Background
Jessie Binford was born on January 20, 1876, in Marshalltown, Iowa, United States, the daughter of Thaddeus Binford, a lawyer, and Angelica Beasley.
Jessie Binford was born on January 20, 1876, in Marshalltown, Iowa, United States, the daughter of Thaddeus Binford, a lawyer, and Angelica Beasley.
From 1895 to 1897 Jessie attended Smith College, then transferred to Rockford College, where she received her B. A. in 1900.
Returning to her family home, Binford led a boys' club that met in her backyard. In 1902 Binford heard Jane Addams speak and requested permission to visit her famous settlement, Hull House, in Chicago. Addams told her to come the following summer. From 1905 until 1963, Binford was a Hull House resident. She also worked for the United Charities and Legal Aid Society in Chicago from 1906 to 1909 and for the Juvenile Protective Association (JPA). Binford's most significant contributions to social work were in connection with the JPA. A voluntary child-welfare organization, it was formed in 1906 as the Juvenile Protective League to support the juvenile court, promote reform, and provide casework services to families of neglected or delinquent children. Binford joined the year it was formed and worked as an investigation or probation officer. Based at Hull House, the league changed its name to the Juvenile Protective Association in 1909.
While working with delinquent boys, Binford discovered that people connected with neighborhood drugstores were supplying youngsters with cocaine. She joined forces with another Hull House resident, Dr. Alice Hamilton, a pioneer in industrial medicine. Hamilton analyzed the drugs, and the women then confronted the legal system with their findings. The inability of the courts to deal effectively with the drug problem left them angry and frustrated. However, Binford continued to speak out, occasionally accusing influential people of harming Chicago's youth; and she advocated various reforms, especially in the juvenile justice system. Binford was promoted to assistant superintendent and, in 1916, to superintendent of the JPA, a post she held until 1952.
During World War I, she also served on the United States Interdepartment Social Hygiene Board and the War Department's Commission on Training Camp Activities, for which she was Midwest regional director for protective work with girls at naval stations and military camps. As head of the JPA, Binford worked to stop the sale of liquor to minors in dance halls. She joined with Louise de Koven Bowen, a wealthy Hull House and JPA board member, in organizing the Dance Hall and Ball Room Managers' Association. This organization hired chaperones approved by Binford and Bowen and paid for a dance hall officer to ensure that all of its member dance halls were decently run. In 1929, even though the JPA was in financial straits, it adopted a policy of not accepting donations from dance halls of which it disapproved.
In addition to the drug and liquor traffic aimed at juveniles, Binford took up other issues. In 1917 she served as one of three civil service examiners hiring twenty county officials. She also questioned the Red Cross's campaign to salvage junk because she was concerned that youngsters would go into the business of selling junk to dealers. In 1920 Binford chaired the Women's City Club's Police Committee, which did a thorough study of Chicago's police stations and then recommended that voters reject a bond issue for new jails because it did not reflect careful planning. Binford also advocated local censorship of movies, attacked gamblers, and pressured the police and the courts into doing a better job of law enforcement. She was variously called "Miss Jessie" and "the conscience of Chicago. " Law enforcement officials listened to what she had to say, and some credited her efforts with diverting as many as 75, 000 youngsters from lives of crime and poverty.
The professionalization of social work in the 1920's undermined the effectiveness of those like Binford who lacked graduate professional training. Funding problems also contributed to the haphazard nature of JPA activities. In the late 1930's the agency decided to focus on neglected and abused children. However, the JPA did not acquire a professionally trained staff until after Binford's resignation took effect in 1952. Binford continued to make Hull House her home after retiring as head of the JPA. In 1961 Hull House sold its site to the city for use as the future home of the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, an action that was opposed by the neighborhood. Binford and Florence Scala, a Hull House neighbor, cochaired the Harrison-Halsted Community, a group that fought the settlement's deal with the city. When Binford's and Scala's speeches and marches failed to change the decision, they launched an unsuccessful two-year campaign in the courts. In 1963 Binford was the last to move out of Hull House. However, the publicity that she and Scala generated led the University of Illinois to restore the original Hull House building. Binford returned to Marshalltown but maintained an active interest in the use of the Hull House restoration until her death. She died in Marshalltown, and left her family home, Binford House, to Marshalltown's Federation of Women's Clubs.
Jessie Binford was a full-time resident of Hull House since 1902. While there, she became the president of the Legal Aid Society and secretary of the Hull House branch of the Juvenile Protection Association. She dedicated much of her life to working to better conditions for children, women and the poor, working to investigate prostitution, organized crime, and political corruption. Binford was well-known in Chicago for her outspoken support for the fight against drugs, the black market in babies and others.
Binford never married.
