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.
Irene Hull was also active in the labor movement. In 1955, Hull went to work at Farwest Printing and Lithograph as a bindery apprentice and joined the International Brotherhood of Bookbinders Local 87. She worked for two and a half years before losing her job for failing a security clearance. In 1971-1975 Hull served as co-secretary of the Seattle Rank and File Labor Committee, which was formed in 1969 and was affiliated with the National Coordinating Committee for Trade Union Action and Democracy (NCCTUAD). NCCTUAD was an organization of union activists who advocated for union solidarity through rank and file action and democracy within their unions, as well as legislative action in their communities. Irene Hull attended the founding convention for the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) in 1974. CLUW was founded to organize affirmative action for women and people of color, and encourage women's involvement in union activities. Hull served for several years as chair of the Puget Sound Chapter of CLUW's publicity committee and as its corresponding secretary in the 1990s . Hull also served as a delegate to the King County Labor Council beginning in 1980, and as a member of the Advisory Council of the Evergreen State College Labor Center in the early 1990s. Seattle Mayor Norm Rice proclaimed September 7, 1996 Irene Hull day in honor of her accomplishments.
From the guide to the Irene B. Hull Papers, 1933-2006, (University of Washington Libraries Special Collections)
