Sophonisba Breckinridge’s (1866–1948) work on behalf of women’s rights, the poor, and the dispossessed spanned multiple reform efforts: legal aid for immigrants, antilynching legislation, labor protections for workers, a minimum employment age, citizenship rights for women, and many others. From her early connections at Hull House to a nearly fifty-year career at the University of Chicago, Breckinridge labored in the background of Progressive Era and New Deal reforms. Moreover, her work as cofounder for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and as a delegate to the Seventh Pan-American Conference bridged national boundaries. Anya Jabour’s biography of Breckinridge, Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women’s Activism in Modern America, deftly weaves Breckinridge’s life into major reform movements and demonstrates the ways in which Breckinridge alternately shaped and was shaped by the social and political forces of her time.
Detailing Breckinridge’s vast and tireless activism is a daunting task. She worked across multiple decades, labored in various locations, and embraced numerous social and political causes. She worked to reform child and maternal welfare, install social work within academic departments at the University of Chicago, worked on behalf of women’s rights through the League of Women Voters, advocated for women workers, and embraced the World War I peace movement. Jabour organizes her biography thematically rather than strictly chronologically. She outlines Breckinridge’s early life, traces her academic endeavors, and then explores her work in the women’s rights and peace movements.
Jabour’s first three chapters trace Breckinridge’s Kentucky roots. She was born at the end of the Civil War to an often-pregnant, sickly mother and a father recently returned from military service in the Confederacy. Breckinridge was close with her father. He practiced law after the War and won a seat in Congress in 1884. Her parents recognized Breckinridge as exceptional and encouraged her to study and achieve independence. She attended Wellesley in Massachusetts, where she would reject the white supremacist beliefs of her childhood and commit herself to worldly service. She later advocated for antilynching legislation, fought for the inclusion of Black women and children in her reform efforts, and was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Jabour portrays the youthful Breckinridge as a “New Woman,” active in social reform through her college communities at Wellesley and later the University of Chicago. Despite frequent interruptions taking care of ill family members—Jabour notes that the “family claim” thrust such expectations onto single women—Breckinridge persevered and received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Jabour’s fourth and fifth chapters analyze Breckinridge’s work in the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and her efforts to build the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. All the while, Jabour argues that Breckenridge continually combined “her commitment to higher education, her advocacy for the underprivileged, and her interest in advancing the social work profession” (117). Jabour’s analysis here engages questions surrounding the social responsibilities of a public intellectual.
Jabour nimbly integrates Breckinridge’s biography with the evolution of the women’s rights movement, specifically the rifts that formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)—Breckinridge was the organization’s second vice president—and the debates over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which Breckinridge opposed, fearing it would damage labor protections women workers had earned based on their distinction as wives and mothers. This blending not only demonstrates how Breckinridge contributed to major debates, but also allows deeper engagement with the nuanced issues confronting pressing social movements. Jabour’s treatment of the ERA not only offers an opportunity for additional biographical details about Breckenridge, it further reveals the ERA as a polarizing and divisive turning point in American women’s history. Breckinridge’s views were more dynamic than any simple opposition to the notion of equality for women, and Jabour therefore injects additional depth and nuance into scholarship surrounding the ERA. Chapters six through eight carry the women’s rights movement through the interwar wars, and chapter nine outlines Breckinridge’s ideological evolution, especially her New Deal era notion of a “national minimum” of resources that all citizens needed to survive. Jabour’s final chapter, on the same-sex relationship between Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, reveals the limits of what modern historians can know about the intimate partnerships of women who shared their lives, as Abbott and Breckinridge did for over forty years.
Jabour uses familiar terms to describe Breckinridge, referring to her as a feminist and “social justice” activist. She presents Breckinridge as a “forgotten” feminist who, until this book, had not received adequate from scholars. Jabour compellingly begins the book with Breckinridge’s own definition of a feminist: a woman who wants other woman “to have their chance” (vii). Jabour never specifically defines what she means by social justice, although it becomes clear throughout the book what Breckinridge meant by “socialized justice” (74) and “peace justice” (189).
Readers interested in the evolution of women’s rights and international peace efforts from the Progressive Era through the interwar years and into the New Deal will find this book compelling. Furthermore, as a biography it is a delightful read: Breckinridge’s personality sparkles throughout the text. But Jabour also shows that Breckinridge didn’t labor in isolation: she worked in cooperation with other equally driven women such as Grace and Edith Abbott, Marion Talbot, Cary Chapman Catt, Bertha Lutz, and others. Breckinridge’s story will be accessible to classrooms and general readers. Sections on activism connect clearly with modern-day struggles for equality and justice. Overall, Jabour’s biography is an enjoyable and enlightening contribution.
