Fri. October 10, 2025
CHICAGO, ILL. -
Today in Oslo, the Nobel Committee announced that this year’s Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader who has fought for democracy under Nicolás Maduro’s regime. The Committee praised her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
As the news spread, a question appeared online: Who are the LGBTQ people who have won the Nobel Peace Prize?
The answer leads straight to Chicago. The social worker and reformer Jane Addams is recognized by historians as the only openly LGBTQ person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She was honored in 1931 for her leadership in the international peace movement and her lifelong commitment to social reform.
Jane Addams was born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, and moved to Chicago in 1889, where she co-founded Hull House on the Near West Side.
Hull House became a national model for community centers that provided childcare, education, job training, health care, and legal aid to working-class and immigrant families. Addams led campaigns against child labor, slum housing, and unsafe working conditions.
She also served as a sanitation inspector in Chicago’s 19th Ward and helped shape the profession we now call social work.
During World War I, Addams turned her focus toward peace. She chaired the International Congress of Women at The Hague in 1915 and later helped start the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She believed that poverty, inequality, and injustice were the true causes of war. Her writings and speeches urged people to think of peace as something built through dignity, education, and compassion, not just diplomacy.
When she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the Nobel Committee praised her “effort to revive the ideal of peace and to rekindle the spirit of peace in their own nation and in the whole of mankind."
Addams’s professional achievements are well known, but her personal life also tells an important story.
For more than 30 years, she shared her home and life with Mary Rozet Smith, a wealthy Chicago philanthropist who was her closest companion and emotional partner. The two wrote letters filled with affection and spoke of each other with deep love. Smith helped fund Hull House and supported Addams through her long career.
Historians often describe their partnership as a “Boston marriage,” an old term for long-term relationships between women. While Addams never used modern terms for herself, her relationship with Smith is understood today as romantic and loving. Their partnership lasted until Smith’s death in 1934, three years after Addams received the Nobel Prize.
In 2008, the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame honored Addams posthumously for her role in both social reform and LGBTQ history. Her story stands at the intersection of peace work and queer identity, grounded firmly in the city she called home.
Addams’s influence spread far beyond Chicago. Former President Herbert Hoover once said she was “the greatest woman of our age.”
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that “Miss Addams symbolizes the spirit of America at its best.”
Philosopher John Dewey called her “America’s most dangerous woman,” not because of violence, but because her ideas about peace, justice, and equality challenged the very order of the world.
These tributes show how her vision touched not only the United States but also the global struggle for human rights.
This year’s Peace Prize announcement also came with a side story that added tension to the moment.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump had spent months publicly campaigning for the award. He repeatedly claimed he had brokered peace deals and deserved the Nobel Prize. He even encouraged foreign leaders to nominate him and mentioned it often at rallies and on social media.
But Nobel experts dismissed his campaign, reminding the public that the prize is not awarded through political lobbying or public pressure. The Norwegian committee considers nominations privately and selects winners based on strict criteria written in Alfred Nobel’s will.
In the end, Trump’s efforts were unsuccessful. The award went instead to Machado, who risked her life to fight for democracy in Venezuela.
In her acceptance speech, she acknowledged Trump’s past support for her cause but dedicated the prize “to all Venezuelans who still believe freedom is worth the risk.”
The moment underscored a truth that Jane Addams herself might have appreciated: peace is earned through courage and service, not through self-promotion or political ambition.
For many in Chicago’s LGBTQ community, Addams’s life is more than a story from the past. It is a reminder that social justice and compassion go hand in hand. She taught that peace begins in our neighborhoods, in how we treat one another, and in how we stand with the most vulnerable. That idea still matters in a world divided by violence and fear.
To remember Jane Addams as both a peacebuilder and a queer woman is to see her whole. She was not just a reformer with a kind heart. She was a woman who loved deeply, thought clearly, and changed the world from Chicago’s streets and settlement houses.
When people ask who among the LGBTQ community has received the Nobel Peace Prize, Chicago holds the answer. Jane Addams, co-founder of Hull House, remains the only openly LGBTQ person to receive that honor, and her story continues to shape how the world understands peace and justice.
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