1

Addams, Race, and Social Evolutionary Theory

On this, the 150th anniversary of Addams’s birth, the 100th anniversary of Twenty

Years at Hull House, and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the NAACP, it is

fitting to reflect on Addams’s writings on black-white race relations in the United States.

Historical accounts of Chicago’s African-American community, biographies of leading

African-Americans of the Progressive era, and the sizeable correspondence between

Addams and African-Americans suggest that Addams’s efforts to engage with African-

American individuals and organizations were more extensive and varied than

contemporary scholars have recognized.1 This story has not yet been written, and awaits a

skilled biographer. In this paper I examine two of her essays, “Respect for Law” (1901),

an analysis of lynching, and “Has the Emancipation Act Been Nullified by National

Indifference” (1913).

Some scholars have politely criticized Addams for occasionally letting racist

phrases and attitudes slip into her writings. Sometimes the gentle critique is accompanied

by the observation that she was, after all, a woman of her time.2 In this paper I want to

take these untoward phrases and attitudes and place them center-stage. To understand

Addams’s writings on black-white race relations I start with the fact that Addams was

absolutely a woman of her time, and read her essays from that standpoint. George

Stocking, a historian of anthropology, writes, “Turn-of-the-century social scientists were

evolutionists almost to a man (sic), and their ideas on race cannot be considered apart

from their evolutionism.”3 These theorists viewed human history as a progression from

savagery to civilization. They thought Africans in Africa existed in a still-savage state;

they characterized immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as “primitive”; and they

2

considered white Europeans and Americans to be well-along civilization’s path. This

perspective functioned as a conceptual frame within which beliefs were proposed, tested,

reconstructed, or abandoned. Many theorists used this frame for imperialist purposes;

Addams also used this frame in her theorizing. The untoward phrases and attitudes are

not asides, but glimpses of bedrock.

Today, close on the heels of the bloodiest century on record, grand historical

narratives and the idea of progress make us nervous. We place “modernity” in scare-

quotes, add ‘post’ as a prefix, or use the term ironically. Before World War I so tragically

revealed that “a civilization is as fragile as a life,”4 various versions of social

evolutionary theory’s grand narrative of progress were ubiquitous among British and

American intellectuals. These held dominance from the latter part of the 19th century until

knowledge of modern genetics and Franz Boas’s anthropological cultural relativism took

hold.5

Social evolutionary theory drew on the work of Darwin and Spencer to bring a

biological dimension to earlier discussions of progressive human development. Defined

narrowly and technically, the theory’s skeletal frame placed savage tribes as hunter-

gatherers, primitive peoples as having agriculture and pottery, and alphabetic writing as a

sign of civilization.6 “Race,” “culture” and “civilization” were conflated through the

Lamarckian assumption that cultural practices could over time become heritable.7

Theorists fleshed out the skeleton with an astonishing array of variations. American

anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan thought there was one path to civilization, while

James Pritchard’s view is better represented by a tree’s many branches.8 Spencer and

Morgan claimed that brains and minds evolved, making civilized people capable of more

3

complex, rational thought. Edward B. Tylor disagreed, positing that brain structure had

stayed the same throughout history.9 The image of savages as impulsive, cruel, and prone

to criminal behavior underlies Nathaniel Shaler’s analysis of race relations in post-Civil

War era.10 John Wesley Powell disagreed, writing, “Consider the savage not as a man of

cruelty, but as a man who takes part in a regularly organized government, with laws, that

are obeyed and enforced.”11 Responses varied as well on the questions of moral

evolution, and whether people from savage tribes could adapt quickly if placed in

civilized settings. Lester Ward said yes; T.M. Cattell said no.12 Gender and class only

confused matters, as many British theorists thought that the lower classes along with

upper class women and the Irish, were closer to primitive peoples in mind and morals

than to civilized British males.13

Within this frame, outdated and false though it be, theorists reasoned and emoted

about non-Anglo-Saxon peoples. Many used the frame in offensively racist ways; others

tried to adapt the frame toward democratic and humanitarian ends. The frame itself has

been thoroughly and correctly criticized for its universalizing, hierarchical assumptions

that place whites at civilization’s pinnacle. The damage it did in supporting denigrating

stereotypes in the popular imagination is incalculable. Nonetheless, it was the reigning

intellectual frame in the U.S. in the two decades surrounding the turn of the century.

Addams worked within it, as did Dewey, Royce, DuBois and many others.14 We need to

be cautious: knowing that theorists used it tells us very little about how they fleshed out

its skeletal frame. In the two essays I examine in this paper, Addams uses social

evolutionary theory to condemn white racial practices in exceedingly strong terms,

although the frame’s racist skeleton persists in casting its shadow.

4

Respect for Law

In “Respect for Law” Addams gives a resounding condemnation of lynching.

Historian Paula Giddings writes, “The fact that such a figure as Addams would seriously

engage the issue was significant. No northern white woman reformer had done so.” The

essay appeared in the January 1901 issue of the Independent, which, according to

historian David Southern, was “the only progressive magazine that did not equivocate,

did not excuse, and did not retreat a single inch on negro rights.”15 In this essay Addams

gives extensive arguments for why extra-legal violence is an ineffective method for

preventing crime. The Independent’s May 1901 issue contained Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s

response, “Lynching and the Excuse for it.” Wells-Barnett states her appreciation for

Addams’s strong indictment of lynching, but focuses her essay, not on Addams’s

arguments, but on what she calls Addams’s “unfortunate presumption,” that lynching was

whites’ response to black men who raped white women. Of the thousands of newspaper

reports Wells-Barnett had collected, 99% contained that presumption. She gave statistics

published in the Chicago Tribune, proving that rape was the alleged crime in less than

20% of the lynchings in the preceding five years.16

Theorists responding to this exchange have followed Wells-Barnett in focusing on

this “unfortunate presumption.” In 1977 Bettina Aptheker gave a Marxist analysis of

lynching as a terrorist method for sustaining capitalist hegemony. She contrasted

Addams’s “courageous, even radical activities” on behalf of civil rights with her

“chauvinist assumptions,” criticizing Addams for not questioning the southern defense of

lynching as a response to black rape of white women and for letting pass the claim that

blacks were ‘underdeveloped’ and hence inclined toward criminality.17

5

Maurice Hamington, in his 2005 essay, “Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells on

Lynching,” carefully develops the appreciative relationship that Addams and Wells-

Barnett had over the many years they both lived in Chicago. Unlike some, Hamington

does not suggest that Addams thought the “unfortunate presumption” was true.18 He sides

with Wells-Barnett, though, arguing that by not refuting the assumption directly, Addams

“violates her own feminist pragmatist method of inquiry, resulting in the perpetuation of

a racial myth,” and thereby she “unwittingly perpetuated a racist assumption.”19 In a

similar vein, Giddings records many of the fruitful collaborations between Addams and

Wells-Barnett, but sides with Wells-Barnett in concluding, “Addams’s fundamental error

was her failing to take into account the falsity of the rape charge.”20

These authors are careful and fair-minded. However, their stress on lynching as a

response to rape appears tangential when we consider the essay’s first audience, and read

it for how social evolutionary theory structures Addams’s argument. Their critiques keep

us from seeing that Wells-Barnett’s article was not so much a reply to what Addams

wrote, as an occasion to do what she had been doing consistently for eight years: using

published data to rebut the charge of rape.21

On December 12, 1899, a little over a year before publication, Addams delivered

“Respect for Law” as an address at the Bethel AME Church in Chicago, to a

predominantly black audience.22 The meeting was called in response to the particularly

gruesome lynching of Richard Coleman in Maysville, Kentucky, on December 7. Wells-

Barnett presided, and spoke on recent history of lynchings in the US. 23 Anti-lynching

meetings had been held at the church before. Wells-Barnett had selected it for the August

1899 annual meetings of two African-American organizations of national importance, the

6

African-American Council and the National Association of Colored Women, precisely

because it was a setting conducive to an open, militant discussion of lynching. DuBois,

Addams, and many others participated in these meetings. The church’s pastor, Reverend

Reverdy C. Ransom, in 1900 founded Institutional Church and Social Settlement,

patterned after Hull House.24

Addams’s audience knew the “unfortunate presumption” was false; there was no

need for her to address it further. In the speech and essay, Addams does not presume a

link between lynching and rape; nor does she ask the audience to presume such for the

sake of argument. What she does do is ask the audience to begin with the assumption that

white Southerners who advocate lynching “honestly believe that this is the only

successful method of dealing with a certain class of crimes.” Addams calls their notion,

“that criminality can be suppressed and terrorized by brutal punishment; that crime can

be prevented by cruelty,” a “time-honored false theor(y)” of conduct.25 This was a typical

move for Addams. In A Modern Lear, her 1894 analysis of the Pullman strike, she began

with the assumption that George Pullman honestly believed he had the best interests of

his workers at heart; she did not castigate him as a greedy capitalist.26 Addams wanted to

get beyond the personal in order to uncover the beliefs’ theoretical underpinnings.

Like many of her contemporaries, Addams viewed the broad sweep of history as

an evolution from savagery to civilization. In “Respect for Law” she steps inside social

evolutionary theory, using it as the organizing spine of her argument. Throughout time,

means of sustaining political order evolved from savagery where order was maintained

through force, toward democratic self-government based on justice and the rule of law.

Civilization and self-government are achievements, hard-won and tenuous; regression is

7

always possible. Addams argues that lynching is a particularly gruesome regression. The

lynchers’ acts threaten progress toward self-government and rule of law, and place

civilized society on regression’s path back toward savagery. She adds that attempting to

protect women by this method also enacts the savage practice of regarding women as

possessions. The women of the South might well ask themselves if they are willing to

accept the status that this sort of protection brings.27

Addams offers historical examples as evidence from the past of the falsity of the

lynchers’ theories of punishment. Not sparing graphic details, she reminds the audience

of how the nobility right before the French Revolution, in their zeal to protect their own

inherited privilege and property, used “torture, strangling, and burning” on those who

dared to assert democratic rights. Their barbaric acts brought about “the moral

degradation of all concerned.” Just as such actions acclimated the French populace to the

brutality of the guillotine, so slavery and the Civil War hardened whites to the brutality of

lynching.28

Viewed from within the social evolutionary paradigm, Addams’s condemnation

of whites’ actions is powerful: lynchers are replicating feudal patterns of using violence

to enforce class privilege, their justifications functioning as a cover for vengeance.

Lynchers are hardening in themselves and their observers those sensitivities required to

carry out self-government based on law and justice. The social evolutionary frame gives

Addams a way to starkly reveal the heavy price the practice exacts: not only are lynchers

regressing below the level of civilization, they are also destabilizing civilization itself.

We can read “Respect for Law” as arguing against those who used social

evolutionary theory to justify lynching, as they claimed that American blacks, still close

8

to savagery, only understood the language of force, and were incapable of controlling

their behavior in response to legal and juridical procedure. It is clear from the context that

Addams regarded African-Americans as fully capable of civilized behavior, and as

having the restraint and self-control needed for the rule of law. This is evident in the final

paragraph of the speech, which Addams cut from the published version. Addams said,

There is much else that might be said, but I can only add one word to this

audience, made up as it is largely of the race who are the victims of this false

theory of conduct. You, above all, must learn that restraint and self-control and

the understanding of the Southern situation, is the only possible way for you to

remedy it. That to indulge in furious denunciation, in anger against the race

among whom you live, is but to exhibit the same spirit which this meeting has

been called to deplore. Your race has suffered a great wrong the consequences of

which will last for many generations, not only with you but with the race of the

wrong-doer, whose punishment is perhaps always the greater. I would beg of you

to remember that the situation is filled with perplexities for both races, that only

forbearance, mutual understanding and public spirit can help either of us to find

the way out.29

Adams’s message here parallels the one she gave earlier to Pullman’s striking

workers, reminding them to include employers in their quest for social justice. In the

above paragraph Addams both acknowledges that blacks are victims of heinous crime,

and holds them responsible for how they respond. To ask them to respond with restraint

implies that Addams regards them as capable of so responding with the moral and

intellectual capacities of people fully equipped for the responsibilities of democratic

9

citizenship. Whether this paragraph was courageous in countering those who advocated

violence in response to lynching, or foolishly insensitive—how could a white woman

presume to tell this audience how to respond to heinous crimes against them—it was

consistent with Addams’s overall argument in the speech. For all citizens, progress

toward democratic civilization had to be based on consent, the rule of law, and non-

violent, judicious responses to allegations of criminal misconduct.

Hamington claims that, by not questioning the “unfortunate presumption”

Addams “unwittingly perpetuated a racist assumption.”30 Out of social evolutionary

theory’s many variables, Addams selects some that are not benign. She identifies

“savage” with acting on impulse and lacking self-control, as linking lust and anger, and

ruling by force. Other associations are ambiguous. In the paragraph describing blacks as

undeveloped, childlike, and imitative, it is hard to tell if she is endorsing the view, or

merely reporting Southerners’ opinions.31

Conceptual frameworks permit some angles of vision while excluding others.

Social evolutionary theory does the same, whether used for hateful or for more benign

purposes. We see clues in “Respect for Law” that later theorists used in forming critiques

of grand narratives of civilization’s progress. Early in the speech Addams uses the

common construction of noting that southerners “must deal with that most intricate of all

problems—the presence of two alien races.”32 The task was then to figure out how these

alien races could be brought into adjustment. Now Addams frequently used history in her

reasoning; she thought it was an important source of experiential content. Defining blacks

and whites as alien races made it very hard to attend to the 300 years of intimate,

continuous interaction between them. How many centuries of working and mixing does it

10

take before groups with little previous contact are no longer alien? Framing groups as

alien races blocks consideration of how the very concepts of “white” and “black” were

simultaneously and mutually constructed. It also makes it hard to imagine lynching, not

as regression from the path toward civilization, but as a particularly vivid manifestation

of how much whites’ so-called civilization was achieved and sustained by continual

violence and practices of oppression.33 Addams was a recognized, public intellectual.

Her speeches and essays mattered. With “Respect for Law” Addams perpetuated some

racist assumptions while also powerfully condemning racist actions.

“Has the Emancipation Act Been Nullified by National Indifference.”

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the 50th

anniversary of Emancipation Proclamation, the February 1913 issue of Survey contained

seven essays issuing strong calls for social justice for African-Americans in government,

education, housing, the economy, and so on.34 Addams, DuBois, and Wells-Barnett were

among the contributors.

Addams’s contribution, “Has the Emancipation Act Been Nullified by National

Indifference?” does not contain the obvious racial stereotypes found in “Respect for

Law.” The decade between the two essays made a difference; Addams added

considerable experience with local and national interracial organizations, and during that

interval, social evolutionary theory fell out of favor with sociologists and

anthropologists.35 Her essay is a stirring indictment of both southern and northern whites,

and presents the fruits of their indifference as crimes against the Great Emancipator’s

spirit. Written many decades before whiteness studies entered the academy, Addams here

11

lays out the costs of whiteness for whites. The spirit of DuBois is evident throughout, as

Addams analyzes ‘the souls of white folks’ and draws from “The Sorrow Songs,” that

gorgeous chapter in The Souls of Black Folk that describes the gifts black people offer to

America. In a heartfelt letter to Addams, showing his appreciation for the article,

Abraham Lincoln Lee wrote, “The Negro is passing through a desperate crisis these days,

caused from racial prejudice, and to have a person of your note, strength, and ability use

you (sic) valuable space and make appeals in our behalf, we have no words at our

command sufficient to express to you our heartfelt thanks.” He notes what recent

historians have confirmed, “The door of opportunity is closed against us . . . . Conditions

now are worse than before the Emancipation proclamation was signed.”36

Abolitionists and Lincoln began the work of emancipation; Addams chides her

generation for its indifference in failing to carry out its obligation to sustain that work.

“Indifference” is a strong charge indeed, as it corrupts whites and perverts democracy

itself. The result of this indifference is reaction, as blacks lose citizenship rights and

economic opportunity, and suffer the horrors of lynching. How to account for this

national indifference, this “spiritual bondage”? She squarely lays blame on whites.

Loyalty and memory block southern whites’ ability to see the situation clearly. Their

“loyalty to a lost cause” keeps them from admitting how wrong had been the cause for

which their loved ones suffered and died in the war. Memories of caste relations of

intimacy, false at the time, continue to fog their perceptions. Northern whites are also

implicated. “The white North,” Addams writes, rather than carrying on the responsibility

to sustain emancipation’s work, “submits to the chains forged . . . by its own

indifference.” Northern whites have put blacks “behind the veil,” at great loss to

12

themselves and to the health of democracy. Instead of demanding that the morality of

equal respect for all voices undergird democracy, northerners had fallen into the crude

logic of government by “political necessity.”37 The underlying theme of this essay is

essentially the same as in “Respect for Law.” By not taking on their duties to continue the

work of emancipation, whites are reversing progress toward democratic civilization and

regressing away from it.

On first read, social evolutionary theory is not present, until we notice the

“patchwork plagiarism,” as my colleague calls it. In the first line Addams mentions

British philosopher L.T. Hobhouse’s 1904 book, Democracy and Reaction, and attributes

a short quote to him. Readers may not notice how closely three of the essay’s eight

paragraphs match passages in Hobhouse’s text.38 Hobhouse there presents his version of

social evolutionary theory, and locates the social Darwinian version as attendant to late

nineteenth century imperialism’s meteoric rise. His version is in many respects the same

as Addams used explicitly in Newer Ideals of Peace, and implicitly in Democracy and

Social Ethics.39 Hobhouse begins with pre-nineteenth century aristocratic rule, where the

few, deeming themselves superior, ruled autocratically, using force to uphold their

privilege. Mid-nineteenth century liberalism brought progress through free trade,

expanded suffrage, abolition of slavery in the colonies, and some industrial reforms.40

Further evolutionary progress came with late nineteenth-century “new liberalism,” or

social democracy. Government was re-envisioned as “the organ of the community as a

whole” and used to further social justice.41 The direction was toward humanitarianism

based on social justice, cooperation, and peace, which Hobhouse calls “the highest

product of healthy evolutionary growth.” Citizens’ obligations widen out to include all of

13

humanity, overcoming what Hobhouse calls “primitive divisions of class, caste, race, or

nationality.”42

“Reaction” is Hobhouse’s term for the late 19th century period of aggressive

European imperialism into Africa and Asia. This “reaction” abandoned the evolutionary

path toward humanitarianism, and exhibited repressive patterns of earlier evolutionary

phases. Referring primarily to British actions in Africa, he writes, “After all, the white

man’s claim to rule the black because he is wiser and more capable is essentially the

same as the noble’s claim to rule the commonalty for their good as much as for his

own.”43 With improved material conditions for the middle-classes, fervor for social

justice diminished, and “indifference” set in. Middle-class young men found employment

in imperial service. They raised little protest as native peoples in the colonies were forced

to labor under slave-like conditions.44 A new version of social evolution theory

developed, pieced together out of social Darwinism, hardened race-categories, and the

manifest destiny of the white man to rule the earth.45

When we read Addams’s essay alongside Democracy and Reaction, certain

phrases stand out. Her quick reference to “that world-wide yielding to race antagonism”

gains prominence. Here Addams uses social evolutionary theory to locate slavery and its

aftermath in the U.S. within the context of international imperialism. Black-white race

relations in the U.S. are an internalized form of imperial aggression, a local manifestation

of a world-wide phenomenon. As in “Respect for Law,” Addams uses the social

evolutionary frame to powerfully condemn the racist practices of so-called civilized

people.

Conclusion

14

Addams’s essay, read in the context of Democracy and Reaction, shows how the

grand narrative of progress structured her thinking in 1913 as well as in 1901. Here is it

appropriate to adapt Hamington’s claim that in “Respect for Law” Addams violated her

own feminist pragmatist method of inquiry. In continuing to frame her thinking within

the grand narrative of progress, even as hopeful a version as Hobhouse’s, did she violate

her feminist pragmatist method?

Yes, Addams was a pragmatist feminist. She based her theorizing on sympathetic

understanding and direct local experience, keeping the voices of women and oppressed

groups at the center of her concern. However, Addams also used many other theoretical

perspectives in tandem. She thought scientific investigation and theorizing were

important and used them in her work. The relationship among these conceptual tools

needs to be worked out before evaluating Hamington’s claim. My inclination at this point

is to say that at least before World War I the grand narrative of progress was the frame

within which Addams used feminist pragmatist method. It was deeply embedded in her

thought and in the intellectual air she and her contemporaries breathed. While using it in

the way she did affirmed its validity, her activism and theorizing on behalf of interracial

comity also contributed to its downfall.

1 See, for example, Giddings, Ida; Lewis, W.E.B. DuBois Vol. 1; Philpott, The Slum and

the Ghetto; Deegan, Race, Hull-House; Reed, “Organized Racial Reform in Chicago”;

and Bryan, The Jane Addams Papers, correspondence index listing for African

Americans.

15

2 See Hamington, “Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells on Lynching,” 167; Sullivan,

“Reciprocal Relations between Races, 55; and Carroll and Fink, “Introduction,” xliii-

xlvii.

3 Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution. 112.

4 Valéry, ”On European Civilization,” 1919,

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/valery.html.

5 Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 112, Delimiting Anthropology, 22-23

6 See Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, chapters 1-4, for his carfully drawn account of

views on social development before Darwin. Morgan lays out the stages in Ancient

Society, 9-11, 31.

7 Stocking, Delimiting Anthropology, 7-9.

8 Morgan, Ancient Society, v-vi; Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 52.

9 Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 115-118; Morgan, Ancient Society, 37.

10 Shaler, “”Science and the African Problem.” 11 Powell, “Sociology, or the Science of Institutions,” 695. 12 Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 251,132.

13 Stocking, Victorian Anthropology 213, 229.

14 Dewey, “Interpretation of Savage Mind;” see Stocking’s analysis of Dewey’s

interpretation in Race, Culture, and Evolution, 248-89; Royce “Race Questions and

Prejudices”; DuBois, “The Conservation of Races.”

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/conra10.txt.

15 Giddings, 429; Southern, 62.

16 “Lynching and the Excuse for It,” 1133;1134-1135.

16

17 Aptheker, Lynching and Rape, 7, 9-10.

18 Hamington, “Jane Addams,” 172-72; Knight, Citizen, 388-89.

19 Hamington, “Jane Addams,” 168, 173. Hamington also argues that by not questioning

the presumption, Addams revealed the “experiential gulf” between herself and Wells-

Barnett, and a lack of “sympathetic understanding on the lynching question. He

hypothesizes that she did not “test” the essay with Wells before publishing it, and may

have been trying to appeal to southern audiences. As I argue in this essay, these

hypotheses are misguided, given the essay’s first audience at Bethel AME Church in

Chicago, with Wells-Barnett in attendance.

20 Giddings, Ida, 430.

21 Giddings, Ida, 430-31.

22 Addams, “Anti-Lynching Address,” attached note. JAPM 46: 961.

23 On the lynching of Richard Coleman, see George C. Wright, A History of Blacks in

Kentucky, Vol. 2: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980. p. 81, “Negro Burned at Stake,” and

“The Kentucky Lynching.” For coverage of the meeting at Bethel AME Church, see

“Women on Burning at Stake,” and “To End Negros’ Wrongs.”

24 Ibid., 378, 385-87, 408-423. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land,116-118, Philpott,

The Slum and the Ghetto, 318. During the NACW meetings, Addams invited several of

the black women to lunch at Hull-House, creating quite a stir. The Chicago Sunday Times

Herald reported, “It was an exceedingly rare occurrence in Chicago for a colored woman

to be received in a purely social way.” Giddings, 417-418.

25 Addams, “Respect for Law,” 18.

17

26 In “A Modern Lear,” Addams describes Pullman as an “unusually generous employer,”

whose “sense of duty . . . represents the ideal in the minds of the best of the present

employers” (132). She wrote the essay in 1894, although it was not published until 1912.

27 Addams, “Respect for Law,” 18-20.

28 Ibid., 19.

29 Addams, “Anti-Lynching Address,” JAPM 46:960.

30 Hamington, “Jane Addams, ” 173.

31 Addams, “Respect for Law,” 19.

32 Ibid., 18.

33 The blocks on the imagination are appallingly demonstrated in University of Chicago

anthropologist Frederick Starr’s article, “The Degeneracy of the American Negro.” He

argues that racial degeneracy accounts for the disproportionate percentage of blacks in

prison, for the high crime rate among them, and as explaining why they congregate in

unsanitary neighborhoods. It is a waste of resources to educate them, he claims, and

concludes, “But we may expect the race here to die and disappear; the sooner perhaps the

better.”

34 The seven essays were by Addams, George Burman Foster, George Edmund Haynes,

W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, and George Packard.

Survey, 565-581. Excerpts from these essays were reprinted in the “Opinion” section of

the March 1913 issue of the NAACP’s journal, Crisis, 229-230.

35 Addams worked with a number of interracial settlement houses in Chicago,

participated in the founding of the NAACP, and was president of its Chicago chapter. See

Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto, 318-322; and Giddings, Ida, 492, 499, 529. For the

18

decline in social evolutionary theory between 1900 and 1914, see Stocking, Race,

Culture, and Evolution, 258-264. His analysis of how W.I. Thomas changed his views

during this interval illustrates the point clearly.

36 Letter from Abraham Lincoln Lee to Jane Addams, dated February 12, 1913. JAPM 7-

764. See Southern, The Malignant Heritage, 12-15, 32, 68.

37 Addams, “Has the Emancipation Act…” 565-566.

38 The first two paragraphs of Addams’s essay closely resemble passages from pages 61-

63 of Democracy and Reaction. The final paragraph borrows from pages 58-59, 60, 63,

and 122 of that text.

39 See Fischer, “The Conceptual Scaffolding of Newer Ideals of Peace.”

40 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 57-58.

41 Ibid., 209-210, 220.

42 Ibid., 134-35, 241, 58, 111-112, 107.

43 Ibid., 26.

44 Ibid., 61-69.

45 Ibid., 84-95.

Works Cited

Note: Materials by Jane Addams marked as “JAPM” are in the microfilm collection of

the Jane Addams papers. The first number is the reel; the number following the

colon is the frame number. In The Jane Addams Papers, 1860-1960, ed. Mary

Lynn McCree Bryan (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International), 1984.

19

Addams, Jane. "Anti-Lynching Address." Typed Manuscript with note. December 12,

1899. JAPM 46:957-961.

---. "Respect for Law." Independent 53. January 3, 1901. 18-20.

---. "A Modern Lear." Survey 29. November 2, 1912. 131-137.

---. "Has the Emancipation Act been Nullified by National Indifference." Survey 29.

February 1, 1913. 565-566.

Aptheker, Bettina, ed. Lynching and Rape: An Exchange of View. New York: American

Institute for Marxist Studies, 1977.

Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, ed. The Jane Addams Papers, 1860-1960 [Microform]. Ann

Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1984.

Carroll, Berenice A., and Clinton F. Fink. "Introduction" to Jane Addams, Newer Ideals

of Peace. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1907/2007. xiii-lxxiii.

Deegan, Mary Jo. Race, Hull-House, and the University of Chicago: A New Conscience

Against Ancient Evils. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.

Dewey, John. "Interpretation of Savage Mind." John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-

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