Video introducing my Frances Kellor Video channel

Happy Birthday Frances Kellor

October 23rd, 1873, Alice Frances Kellor entered the world she would do so much to reshape.  Birthing a new American social order in the Progressive Era via the Americanization movement (1906 - 1921) and later connecting the world with her international arbitration work, this Founding Mother helped create modern America and a good deal of the current global order.

Every piece of Kellor's work defended social justice.  She founded the National Urban League. She worked in Southern African - American prisons when no one else considered it.  She pioneered women's basketball with the hope of reforming women.  She launched Service Learning in New York State.  She publicly led Presidential campaigns to show women capable.  She ran immigrant media in America.  She got women's voting on national political party platforms for the first times. She launched an alternative form of government in America. She developed multiculturalism in practice and modern culturally- neutral citizenship.

Repeating the pronoun "she" at the beginning of the above sentences highlights Kellor's function as a transgender lesbian.  Upon going to college, she changed her above name to Frances Kellor.  In many photos she is dressed as a man.  And, took the masculine role in her 47 year relationship with Mary Dreier.

As a gift to Kellor, on this occasion of her 128th birthday, I wish to offer you a birthday gift.  If you'd read a copy of her biography and tell someone about this LGBT role model, I'll give you a free copy of Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Creation of Modern America; just email me your name and address.

In honor of her, visit www.franceskellor.com.  Happy Birthday!!

John K. Press, Ph.D.

Cheryl Hicks' Talk With You Like a Woman

Cheryl Hicks’ book, Talk With You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890 – 1935 contrasts Victoria Earle Matthews (1861 – 1907) and Frances Alice Kellor (1873 – 1952) in its third chapter.  This work illuminates many of the joys and challenges biographers encounter.  We will look at these.  But Hicks' work also illustrates the modern historical tendency to judge historical characters by how well they live up to modern authors’ reform agendas.  As such, this analysis of Hicks’ third chapter will provide a cautionary tale.

Matthews worked alongside Kellor to protect African American women in New York City at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.  Matthews was an African American woman born into slavery.  Kellor was white. Hicks’ uses the pair to typify the races’ different approaches to helping African American women in the Progressive Era.  Hicks argues that Matthews’ empowered African American women more; whereas Kellor saw them as racially prone to mischief and immorality. 

Imagine if someone slandered a person you love dearly. Biographers, hopefully, love their subjects as I do mine.  In researching my biography of Kellor, Founding Mother, I found no evidence of what I would call racism.  But if your loved-one uttered something off-color, you might ignore it.  Emotional investments in story lines run alongside historians’ dry considerations of facts.  Falling in love with your subject, and so writing to vindicate them, is a trap for biographers.  I will send the following with as much integrity as my heart can muster. 

Hicks tells us that Kellor shooting herself in the hand led to her adoption by the Eddy sisters.  This adoption, in turn, led to Kellor’s becoming the woman we know today.  The evidence for this shooting story comes from one article.  And all the other evidence counters it.  Hicks, as others, got the story from Ellen Fitzpatrick’s book Endless Crusade, which popularized it.  When one deals in primary sources, they see that what secondary sources report ‘ain’t necessarily so.’  As Hicks’ main goal was not to explore Kellor’s early life, the oversight is forgiven.  But, glosses’ reliance on secondary sources has dangers. One of the joys of biography is seeing how stories get formed and passed along. 

In my biography of Kellor, Founding Mother, I can be accused of the same failure to get details right that I noted Hicks engaged in with the shooting story.  I provided a systematized overview of all of Kellor’s life in support of a general thesis about her having been an intellectual, cultivating progressive democracy, who created much of the modern world.  Hicks narrowed in on a particular portion of Kellor’s life and rhetoric.  This led her to archives I did not find.  And, more significantly, she interrogated her sources with different questions than I did.  Focused interrogations can provide insights that sprawling overviews miss. 

In some regards, different questions and archives make historical investigations bottomless.  But all historical interpretations must stay within the limits of some reigning guidelines.  In this respect, I find Hicks has committed some misdemeanors. 

Non-fiction must employ logical consistency.  We are an evidence-based discipline.  Hicks has assertions that are, in my humble opinion, seemingly contradicted by evidence she provides in the very same chapter of Talk With You Like a Woman.  On page 113 Hicks quotes Kellor to the effect that penal reform will not happen while the State gets so much revenue from it.  But on page 116, she claims that Kellor never considered the influence that corrupt policing had on incarceration.  Unless I failed to see a subtlety, Hicks’ contradicts her own claim herein. And Hicks's assertions are also contradicted by evidence outside of the chapter under consideration.

Hicks claims that that Kellor “characterized black people as without individual agency to improve themselves and fight for their rights.”[i] But in Kellor’s major work on African-Americans, Experimental Sociology, she suggests that African-American ministers could improve the parishioner, “not by characterizing him as a transgressor, but by enabling him to reason out his own position” on social problems.[ii] Elsewhere Kellor advocated “educational opportunity for training of Negro social workers, and social science education for Negro leaders in other walks of life to prepare them for leadership in urban centers.”[iii] Broad sweeping statements require more than internal logic, they require familiarity with the preponderance of evidence. 

Though more subtle, employing absolutes in analysis undermines historical analysis as much as failures to note evidence. Hicks specifically castigates Kellor for not recognizing the agency of incarcerated women.  Well, the horrid truth of the matter is that late twentieth century African American women incarcerated in southern penitentiaries had very little agency.  Kellor herself had to drop out of high school to help support her family via domestic labor and Matthews was born into slavery. Agency has degrees.  A debate over how much agency she saw would have provided more illumination than castigating Kellor for not seeing everyone as having agency.

Hicks also falls into the all-too-common modern trap of seeing normative cultural criticism as simply racist and irrational. This sort of analysis sits particularly strangely next to Hicks' praising Kellor’s taking us from a biological view of crime to one wherein environment plays a role in fomenting criminality.  If we judge criminality, we need to see that poor morals do exist.  We, in turn, would not be totally out of line in judging the environs that foster criminality. To be sure, economics contribute to these poor environs.  But if we believe in agency, we have to accept that cultural values also impact individuals’ moral choices.  It disempowers us to dismiss discussions of values simply as signs of irrationality. 

 

Hicks' most provocative thesis is the one wherein she accuses Kellor of working on African American women’s morals more than she fights discrimination and exploitation in order to demonstrate that Kellor had racist leanings.  Kellor’s work to regulate employment agencies shows that she fought exploitation.  And, her cutting edge exposes of “White Slavery” show that Kellor was not only concerned with African American morals. If true, the idea that white reformers attacked morals more than African American reformers would demonstrate bias and merit interest.  But, Hicks' third chapter fails to provide statistical or convincing qualitative evidence of this assertion.

Talk With You Like a Woman provides a service, as we should interrogate historical texts for hidden messages.  And, indeed, white reformers might have emphasized morals more than African American ones in order to elide discussions of structural inequality.  But Hicks sometimes loses credibility in a desire to prove her assertions. And, in probing the historical impact of values and exploitation one could do worse than to respect the views of your historical subjects.  Hicks instead dismisses all discussions of morals out-of-hand.  History has a lot to teach us.  But, to get such benefits we must listen to historical figures prior to judging them.  

---

[i] Hicks, Cheryl D., Talk With You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890 – 1935, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 114.

[ii] Kellor, Frances, Experimental Sociology: Descriptive and Analytic (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1901), 211

[iii] Weiss, Nancy, The National Urban League, 1910 – 1940, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 42, 43

[iv] Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010)

Kellor Starts a Fascinating LGBT Discussion

Recently I created some entries on Frances Kellor a fantastic timeline project.  My entry on Kellor's co-founding the National Urban League in 1910 got included in the women's timeline.  The entry on Kellor's first book being published in 1901, got included in the African - American timeline.  It likely got put there as the book concerns the plight of African - American women in southern penitentiaries.
The time line organizers are working on an LGBT timeline.

The editor of the timeline had removed Kellor's sexuality from the initial timeline entries I wrote.  The editor explained that if you click on the timeline, it expands, and then Kellor's LGBT status was mentioned. It was not put on the time line itself, he explained, because her LGBT status did not seem relevant to the accomplishments.  We do not, after all, put all peoples' sexuality on the timeline.

In response, I noted that both Kellor's first book and the group she merged to form the National Urban League, aimed to help women exclusively.  Kellor only lived with women. As a transgender person from childhood, she wrote a lot about gender.   Her identity was intimately tied to the projects she chose to pursue.

Then, via email, the woman that introduced an even more radical suggestion:

Why not just have one timeline for all groups?

The suggestion was put forward because straight students will not look at the LGBT timeline.  This leaves prejudice unchallenged.  Furthermore, LGBT students would feel better about themselves if their experience were normalized.

I agree with the idea of inclusion.  But, taken to the extreme, this thought would mean the disappearance of African - American Studies and Women's departments.  And, I would argue that Kellor's LGBT status informed her aiming to create an inclusive form of Americanization.  But, we do not want to see LGBT persons as necessarily separate and different.

What do you think?  Can you come up with arguments for either side?

Capsule, Kellor, and You!

My two most recent books concern the formation of identity in modernity.  “Capsule: A Search for Identity in Modern Japan” follows Adam and John as they systematically discuss sources of identity on psychedelics.   “Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Creation of Modern America,” looks at ways in which Kellor (1873 – 1952) presaged, promoted, and formed our modern sense of American identity.

The quintessential characteristic of modernity is choice.  You can live as a gay Buddhist all the while working as a corporate executive, voting Republican, and have surrogates create multiple children for you.  You could also stay single, vote Democrat, and spend the majority of your time improving your drinking skills.  Nothing fetters your self-invention in this modern world. 

In its valuing of choice, modernism contradicts traditionalism.  In traditional societies men and women know their roles. They have children.  The men work and the women raise the children. In this sense, child-free transgender persons represent the final frontier of modernity, of the Western modern experience.  They have become the essential Americans.  No tradition binds them.

Kellor lived with a woman, had no children, and dressed as a man.  And, she ran the Americanization movement that greeted immigrants from 1906 – 1921.  100 million Americans trace their heritage to Ellis Island.  During Ellis Island’s hey day she ran New York’s Bureau of Industries and Immigrants; the official governmental agency in charge of immigrant affairs.   This is only one way that this LGBT role model created America’s modern self-image.

The definition of American identity Kellor promulgated eschewed traditional American sources of identity.  Rather than our old Protestant definition, she taught that Americans were those who participated in political activism.  Her multicultural parades showed that being American required no particular sets of beliefs.  To her, as to us, our national identity solely stems from our label as a democracy.

This lack of judgment made a world safe for modern gender benders with alternative life styles like Kellor.  So from where do we get our moorings today? 

In Capsule Adam and I discuss our lack of belonging.  He lives in Japan and so is clearly out of place.  And, I am bewildered by the dizzying array of choices my life presents.  In a backdrop of adventure in Japan, we ponder if marriage, LGBT lifestyles, travel, nationalism, our personal stories, our work, or many other sources of identity could provide us with a fulfilling sense of community, belonging, meaning in live, or identity. 

To understand Capsule’s conclusions, you must read the book.  But know that the search, the fact that we must self-identify fuels every fun moment.  And, Kellor necessarily launched the search that the Capsule chronicles.  Once we have left our traditional moorings, we get faced with choice.  Founding Mother helps us understand where our modernity comes from.  Capsule helps chronicle the adventure that being let loose from roles entails. Both help us to understand who are and might become in this modern world.  

Frances Kellor Interrupted

The new edition of Founding Mother has been published.  The last blog post, simply relayed the new introduction.  As book introductions went, it rocked the house.  As a blog post, it ran a bit long. And, due to my occupied by publishing, it stayed up for months.  For all of those who were considering becoming regular readers, I apologize.  I am back.  Now if you want the new introduction, just buy the new version of Founding Mother.  The blog is back.

In the interim, I have also published another book, Capsule: A Search for Identity in Modern Japan.  This project also kept me from writing Kellor blog posts.  And, as this blog provides my main word-based source of expression, I will introduce those interested in Kellor to capsule at a later date, on this blog.  Suffice it to now say, that both Kellor and Capsule converge in the theme of my publishing company, Social Books; the attempt to understand what holds society together.

Today, I launched another phase of my Kellor promotion campaign.  I began bringing Kellor and my other books to the streets of New York.  I set up a table and chair and offered such information to the Columbia University community.  I sold zero books in my hour and a half selling.  But, I met some very interesting people.  I have always been attracted to the extravagant, eccentric folks in the world.  And, if nothing else, selling Founding Mother on the street seems to introduce one to eccentrics.

Transgender Pronoun Disclaimer Help

Hello Readers, Colleagues, and Friends,


I am especially asking the LGBT scholarly community to critique the "Note on Pronouns" that will appear on in the final edition of Frances Kellor's biography, Founding Mother.   


Your comments are greatly appreciated.


Thanks in advance,


Here is the text:

A Note on Pronouns

Throughout this text, though transgender, Frances Kellor will be referenced with the feminine pronouns, “she,” “her,” and, “herself.” Kellor was the male persona in her forty-seven year relationship with Mary Dreier, argued publically that women needed to take on more “masculine” characteristics, changed her name from the feminine “Alice” to the more masculine “Frances,” and dressed in men’s clothes.  Within the broad parameters of today’s language, Kellor was transgender. But, the past lives with different terms. In Kellor’s time, sex change operations did not yet exist.  As such, to expect her to even consider becoming anatomically male is anachronistic. In her ongoing focus on gender roles, Kellor called herself “masculine,” but she never called herself “male.” Therefore, throughout this text we shall use feminine pronouns in reference to Kellor.