Reviewed by:

• Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women’s Activism in Modern America by Anya Jabour
• Susan Goodier

Anya Jabour has masterfully brought our attention to Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge, one of the most influential women of the Progressive era that no one knows. She centers Breckinridge in a dense contextualization of the period and proves without a doubt the significance of Breckinridge’s wide-ranging social activism. Having cast a wide net to make use of a rich array of sources, the author has recovered the life of a public intellectual deeply entangled in a web of astounding policy influence and creation. In the process, Jabour persuades us to [End Page 135] rethink our understanding of feminism and activism during the modern period of the United States.

The pattern of Breckinridge’s life shows the uniqueness of her development as a social activist. The daughter of a Confederate officer and lawyer, Breckinridge wanted to study law. She earned a liberal arts education at Wellesley College, focusing on mathematics and statistics. Despite the almost constant pressure of family demands and strong social resistance, she did ultimately read for the law. Meanwhile, Breckinridge attended the University of Chicago and became an academic, training dozens of young women in the skills necessary to collect and use statistical data to influence truly effective social policies.

Although involved in every kind of progressive reform, Breckinridge focused on four distinct areas throughout her long life. She engaged in debates over equality and difference, coming out on the side of protective legislation for women and opposing the Equal Rights Amendment. She also promoted statistical analysis in the pioneering field of social work policy. She achieved compatibility between academic scholarship and activist commitments nationally and internationally. Finally, she worked to eliminate discrimination through race consciousness. Directly challenging patriarchal laws in the interest of advancing social justice, Breckinridge deeply engaged with many women activists, especially through Jane Addams’s Hull House.

The sheer volume of the arguments, organizations, and issues that Breckinridge weighed in on help us understand some of the challenges that remain in the present, and assuredly complicated Jabour’s recovery work. Breckinridge apparently never said “no” to requests for her expertise. She involved herself in dozens of committees and organizations, including working as treasurer for the Woman’s Peace Party, involving herself in the woman suffrage movement, advocating for women’s citizenship through the Cable Act, and influencing the work of the Children’s Bureau and the Women’s Bureau. Her influence spread beyond the borders of the United States through her involvement in the international feminist community, particularly in Latin America. Her views tended to be consistent with those of Latin American feminists, which put her at odds with some of the leading feminists of her own country.

Breckinridge never lost faith in social scientific research or in the idea that the federal government was the best solution for social problems. She influenced the development of the welfare state through her support for programs such as the Sheppard-Towner Act, voluntary parenthood, immigration policy, and Social Security. Despite having been raised in the South, she advocated for equality for African Americans and opposed lynching. Such advocacy earned Breckinridge some scrutiny in connection with the claims of the infamous “Spider’s Web chart” (p. 198).

Perhaps it would have improved the organizational framework of the book and eliminated some redundancy if the author had woven Breckinridge’s personal life, as much as could be recovered, throughout the entire work. It stuck this reviewer as odd that Jabour waited until the last chapter to discuss Breckinridge’s forty-year intimate relationship with former student and social [End Page 136] justice advocate Edith Abbott. It is also never entirely clear why Breckinridge became involved in so many diverse organizations. Nevertheless, Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women’s Activism in Modern America is a valuable addition to the scholarship of the Progressive era. Sophonisba...

审核人：

• Sophonisba Breckinridge： Anya Jabour倡导现代美国的妇女积极主义
• 苏珊·古迪尔（Susan Goodier）

Anya Jabour巧妙地将我们的注意力吸引到了Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge，这是进步时代最有影响力的女性之一，没人知道。她以布雷肯里奇在那个时期的密集语境为中心，毫无疑问地证明了布雷肯里奇广泛的社会活动主义的重要性。通过广泛使用各种资源，作者恢复了深深卷入令人震惊的政策影响力和创造力的网络中的公共知识分子的生活。在此过程中，Jabour劝说我们[End Page 135]重新思考我们对美国现代时期女权主义和行动主义的理解。

布雷金里奇的生活模式显示出她作为社会活动家发展的独特性。布雷金里奇是同盟军官和律师的女儿，他想学习法律。她在韦尔斯利学院（Wellesley College）获得了文科教育，重点是数学和统计学。尽管家庭要求和社会抵制的压力几乎一直存在，但她最终还是读了法律。同时，布雷金里奇（Breckinridge）就读于芝加哥大学，并成为一名学者，对数十名年轻女性进行了培训，使其具备收集和使用统计数据影响真正有效的社会政策所必需的技能。

尽管参与了各种渐进式改革，但布雷金里奇一生都专注于四个不同的领域。她参与了有关平等与差异的辩论，是针对妇女的保护性立法，反对《平等权利修正案》。她还促进了社会工作政策开拓领域的统计分析。她在国内和国际上都获得了学术奖学金和激进主义者承诺之间的兼容。最后，她致力于通过种族意识消除歧视。为了促进社会正义，布雷金里奇直接挑战了父权制，特别是通过简·亚当斯的赫尔之家与许多女性激进主义者进行了深入接触。

布雷金里奇在争论，组织和问题上所涉及的数量之多，有助于我们理解当前仍然存在的一些挑战，并确保使Jabour的恢复工作复杂化。布雷金里奇显然从不拒绝要求她提供专业知识的请求。她参与了数十个委员会和组织的工作，包括担任妇女和平党的财务主任，参与妇女选举权运动，通过《电缆法》倡导妇女公民身份以及影响儿童局和妇女局的工作。她的影响力通过参与国际女权主义社区，特别是在拉丁美洲而扩展到了美国之外。她的观点倾向于与拉丁美洲女权主义者的观点一致，

布雷金里奇从未对社会科学研究或联邦政府是解决社会问题的最佳解决方案的信念失去信心。她通过支持诸如《谢泼德-唐纳法案》（Sheppard-Towner Act），自愿生育，移民政策和社会保障等计划，对福利国家的发展产生了影响。尽管在南方长大，她还是倡导非裔美国人的平等并反对私刑。这样的主张使布雷金里奇对臭名昭著的“蜘蛛网图”的主张进行了详细审查（第198页）。

如果作者将布雷肯里奇的个人生活编织到整个工作中，并且可以恢复的话，也许会改善这本书的组织框架并消除一些重复。贾布尔等到上一章讨论布雷肯里奇与前学生和社会人士之间长达40年的亲密关系，这使这位评论家感到奇怪。[End Page 136]司法倡导者伊迪丝·阿伯特（Edith Abbott）。从来都不完全清楚为什么布雷肯里奇会参与这么多不同的组织。尽管如此，《Sophonisba Breckinridge：在现代美国倡导妇女行动主义》是进步时代奖学金的宝贵补充。Sophonisba ...