This article explores the career of Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge (1866–1948), a pioneering social work educator and a key figure in the professionalization of social work, to suggest how contemporary female social workers may reclaim their historic leadership role in the profession. In particular, it contends that women’s relationships were the key to female leadership in the formative decades of the social work profession. It thus suggests that contemporary women social workers may recapture a leadership role by reinvigorating a reform minded and social justice-oriented tradition and reviving a legacy of female mentorship and feminist collaboration.

In 1930, Sophonisba Breckinridge, a feminist social work professor at the University of Chicago, initiated a campaign to reform the branch of Chicago's Municipal Court system that dealt with prostitutes. A product of an international anti-prostitution movement, the Morals Court was considered a model reform at the time of its inception in 1913. Yet as scholars have observed, reformers' efforts to abolish prostitution resulted in repressive policies that sanctioned state control and police harassment of sex workers. Although most studies note feminist critiques of prostitution policies on civil libertarian grounds, few have explored this phenomenon, particularly after 1920. Breckinridge's crusade to secure civil rights for accused prostitutes in Prohibition-era Chicago offers a new perspective on the politics of prostitution, prompts a reexamination of American feminism after the achievement of suffrage, and sheds light on current debates about the international traffic in women.

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