A sickly small-town girl who felt too plain to be seen grew up to change how America looks after its neighbors.
Young Jane loved to sneak peeks at a letter her father kept in his desk. Which famous Illinois friend of his wrote it?
Abraham Lincoln Her father, a founder of the Illinois Republican Party and a state senator, backed his friend Lincoln's runs for senator and president.
Inspired by Charles Dickens, she picked a career that would let her live and work among the poor. What job did she train for?
A doctor She finished a year of medical school in Philadelphia, but a spinal illness and a breakdown ended it, and she later realized she didn't need a medical degree to help the poor.
As a girl with a curved spine and a limp, she thought she was too ugly to walk beside her dressed-up father. What world-famous prize did she later become the first American woman to win?
The Nobel Peace Prize Jane Addams won it decades after co-founding Hull House in Chicago, and by her death she was the best-known woman in American public life.
Touring Spain, she watched a bloody spectacle in Madrid and was ashamed she felt fascinated instead of outraged. What did she see?
A bullfight She condemned her own indifference to the suffering horses and bulls on the same European trip that led her to London's Toynbee Hall, the world's first settlement house.
Her Chicago settlement house ran evening classes for immigrant adults. What do many universities offer today that grew from that idea?
Continuing education classes Hull House grew from one run-down mansion into a whole complex with a gym, a theater, a bathhouse, and an art gallery that thousands of neighbors visited every week.
