Louise
Bowen was
born in 1859. The widow of a rich businessman, Joseph Bowen, she was
a major financial
contributor to the Hull
House Settlement. This included the
money to provide several new buildings and the summer camp, the Bowen
Country Club, in memory of her dead husband. Jane
Addams estimated that over the years Bowen provided over three
quarters of a million dollars to the Hull House project.
Bowen was the leader of the Hull House Women's Club and president
of the Juvenile Protective Association,
and this stimulated her into carrying out an investigation
into the African Americans living in Chicago. The report, The
Colored People of Chicago was published
in 1913.
Bowen was a long-time trustee, treasurer and
finally president of the Hull
House Association
board of trustees. After the death of Jane
Addams
in 1935 she was the most important figure in the Hull
House Settlement. However,
her increasingly dogmatic manner led to the resignations of the two
head residents that followed Addams, Adena
Miller Rich (1935-1937) and Charlotte Carr
(1937-43). However, she developed a better relationship with the next
head resident, Russell Ballard.
Louise Bowen died in 1953.
(1)
Louise Bowen, The Colored People of Chicago (1913)
While the morality of every young
person is closely bound up with that of his family and his immediate
environment, this is especially true of the sons and daughters of
colored families who, because they continually find the door of opportunity
shut in their faces, are more easily forced back into their early
environment, however vicious it may have been.
The enterprising young people in immigrant families who have passed
through the public schools and are earning good wages continually
succeed in moving their entire households into more prosperous neighborhoods
where they gradually lose all trace of their early tenement house
experiences. On the contary, the colored young people, however ambitious,
find it extremely difficult to move their families or even themselves
into desirable parts of the city and to make friends in these surroundings.
Many a case on record in the Juvenile Protective Association tells
a tale of an educated young Negro who failed to find employment as
stenographer, bookkeeper, or clerk. One rather pathetic story is that
of a boy graduated from a technical high school last spring. He was
sent with other graduates of his class to a big electric company where
in the presence of all his classmates he was told that "niggers
are not wanted here".
The association has on record another instance where a graduate of
a business college was refused a position under similar circumstances.
This young man, in response to an advertisement, went to a large firm
to ask for a position as clerk. "We take colored help only as
laborers," he was told by the manager of a firm supposed to be
friendly to the Negroes.
(2) Louise Bowen, letter to
a friend about the death of Jane
Addams
(27th May, 1035)
Miss Jane Addams went to Passavant
Hospital on the 18th May. The operation was performed on her that
day but it was found that she had an incurable disease. On the 20th
she sank into unconsciousness, and she died very quietly on the evening
of the 21st.
May 22nd and 23rd Miss Addams lay in state in Bowen Hall at Hull House.
She looked very lovely and very natural, and during the twenty-four
hours she was there thousands of people passed through the Hall. The
Hull House Women's Club formed a guard of honor and stood on either
side of the hall, while the older boys and girls in the Clubs with
white ribbons tied around their arms acted as ushers and everything
was conducted in a most orderly way.
She lay in a casket with a loose light blue robe around her, her hair
pushed back from her forehead as she always wore it. On either side
of the casket were bright colored tulips, so that it looked as though
she was resting on a bed of flowers. The hall was opened at five o'clock
in the morning, and working men on their way to their jobs came in
with lunch boxes in their hands, many of them kneeling on a little
stool in front of the casket and saying a prayer.
The morning of the funeral - and it was a beautiful day - she was
taken from Bowen Hall and placed upon the terrace in Hull House Court.
This Court is surrounded by the various Hull House buildings. The
funeral was at 2.30 in the afternoon. As early as ten o'clock in the
morning the Court Yard was crowded with people, one or two thousand
standing there all day in order to be present at the services.
When the funeral began, the music for which was furnished by the Hull
House Music School, every window in the Court was filled with people,
there were flowers in every window and wreaths hanging below the windows,
while the terrace was banked with lilacs and apple blossoms with bright
colored tulips around the edges. It was a most touching and democratic
gathering. Strong men and women with children in their arms all stood
weeping for the friend they had lost.
(3) Charlotte
Carr gave an interview to Time
Magazine after she was forced to resign by Louise Bowen (11th
January, 1943)
"Hell, I was fired!"
exclaimed Charlotte Carr last week at reports that she had "resigned"
after five years as director of Chicago's world-famed slum settlement,
Hull House. For many reasons, Charlotte Carr's position at Hull House
had become shaky. Some trustees and philanthropists in particular
did not like her outspoken political activity, her affiliation with
the Union for Democratic Action.
Hull House's founder, Jane Addams, in the 19th Century spirit believed
in the social adjustment and education of the alien poor. Miss Carr
thought that times had changed, that organization and political pressure
were now the best ways for slum dwellers to better their lot.
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