Who Was Julia Lathrop?
Last Saturday I saw the reading of the play, Julie & Jane, at Artists’ Ensemble at Rockford University. This is the perfect time to resurrect Julia Lathrop. Julia Lathrop and Jane Addams, life-long friends, graduated from Rockford Female Seminary which became Rockford College in 1892 and Rockford University in 2013. This year, Rockford University celebrates its 175th anniversary.
But there’s another anniversary connected with Julia Lathrop. Julia started the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, now the Greater Rockford chapter, 100 years ago this year. The League planted the seed for this new play, written by Margaret Raether, and co-sponsored its reading last weekend.
Hopefully, a full, staged production will be in the future for Artists’ Ensemble. I found the play entertaining and hilarious, as well as biographical. The full-house audience responded with a standing ovation. I now know the person behind Lathrop Street and Lathrop School.
Julia joined her friend Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago in 1890 and worked with her as a suffragette until Constitutional Amendment 19 passed in 1920, giving women the right to vote.
Julia Lathrop was a state-wide, national, and international leader for women’s and children’s rights at the turn of the century. Here’s a list of some of her “firsts:”
1893 First woman on the Illinois State Board of Charities
1899 Helped found the country’s first juvenal court in Chicago
1912 First woman bureau chief of a federal department, for the new Children’s Bureau under President William Taft, a Republican. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, continued her tenure.
1918 Represented the US at the International Conference on Child Welfare
1922 President of the Illinois League of Women Voters
In an era when women were expected to stay home and raise children, Julia Lathrop worked for education for women, including college education, graduating from Vassar in 1880. She fought for and won restrictions on child labor and lobbied for humane treatment of mentally ill patients. She never married, but adopted a girl stranded by court decisions. After her retirement from federal government, she returned to a new home on National Avenue in her hometown, Rockford, dying in 1932.
Submitted by Teresa Wilmot