Hull-House increases its contemporary relevance 

By David Lessner 

The Hull-House Museum has existed for so long that people may believe they know what to expect: musty musings about a treasured icon, stuffy exhibits, and maybe an interactive attraction or two. In other words, a childhood field trip so dull that the highlight was the brown bag lunch you ate on the bus on the way back to school.

            You can leave the brown bag at home, however, because the museum—under the guidance of director Lisa Lee—remains as vibrant and relevant as when Jane Addams first opened its doors. It has embraced new methods to illustrate that the diverse ideas Addams promoted have not lost their importance since the last century.

            Lee clearly loves her job. When she talks about Jane Addams and her era, names including Upton Sinclair, James Dewey, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ida B. Welles swirl in a dizzying verbal vortex with the labor movement, women's and immigrant rights, and peace and justice, all without hesitation. Se laughs, a lot, about her enthusiasm for her work.

            "Before I came to the Hull-House Museum, I knew about Jane Addams; as a feminist she represents so much," Lee said. "But once I got here and began to learn more it became a consuming interest. Look at her life: she was labeled ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ by J. Edgar Hoover and she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

            "Jane Addams was a pacifist; a suffragist; she worked for birth control, immigrant rights, and free speech. She was involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union and was called an anarchist and socialist. At the same time she worked to set up the Juvenile Justice Court and was heavily into arts and crafts and created programs that galvanized important thinkers and activists of her time."

            Lee explained that Hull-House is a "site of conscience" museum, one where preserving the physical building is not the only important task. “In serving legacies where history took place, it needs to be a springboard for how it relates to the world today,” Lee explained. “In this case, we ask, ‘What would Jane Addams be fighting for today?’

            "It's the things she fought for that remain important. Hull-House is not a single issue place. It is about social welfare issues. In Addams’s time, 'welfare' was defined as for the well being of the society. Now it's been taken to mean money handouts to the poor or people who cheat the government. We think we can redefine it best by illuminating her work, by making the links between all the issues such as immigrant rights, labor reform. They are in the news as much today as they were then.

            "By making the museum one of the town halls of the 21st century, the consumer can actively enjoy solidarity with the entire human race," Lee added.

            Lee calls her methods "guerilla style" when dealing with exhibits. Currently, the staff is redoing core exhibits on the history of labor reform, urban renewal, and the "most dangerous woman in America." They also want to create engaging new attractions that will rotate with the core; Lee said the next six to nine months will bring big changes.

            This new direction can be seen in the Chicago Reef Project and History on Call. The Reef Project uses crafts to create a dialog about the damage being done to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. During summer 2007, 120 Chicagoans crocheted a re-creation of the colorful, fragile ecosystem that faces extinction because of global warming. Hull-House donated supplies and organized crocheting groups, viewing the project as consistent with its history of social engagement and craftmaking. Completed with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in cooperation with the Chicago Humanities Festival, the exhibit is on display through Sunday, Dec. 16, at the Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph St.

            History on Call offers a twist on standard headset tours. When you approach an exhibit at the museum, you can dial a number on your cell phone to hear Bill Ayers on why Jane Addams was so dangerous, Bernadine Dohrn on the nation's first Juvenile Justice court, or Studs Terkel and Florence Scala on the demolition of most of the Hull-House complex. All recordings can be downloaded from the museum website as well. Using controversial figures such as Ayers and Dohrn is a conscious choice for Lee, as it keeps alive what she calls a "meaningful diverse" conversation between the past and present.

            The Alternative Labeling exhibit, one of the museum’s core displays, shows how museum-goers can influence the institution. "We had a high school group one day, and after the tour the discussion was about Jane Addams’s relationship with Mary Roget Smith," Lee said. "The students felt it was obvious that the relationship was a romantic, sexual one but there was no mention of it anywhere in the museum. It is one of the more discussed parts of Addams’s life, so we included it in Alternative Labeling, asking people to vote whether the relationship was a friendship, a romantic one, or if it made a difference."

            Lee explained future exhibits will examine Addams’s life, "warts and all. She wasn't perfect, she made mistakes. We want to look at what made her human" and how these events influenced and shaped her work.

            On Monday, Dec. 10, Illinois will celebrate the inaugural annual holiday honoring Jane Addams, "but the kids will still have to go to school," Lee said, laughing. Prior to that, the Hull-House Museum will advertise some of Addams’s most famous quotes on Chicago Transit Authority buses and stations to raise awareness of the holiday and will host an event on Sunday, Dec. 9, at the museum.

            The Hull-House Museum is located at the University of Illinois at Chicago at 800 S. Halsted St. Hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday noon to 4 p.m. The museum is closed Mondays and Saturdays. Admission is free. For more information, call (312) 413-5353 or visit www.hullhousemuseum.org.

 

Simulation exercise brings an ex-felon’s plight to life 

By Jean Lachowicz 

One chilly evening in October, this writer became Mimi B., a 26-year-old mother of two who had done time at the State Penitentiary for prostitution and heroin possession. Upon my release, I had to find housing, clothing, food, and a job while I made sure I kept appointments with my parole officer and mandated 12-step meetings.

            I did whatever I could to make sure I didn’t get thrown back in jail.

            My kids were in foster care, and reuniting with them was out of the question because I had no resources to care for them. Because the oldest child is chronically ill and needs ongoing medical care, she is better off, wherever she is, than she would be with me.

            While in prison, I learned how to be a school bus driver. When I was released, on my first visit to employment services, I was informed Illinois does not allow convicted felons to be school bus drivers. I couldn’t possibly get a job in the field for which I was trained. The guy behind the desk encouraged me to enlist in the military because there were few other possibilities for me and I’d get a $20,000 signing bonus.

            In the second week after I was released, I was lucky to get a guaranteed bed in a transitional housing facility for 120 days. Most of the women around me were not so fortunate and remained homeless. In my third week, I finally was able to register with a food pantry and get something to eat and some clean clothing.

            I found myself feeling absolutely invisible. No one seemed to care about me. My life had turned into nothing but harshness. I had a flood of feelings about being helpless, worthless, and hopeless.

            With a huge sigh of relief, Mimi B. became me again at the conclusion of the three-hour simulation exercise. Happy, healthy me. Well clothed, well fed, happily married me. The me who doesn’t have a criminal record, and the me who lives in a comfortable house and has two dogs and a parakeet. Saying I felt relief is an understatement.

            Jane Addams Hull-House Association Center for Civil Society, in collaboration with the Adler School of Professional Psychology Center for Social Exclusion, presented the simulation to help 50 participants explore the lives of formerly incarcerated women. The participants were a diverse group of men and women from many walks of life, from wide-eyed college students to well seasoned ministers.

 

Systems must be altered

            According to Clarence Wood, president and CEO of Hull-House and head of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, “At the core of inequality are a series of systems that work to empower some while excluding others. If we are going to successfully create an equal society, we must alter these systems.”

            The simulation had participants explore how social structures and systems affect human values. Systems such as laws, regulations, public policies, institutional practices, organizational behaviors, and cultural conventions often work quietly behind the scenes of life, but their effects are deeply embedded in our society.

            After the simulation, participants heard the personal story of Helen, who had been on her own since 13 and had been released from prison recently. Helen’s story had many similarities to the roles the participants had been playing all evening. It seemed that she had been beaten back down every time some hope appeared for a better life.

            She said she found a good job at a local cosmetics distributor. After a week of working hard and showing up on time, she was told to report to the office. The management said they had discovered she was a convicted felon. The company fired her immediately, and an armed security guard escorted her off the premises.

            Helen now lives in transitional housing, but it is only temporary and she has no idea where she will live next. She enjoys sharing her story with groups and often speaks on behalf of ex-offenders for Chicago Legal Assistance for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM). She dreams of one day becoming a social worker so she can help women deal with similar circumstances.

 

Impossibilities

            “Unfortunately, it would be virtually impossible for someone like Helen to become a social worker,” said Terri Johnson, Hull-House’s vice president of public policy and advocacy. “There are laws and insurance requirements keeping ex-offenders away from children, even if a particular agency has no specific policy about convicted felons joining its staff. If she were to get a social work job for an agency that deals with adults only, adults often bring children to a center while they are looking for assistance and that would present a problem.

            “Also, most financial aid programs exclude ex-offenders, so she would probably be unable to get the education she would need for social work. Even if her conviction was able to be expunged, it would be very difficult for her to leave it completely behind.”

            Convicted felons also are barred from Chicago Housing Authority housing, and if they have children in a Headstart class, for example, they are prohibited from volunteering to help with the program because they cannot be in the presence of other people’s children.

            Through CLAIM, Helen has lobbied in Springfield for a program that would be more lenient with first offenders and a program to shift more of the penalties of prostitution from the prostitute to the customer.

            She urges employers to give ex-offenders a second chance to start a new life. Even though they have paid their debt and been released, they continue to suffer collateral consequences that ruin their future. Helen also noted formal and informal rules and laws are beyond a woman’s control; she hopes society does not always blame the women.

            Hull-House and the Adler School are planning additional simulation programs focusing on immigrant refugees and on middle-class African Americans. According to Johnson, “We want to take this model to many different groups to reinvigorate Jane Addams’s vision of systemic change on issues of social justice.”

            For more information on the Exclusion Simulation program, contact Terri Johnson at (312) 235-5391 or www.hullhouse.org.