Background

Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge was born on April 1, 1866 in Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky. She was the second of seven children of William Campbell Preston Breckinridge, a lawyer, editor, United States congressman, and colonel in the Confederate Army, and his second wife, Issa (Desha) Breckinridge.

Education

Isba, as she was called by family and friends, was strongly influenced by the long family tradition of public service and support of education. One of the first generation of college women, she graduated from Wellesley in 1888 and, like most of her contemporaries, searched restlessly for several years before finding a career.

She also earned the Ph. D. in 1901 in political science, defending a thesis on legal tender. She then entered the University of Chicago Law School, where she received her J. D. in 1904.

Career

After teaching at a Washington, D. C. , high school while Sophonisba's father was a congressman, she returned with him to Kentucky and studied in his law office. In 1895 she became the first woman admitted to the Kentucky bar, an achievement that did not end her search for a meaningful career. In 1895 she became an assistant to Marion Talbot, dean of women at the University of Chicago.

After receiving the J. D. in 1904 from the University of Chicago Law School, that year she became an instructor in the department of political economy at the university, where she taught until 1942. Teaching and administration occupied only a portion of her time.

About 1905 she met Jane Addams of Hull House, Margaret Dreier Robins of the Women's Trade Union League, and others engaged in social research and reform in Chicago. Through them she discovered a way to combine her interest in scholarship, teaching, and social reform. She became a resident of Hull House in 1907 and for the next fourteen years she spent part of her time at the settlement.

Also in 1907 she began to teach at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, organized in 1903 by Graham Taylor. She became dean of the school and director of research, and in 1920 she was responsible for the school's incorporation into the University of Chicago as the Graduate School of Social Service Administration.

She collaborated with Edith Abbott, who also taught at the University of Chicago, on The Delinquent Child and the Home (1912), Truancy and Non-Attendance in the Chicago Schools (1917), and The Tenements of Chicago (1936).

Her research drew her into participation in many reform movements. Her principal role was that of advisor and expert, often utilizing her legal training, but she also took part in a whirlwind of conferences, campaigns, and causes. Sophonisba Breckinridge served on the executive committee of the Illinois Consumers League and advised Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott on policy at the Children's Bureau.

Working closely with Edith Abbott, she shaped the School of Social Service Administration into one of the country's leading institutions. She maintained that social workers should be not merely philanthropists or technicians but professionals.

In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her a delegate to the Pan American Congress, the first woman to receive such an honor, and in 1934 she was elected president of the American Association of Schools of Social Work.

After her retirement in 1942 she continued to teach and to write until a few months before her death at the age of eighty-two from a combination of arteriosclerosis and a perforated ulcer.

Achievements

• Sophonisba Breckinridge was an aristocrat who had sympathy and understanding for those less fortunate, she was a pioneer in social welfare administration and teaching, a researcher with great energy, and one of the first professional women in America. Her great capacity for research and writing was expressed in an impressive array of articles and books, all heavily loaded with charts, graphs, and statistics documenting the squalid conditions she observed. Her lifelong concern with the role of women in American society was reflected in two articles published in 1906 in the Journal of Political Economy on the legal aspects of the employment of women in industry and in Marriage and the Civic Rights of Women: Separate Domicile and Independent Citizenship (1931), and Women in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Their Political, Social and Economic Activities (1933). She helped organize and was the first secretary of Chicago's Immigrant Protective League and was an early member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and vice-president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association. Sophonisba was also president of the Woman's City Club of Chicago and an officer of the American Association of University Women. She helped to draft the Progressive party platform in 1912, aided in the campaign to launch a federal investigation of women and children in industry, and was a delegate to the International Congress of Women at The Hague in 1915. Her chief importance was as a teacher of social work and as one of the first generation of professional women. Breckinridge helped to organize the Woman’s Peace Party and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She emphasized the need for the federal and state governments to promote social welfare in New Homes for Old (1921), Family Welfare Work in a Metropolitan Community (1924), Public Welfare Administration in the United States (1927), The Family and the State (1934), and The Social Service Review, a journal that she helped found in 1927. Appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a delegate to the Pan American Congress, she became the first woman to receive such an honor in 1933. And then another great achievemnet followed when she was elected president of the American Association of Schools of Social Work in 1934.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Madeline McDowell Breckinridge: A Leader in the New South (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Madeline McDowell Breckinridge: A Leader in ...)

  • The Modern Household (Classic Reprint)

    (We hope that the statements and suggestions in the follow...)

  • Truancy and Non-Attendance in the Chicago Schools: A Study of the Social Aspects of the Compulsory Education and Child Labor Legislation of Illinois

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A study of legal tender in England

    (This book, "A study of legal tender in England", by Sopho...)

  • A Summary of Juvenile-Court Legislation in the United States

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Truancy and Non-Attendance in the Chicago Schools: A Study of the Social Aspects of the Compulsory Education and Child Labor Legislation of Illinois

    (This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)

  • Legal Tender: A Study In English And American Monetary History

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Madeline McDowell Breckinridge; A Leader in the News South

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • New homes for old

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • The administration of the aid-to-mothers law in Illinois

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The Chicago Juvenile Court, Issues 101-110

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The Chicago Juvenile Court, Issues 104-108...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • A Handbook for the Women Voters of Illinois - Primary Source Edition

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • New Homes for Old - Primary Source Edition

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The Family and the State: Select Documents (Family in America Series)
  • Women in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Their Political, Socail and Economic Activities (American Women: Images and Realities)
  • Legal Tender: A Study in English and American Monetary History,
  • New Homes for Old

Politics

In her political endeavors Sophonisba Breckinridge was involved in the Progressive Party movement.

Views

Sophonisba Breckinridge had a great interest in scholarship, teaching, and social reform, so she collaborated on these matters with other social activists, such as Jane Addams of Hull House, Margaret Dreier Robins of the Women's Trade Union League, whom she met about 1905, and others engaged in social research and reform in Chicago, and of the American Association of Schools of Social Work.

Breckinridge also contributed to the growth of the idea that the state had to be involved in social-welfare programs, a view not widely accepted in the United States until the New Deal of the 1930s. She popularized the doctrine through her books and teaching and in the pages of the Social Service Review, a highly regarded journal of which she was cofounder in 1927 and which she edited until 1948.

Quotations: She once wrote in her autobiography: "but the faculty and students were kind, and the fact that the law school, like the rest of the University. .. accepted men and women students on equal terms publicly".

Membership

Sophonisba Breckinridge was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, of the Woman's City Club of Chicago, of the American Association of University Women.

Other organizations she was a member of, as follows: American Association of Schools of Social Work, American Association of Social Workers, AASW,

American Political Science Association, American Social Science Association, American Sociological Society, Hull House Association, Illinois Welfare Association, Immigrant's Protective League, League of Women Voters, National Consumers League, National Probation Association, National Urban League, Phi Beta Kappa, Urban League, Vocational Supervision League, Woman's Peace Party (treasurer), Women's International League for Peace, and Freedom

Women's Trade Union League.

Personality

She never lost her aristocratic appearance or southern accent.

In her appearance she was delicate and sickly; she had a pale, thin face and weighted only ninety pounds. But her appearance was deceiving. She had tremendous energy, an engaging sense of humor, and total commitment to her careers.

Quotes from others about the person

• Judith Sealander says of Breckinridge: “Breckinridge, as a social worker, fought for a progressive agenda of reforms. Key to that agenda was advocacy of greater state involvement in social issues. Breckenridge, in roles as a Chicago city health inspector, a probation officer for the Chicago Juvenile Court, a member of the executive committee of the Consumers’ League, a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and as secretary of the Immigrants’ Protective League demanded government intervention under the aegis of laws and agencies. She worked hard for civil rights and compulsory education laws, the minimum wage, the abolition of child labor, the eight-hour day, the establishment of a Federal Children’s Bureau, and the state’s right to remove children from abusive parents”.

Connections

Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge never married.

Father:

William Campbell Preston Breckinridge

1837–1904

Sister:

Issa Desha Breckinridge

1871–1872

Sister:

Mary Curry Desha Breckinridge

1875–1918

Sister :

Desha Breckinridge

1867–1935

collaborator:

Edith Abbott

colleague:

Marion Talbot

mother :

Issa Desha Breckinridge

1843–1892

Brother :

Campbell Preston Breckinridge

1869–1870

associate:

Jane Addams

activist, reformer, social worker

associate:

Margaret Dreier Robins

labor leader

References

• Women in Public Life 1914 Hardcover