Jane Addams seems different from Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Anna J. Cooper in every conceivable way when looked at for face value. Addams, Wells-Barnett and Coopers main commonalities, as sociologists, are that they all use participant observation in their studies of modern society, be it in the industrial heart of Chicago or the American South during reconstruction. For Wells-Barnett and Cooper, it is as simple as going about their everyday lives as educated, African-American women in the South. For Addams, it required her to create a space within the poorest ward of Chicago and even then she refused to call it participant observation and just referred to herself as a “neighbor” to the people that she studied although she contributed to the American Sociological association from its inception. Addams grew up in the middle class and eventually her family married into wealth whereas Wells-Barnett and Cooper were born the children of slaves and had to fight tooth and nail for everything that they got.
Wells-Barnett, Cooper and Addams share the distinction of being included in the first generation of educated women in the United States, but Addams also had the privilege of being one of the first women to be involved in government at any level, and worked with other women to empower them through lectures and her role at the Hull house.
All three women also used standpoint theory although they didn’t always refer to it as such at the time. For Wells-Barnett and Cooper it was from the standpoint of being African American and women, and is described in the book as follows: “They choose to use the imagery of the courtroom in framing their method of social analysis. They “cross examine”: they establish their own standpoint; from that standpoint on the margin of power, they challenge dominants’ claims about the facts, using the dominants’ own words as evidence; they give their own eyewitness accounts and “subpoena” into the record the eyewitness accounts of other subordinates. They, thus, create a critical and forensic empiricism.”. For Addams it was from the standpoint of being a white woman and a lesbian. Identifying both as women and black allowed them to analyze society from the perspective of an oppressed minority, which aided in the development of their overall sociological outlook. On page 162, the book tells us that “Cooper and Wells-Barnett present data from their direct observations of situations and events, for example, of Jim Crow laws and mores in public transportation, of their travels in other countries where race was not an instrument of oppressive practice, of conditions in Memphis before and after the lynching of Thomas Moss (Wells-Barnett), of barriers to the education of African American women (Cooper). Both try to collect data themselves.” (2007, p. 162). Wells-Barnett focuses her major works on the lynching of African American males in the South for their supposed rape of white women, although she makes note that in most of these cases, only one or two of the many men lynched are ever charged with the crime. Cooper tends to focus her attention and work on education. Her life as an educator and learner served as her primary interaction with oppression and discrimination.
Lengermann, Patricia Madoo; Niebrugge, Gillian.2007. The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory 1830–1930 Waveland Press ( Chapters 3 and 5). Kindle Edition.