Hull, Irene B.

Irene Hull is a child care, labor, and peace activist based in Seattle, Washington. She was born in Republic, Kansas in 1913. Hull installed insulation on deck heads and bulk heads in shipyards during World War II and also taught in child care centers in Vancouver, Washington and Seattle. At the end of the war, nurseries funded by the Lanham Act were slated to lose their federal funding and close. In response, Hull joined the Citizens' Child Care Committee to keep the nurseries open for working mothers. The Seattle-based committee, with Hull as secretary and Marijo Lawrence as chair, worked to maintain and expand the state's child care program on a permanent basis. They were successful in persuading the Seattle School Board to keep the Seattle nurseries open for three years after the war.

A peace activist since 1960, Hull was a member of Seattle Women Act for Peace and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1969 Hull joined the Grassroots Assembly of Women, an organization established in 1968 by Jeanette Rankin. Its concerns were poverty, racism, and war, particularly their effect on women. Hull also became involved with the Assembly's Child Care Committee, which advocated for a child care system modeled on the Lanham Act nurseries of World War II. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Hull made several trips to Cuba and Russia and, from 1942, was a member of the Communist Party in the United States.

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