experiences working on the Jane Addams Papers and the Kentucky Civil War Governors Papers, also an Omeka site. Discussing the different values that the project had, she walked through the way that developers work with editors to configure their sites, looking at who the intended users of the site will be, the kinds of searching they will need, and how much metadata should be used for site navigation. Anneliese noted that the Addams site was interested in exposing metadata, developing spatiotemporal context for documents, and creating branching paths through the edition. The Kentucky Governors project looked to create a more linear path through documents, but were more interested in presenting transcriptions alongside images of documents.

Liz Stanley gave a keynote talk on the Olive Schreiner Letters Online

In addition to our panel session, we were able to learn about some extremely interesting projects in women’s history, both here in the U.S. and abroad. Rachel Love Monroy, Lauren N. Haumesser and Melissa Gismondi discussed the Founding Women project that seeks to build a federated documentary edition of a variety of women’s papers. Eric Pumroy spoke about Collegewomen.org, which seeks to build an inclusive resource about late 19th and early 20th century college experiences for women. Cécile Gotdon spoke about Ireland’s Military Pension Project, a fascinating look at detailed records of men and women involved in the Irish military between 1916-1923.  And Alvean E. Jones’ work to provide access of the history of St. Mary’s School for Deaf Girls in a way that makes it accessible to deaf scholars, by translating digitized material into Irish Sign Language videos. Helena Byrne discussed a project to gather a digital history of Irish women’s indoor football leagues in the 1960s. And Liz Stanley gave a wonderful presentation on the Olive Schreiner Letters Online and the difficulty of representing a person from the things left behind.

Thanks to all who attended for a fascinating time!