Jessie Wallace Hughan (December 25, 1875 – April 10, 1955) was an American educator, a socialist activist, and a radical pacifist. During her college days she was one of four co-founders of Alpha Omicron Pi, a national fraternity for university women. She also was a founder and the first Secretary of the War Resisters League, established in 1923. For over two decades, she was a perennial candidate for political office on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America in her home state of New York.
Early life and education
Jessie Wallace Hughan was born December 25, 1875, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the third of four children born to Margaret and Samuel Hughan, who were of Scottish, English, and French ancestry. Her father was an accountant.
Hughan attended grammar school on Staten Island and then went on to Northfield Seminary, a theologically liberal Unitarian college preparatory school for girls located in Northfield, Massachusetts.
Hughan enrolled at Barnard College in New York City in 1894. In January 1897 she co-founded there with three other students the international sorority Alpha Omicron Pi. In 1898 she graduated, earning her A.B. degree, for which she authored an unpublished senior thesis on "Recent Theories of Profits." An excellent student, Hughan was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a national honorary society.
After graduation from Barnard, Hughan enrolled in Columbia University, also located in New York City. There Hughan earned her Masters of Arts degree in 1899, writing a thesis entitled "The Place of Henry George in Economics," and her Ph.D. in 1910. Her dissertation was adapted by Columbia University Press and published in book form as The Present Status of Socialism in America, for which the prominent British-born socialist John Spargo wrote the introduction. The book was later reissued by a commercial publisher under a slightly revised title.
Career
Hughan made her professional career as an educator, teaching in a series of public and private schools following her graduation from Columbia with her A.M. degree in 1899. She first taught in schools in Naugatuck, Connecticut and White Plains, New York before returning to New York City in the early 1900s to complete her doctorate. Following her graduate work, she taught in a number of high schools throughout New York City, primarily in Brooklyn. In the 1920s, Hughan was in charge of the English Department at Textile High School, a position which she retained until her retirement from the profession in 1945.
Socialist activism
Jessie Wallace Hughan joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1907.
Hughan's primary place in the socialist movement was as an officer of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS), an independent organization established by author Upton Sinclair in 1905 to provide a venue of topics related to socialism, pro and con, by university students across America. Hughan was elected to the Executive Committee of the ISS in 1907 and served continuously in that capacity until the end of the organization in 1921, continuing in a similar capacity in its successor organization, the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) through 1925. She also served as Vice President of the ISS from 1920 to 1921. Other so-called adult leaders of the ISS during this interval included Morris Hillquit, J.G. Phelps Stokes, Harry W. Laidler, as well as founding father Upton Sinclair.
In 1913, the ISS commissioned Hughan to write a book on the principles of socialism to serve as a text for study and discussion by the various chapters of the organization. The resulting publication, a tome called Facts of Socialism, was an influential text among the young intellectuals who participated in the Intercollegiate Socialist Society's activities, a group which included peace activist Devere Allen, journalist Heywood Broun, researcher and American Civil Liberties Union official Robert W. Dunn, historian Herbert Feis, and publicist Walter Lippmann.
Campaigns for electoral office
For over two decades, Jessie Wallace Hughan was a candidate for public office on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America. Her first foray into politics came in a 1915 bid for Alderman in 1915. It was perhaps the only race in which she ran in which she had a measurable chance of winning. Hughan ran for office not so much intending to win, but rather as a means of advancing socialist ideas to a broader public and to put pressure on elected officials to co-opt and implement ideas from the Socialist Party's political platform. Hughan therefore was unfazed by electoral defeat, instead running for a steadily escalating series of political offices.