On December 10

On this day in ...
... 1931, the Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Jane Addams; she was a co-winner with Nicholas Murray Butler. Nobel Committee Chair Halvdan Koht said in his presentation speech:

(credit)

'America helped – perhaps it would be more correct to say compelled – Europe to create a League of Nations which would provide a firm basis for peaceful coexistence among nations. It was a crushing blow that America herself did not join this organization, and without doubt her failure to do so contributed largely to the failure of the League of Nations to live up to expectations. We still see too much of the old rivalries of power politics. Had the United States joined, she would have been a natural mediator between many of the conflicting forces in Europe, for America is more interested in peace in Europe than in lending her support to any particular country.
'It must be said, however, that the United States is not the power for peace in the world that we should have wished her to be. She has sometimes let herself drift into the imperialism which is the natural outcome of industrial capitalism in our age. In many ways she is typical of the wildest form of capitalist society, and this has inevitably left its mark on American politics.
'But America has at the same time fostered some of the most spirited idealism on earth.'

A longtime advocate of peace, suffrage, and measures to alleviate poverty, Addams was emblematic of that idealism – of "the work which women can do peace fraternity among nations," Koht continued. But Addams, who was then 71 years old, was admitted to a hospital in Baltimore on this day in 1931, and so was unable to attend the ceremony in Oslo, Norway. She would die 4 years later in the city where she had long lived, Chicago. We IntLawGrrls honor her as a transnational foremother.

(Prior December 10 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Welcome hand for low-income women

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of acquaintance with America's 1st elected Congresswoman -- or rather, with many good women who do good works in her good name.
Her name was Jeannette Rankin. In 1916, when she was 36 years told and national women's enfranchisement was still 4 years away, voters in her native state of Montana chose Rankin, the field secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, to represent them in Congress. She served from 1917 to 1919 and again from 1941 to 1943. In both of those periods the United States entered a global war, and in both, Congresswoman Rankin cast a rare vote of "No."
Her activism persisted throughout her life: she served as field secretary for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (an organization whose other representatives included IntLawGrrls foremothers Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch), and at age 87 she and 5,000 others in the Jeannette Rankin Brigade marched against Vietnam War.
By that time Rankin lived not in Montana, but in northeast Georgia, on a farm not far my own new home in Athens. There, as described in a biographical booklet by Dorothy Sams Newland, Rankin cofounded the Georgia Peace Society, fought naval spending bills that brought funds to her region, won a libel suit against a Macon paper that called her a Communist, traveled widely, and started girls' and boys' clubs.
On her death in 1973, Rankin left a $16,000 bequest, and on this the Athens-based Jeannette Rankin Foundation was built. (logo credit)
As I learned at the group's annual dinner this week, the Foundation focuses on a segment of society often overlooked: it gives scholarships to low-income women over 35 years of age who are pursuing college or vocational degrees.
In 1978, the fledgling Foundation awarded $500 to Barbara Dixon, a local widow who was studying nursing and caring for her young children. Since that small beginning, it's given well over $1 million in grants, to more than 600 women from all over the United States.
Some Jeannette Rankin Scholars were at the dinner: Dixon herself; another local woman, Latrena Stokes, who gave the benediction; and Patricia Garcia of Utah, a recent geology graduate who talked of her field work bringing fresh water to communities in Mexico and Nepal.
The Scholars' stories -- no less than that of Rankin and the women who devote time and energy to the Foundation -- inspired. Learn more about this most worthy nonprofit here.

On June 19

On this day in ...
… 1961, Kuwait declared independence from the United Kingdom. Back in 1899, Britain had concluded a protectorate agreement with the ruler of Kuwait (flag at left). In it the ruler promised not to conclude treaties with other powers, to admit no foreign agents, and to cede no part of his territory without British consent. According to the independence agreement concluded on this day in 1961, relations between the 2 countries should continue to be governed by a spirit of close friendship, and, when appropriate, the 2 governments would consult on matters of concern to them both.

… 1939 (70 years ago today), Grace Abbott (below right), American social reformer, teacher, and writer, died in Chicago, Illinois. Concerned about the low pay and long hours required of children working in factories, Abbott became a leader in the fight for federal children's rights legislation. As associate of Jane Addams, Nobel Peace Prizewinner and IntLawGrrls transnational foremother, Abbott served as head of the Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor from 1921 to 1934. She was the official representative of the United States on the League of Nations' advisory committees on traffic in women and on child welfare from 1922 to 1934. Upon her resignation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described her career as one of

inestimable value to the children, the mothers, and fathers of the country, as well as to the Federal and State governments.

From 1934 until her death, Abbott continued working for social welfare as a professor at the University of Chicago and as chair of international labor conferences and state committees dealing with child labor. (photo credit)

(Prior June 19 posts are here and here.)

On April 1

On this day in ...
... 1866, Sophonisba Breckinridge (left) was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Elder by 6 years than her sister Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, whom IntLawGrrls prevoiusly profiled, Sophonisba likewise devoted herself to women's rights and other causes. A graduate of Wellesley, in 1894 she became the 1st woman to pass the Kentucky bar exam. She then moved to Chicago, where in 1901 she became the 1st woman to receive a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago -- the university from which she also earned her J.D. 3 years later. (photo credit) She began to write about women workers and to collaborate with other Chicago women, among them social worker Jane Addams, an IntLawGrrls transnational foremother. Among other activities, Sophonisba attended the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague, took part in the work of the Women's Trade Union League and the NAACP, and lobbied against war and for women's suffrage and juvenile justice reform. She died in 1948.
... 1979 (30 years ago today), a 2-day referendum concluded with 97% of the electorate voting that Iran would be an Islamic republic. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that the date should mark "'the first day of a Government of God.'"

(Prior April 1 posts are here and here.)

Honoring Emily Greene Balch

A few words about Emily Greene Balch (left), whom today's guest blogger, Chimène Keitner, has chosen to honor:
Born in 1867, Balch was a member of the 1st class to graduate from Bryn Mawr College; thereafter she studied sociology and economics in Europe and, eventually, back in the United States. She started teaching at Wellesley College in 1896, and became a Professor there 15 years later. During this time she was active in movements for women's suffrage, racial justice, and fair treatment of immigrants.
When World War I broke out in 1914, she found her life's calling; that is, "furthering humanity's effort to rid the world of war." Among many other activities, Balch:
► took part in the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague;
► helped to found what's now known as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom;
► collaborated with Jane Addams and others on Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results (1915); and
► participated in the work of the League of Nations that was formed in the wake of World War I.

(credit for photo below right of American delegation to the 1915 Hague Conference; Balch is standing at far left in the 3d row from the front, while Addams is sitting 2d from left in the front row)
By the time that Balch was named a Nobel Peace Prizewinner in 1946, she had altered "her strong pacifistic views" somewhat on account of the "the excesses of nazism." She came "to defend the 'fundamental human rights, sword in hand'" in World War II, even as she "concentrated on generating ideas for the peace, most of them characterized by the common denominator of internationalism." Today Balch, who died in 1961 at the age of 94 years + 1 day, joins Addams -- her friend and a 1931 Peace Prizewinner -- and other distinguished women on IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers list at right, just below our "visiting from ..." map in our righthand column.

On September 11

On this day in ...
... 1877, in Budapest, Rosika Schwimmer (left) was born. For years a leader of feminist and peace movements in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe, Schwimmer was living in London, "serving as International Press Secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and as correspondent of important European newspapers," when World War I broke out. She worked against the war with other women; among her close associates was Jane Addams. (Addams is the transnational foremother of IntLawGrrls guest Mary Ellen O'Connell, and guest Catherine Lanctot posted this past spring on antiwar efforts of other World War I women.) Schwimmer persuaded a U.S. auto magnate to charter an ocean liner and sail the eponymous Henry Ford Peace Expedition to Europe in late 1915-early 1916. She served as Minister to Switzerland -- making her Hungary's 1st woman ambassador -- after the war. But political turmoil in her home country soon prompted Schwimmer to seek refuge in the United States. There she became embroiled in the legal struggle depicted in the editorial cartoon at right,which ended when the Supreme Court rejected her bid for citizenship in United States v. Schwimmer (1929), on account of her refusal to take up arms in defense of the country. Schwimmer, whom ImmigrationProf Blog recently honored as immigrant of the day, died in New York in 1948. (photo credit; 1928 cartoon credit)
... 2003 (5 years ago today), the 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety entered into force. The protocol's intended to supplement the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (logo below left) by "seek[ing] to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology. " The protocol has 147 states parties; the United States is not among them. Nor is it among the 191 states parties to the Convention itself.

Guest Blogger: Mary Ellen O'Connell

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to feature a guest post today from our colleague Mary Ellen O'Connell (right).
The Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana, Mary Ellen's a noted expert on the use of force, armed conflict, and international law, issues on which her scholarship concentrates. Her most recent book is The Power and Purpose of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2008), which she describes as "a renewed and updated theory of international law for the post-torture era" that responds to Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner, The Limits of International Law (2005).
Mary Ellen's guest post below begins by observing that the world's collective attention may have been too closely trained on saber-rattling in Iran (on which she'd written earlier, as IntLawGrrls noted here and here) and, this week, on the Beijing Olympic Games (prior IntLawGrrls posts here). She then redirects attention, to international law issues underlying the struggle between Russia and Georgia for control of the troubled regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Mary Ellen earned a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University, then studied as a Marshall Scholar, earning her master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and an LL.B. from Cambridge. Thereafter she earned a J.D. from Columbia University, where she was a Stone Scholar and book review editor for the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law; she practiced at Covington & Burling. Since entering academia, Mary Ellen has taught law at institutions in the United States, Italy, and Germany.
Mary Ellen dedicates her post to Jane Addams (below) whom she describes as a "peace campaigner extraordinaire." Indeed: as IntLawGrrls detailed here, Addams (1860-1935) was renowned as a pacifist, feminist, suffragist, settlement-house founder, and social worker; she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Today Addams joins IntLawGrrls' other foremothers in the honor list just below the "visiting from ..." map at right. (photo credit)
Heartfelt welcome!

On September 6, ...

...1974, in Zambia, leaders of Portugal and of the liberation front known as FRELIMO signed a treaty known as the Lusaka Agreement establishing Mozambique as an independent nation-state, and so ending more than 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule. This week Forbes magazine named Mozambican Prime Minister Luisa Diogo the 89th most powerful woman in the world.
... 1860, Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois, the 8th of 9 children in a family "with Quaker roots" who counted among its friends President Abraham Lincoln, who'd served in the Illinois Senate with Addams' father. "Lincoln's creed of the equality of men became Miss Addams's ideal as a child," the New York Times wrote on the occasion of her death in 1935. It must be supposed that a contemporary reporter would insert "and women" after "men," given this passage from her 1931 Nobel Peace Prize biography:

Jane Addams was an ardent feminist by philosophy. In those days before women's suffrage she believed that women should make their voices heard in legislation and therefore should have the right to vote, but more comprehensively, she thought that women should generate aspirations and search out opportunities to realize them.

The opportunity that she seized was founding of Hull-House, a "settlement house" where Chicago's poor were given access to health care, job leads, education, exercise, and the arts. Over time Addams became active in civic and pacifist movements at home and abroad. She spoke at the 1913 ceremony opening the Peace Palace at The Hague, for instance, and served as President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom established there 2 years later. Because of her opposition to World War I, the Daughters of the American Revolution expelled Addams from its ranks. Addams' memoir Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910) is an inspiration. (photo of Addams, holding a peace banner at right, with a flag-holding woman believed to be Mary McDowell, courtesy of Library of Congress.)