Frances Kellor at the 4th Annual Leon Levy Biography Conference

Today my never-ending quest to make Frances Kellor known, led me to a wonderful time at the 4^th Annual Leon Levy Biography Conference.  I passed out over 100 fliers introducing Kellor.  Each offered a heavily discounted copy of my Kellor biography, Founding Mother, to people who would email me.  But I also got a lot of intellectual stimulation.  And that is always wonderful.

My encounter with the famous E. L. Doctorow provided great entertainment.  He argued for the importance of story.  He noted the cultural importance of Homer’s stories and how boring factual depictions would be.  Realities result from Jesus’ virgin birth.  And, in contrast to scientists’ big bang, he championed author’s little bangs – creation in the form of a sentence.

I told him that as a historian, I was a bit offended.  Did my research mean nothing?  Is there no virtue in trying as best as possible to uncover the past on its own terms?  Though we ultimately interpret, shouldn’t we historians strive to be as faithful to the past as possible?  And, for good measure, I asked him if storytellers were central to culture, why is writing better than TV?

First he asked me to rephrase the question while “he thought up an answer.”  I returned to the microphone and repeated the question.  He then answered, “If you’re asking how much research I do, the answer is ‘as little as possible.’”  Someone from the audience shouted, “That wasn’t the question!”  He retorted, “Well that’s the question I wanted to answer!”  Wow!  Fun!!

During the body of Doctorow’s speech he said that the fictional and real person had nothing to do with each other.  That was a relief.  I have often wondered if Frances Kellor would punch me for distorting her if she came back from the grave.  Doctorow essentially said, “Don’t worry about it.  All is fiction. The real person and the fictional character we create based on them have nothing to do with each other. Invent.”  I am not sure I am comfortable with that answer.

Still my portrait of Kellor is a portrait that locates her in the debates happening between today’s scholars.  Specifically, these scholars discuss progressive intellectuals’ search for progressive democracy in the era of mass Federal programs.  And while this question resonates in our time of apathy and disconnect from political elections, it also resonated with progressive activists.

A gossip-ladened session looked into biographies of the singers Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett and asked what people you write about would think of your depiction.  In writing about Tony Bennett, David Evanier even has to worry about what a living subject would think of his biography.  Though safely dead and without relatives or mafia ties, I often ask, "What would Kellor think of my depiction of her as a transgender lesbian?"

Kellor might have a beef with me for discussing her lesbianism publically.  But, in today’s world she’d likely get married to Mary Dreier.  And, though the term had not been invented, she might chafe at the emphasis I put on her being “transgender.”  But if you asked her about the import of women being masculine and acting like men, she’d go on for hours. She clearly thought women should be more masculine and dressed the part. 

I think Kellor would not totally disavow my depiction of her as trasngender.  And, that is important to me.

I asked Sylvia Nasar, who wrote the biography of John Nash, upon whom the Academy Award winning film ‘A Beautiful Mind’ was based, about whether personal life and public life intersected.  If not, why was Nash’s bisexuality an issue? 

Nasar’s argument about Nash’s difficulty with personal relations feeding into his facility with abstractions sort of worked for me.   And, I have written about the contrast between Kellor’s public emphasis on gender and her not discussing sexuality. But her insistence on sticking to policy publicly seems like a very masculine thing to do.  Her stance asks the reader to value public issues over private issues.  Subtlety, her public issue orientation can be read as a manifestation of a desire to live in the closet and still honestly say a lot about her personal values. 

This gets us to the fractal labyrinth of Margo Jefferson’s biography of Michael Jackson and back to E. L. Doctorow. Michael Jackson’s public image distorted his “real self” to the extent that no “real self” existed.  Is Kellor her public image?  In some respects.  She would want it that way.  Did she have bizarre subconscious dreams as Michael did?  Did she reflect our public as he did?  I think inclusion as a lesbian transgender woman fed her passion for including immigrants. And she framed issues in ways that spoke to public opinion.

Like Michael Jackson, Kellor’s private and the public image, the real person and the performer, became a part of a simultaneously created life based in imagination. 

All-in-all, I ended up feeling great about my Frances Kellor project. 

Brad Gooch spoke of not always liking his subject Flannery O’Connor.  As I love Kellor, that problem only challenged me in terms of my tendency to ignore critics. Debby Applegate has written about a Madam who ran a prostitution ring.  Kellor brought the question of “white slavery” while the Madam lived.  Making connections with other scholar’s work is important.  And, James Kaplan wrote that he had to find an “edge” to justify his writing the umpteenth biography of Frank Sinatra. Kellor’s amazing contributions to creating the modern world have gone unnoticed and obviously deserve recognition. 

All-in-all, it was a wonderful conference.  I got a book to a person who knew an agent.  And, again, more than 100 people now have heard of Frances Alice Kellor who previously had not.  But,  I mostly enjoyed this brush with academics reminding me of the eternal unanswerable questions upon which any conscious biographer must dwell.  

www.franceskellor.com

My Uncle Lou and Frances Kellor

This week my Uncle Lou died.  Louis Press was the youngest of eight siblings.  My grandfather was the oldest.  Uncle Lou was always an enjoyable man.  He played piano.  He met his wife while stationed in India during World War Two and made his money in the wig business.  And, Frances Kellor influenced his life.

In 1915 or thereabouts, my family moved from New York City to Bay Minette, Alabama.  They went with three children, including my grandfather, and left with seven, ten years later.  When the oldest child, Rachel, turned eighteen, my great grandparents realized there were few Jewish men for her to marry in Alabama.  So they sold the potato farm and tailor shop and moved to California.    My Uncle Lou was born in Pasadena.

From the beginning of her Americanization work until the end, Kellor worked with Jacob Schiff.  This wealthy Jewish banker founded the Industrial Removal Office (IRO).  The purpose of this office was to remove and resettle New York City’s Jews.  Schiff hoped to relieve decongestion and assimilate Jews with this effort.  70,000 Jewish families took his offer of financing emigration.  My family’s records are in the IRO archives. 

Kellor stole and modified Schiff’s program.  Her program was not specific to any one ethnicity.  Furthermore, her distribution program was the hub of an national employment agency program.  It told workers where there was work and made sure those advertising work had it.  While it didn’t go national, her arguments for seeing unemployment as the Federal government’s responsibility did take hold.

As there was no industrial employment there, and assimilation was not a goal she cared about, Kellor would have never sent immigrants to rural Alabama. But Jacob Schiff was a main backer of pretty much every effort she ever undertook in the name of Americanization.  And, I am sure that she returned the support. 

Whereas my grandfather always seemed influenced by the South, Uncle Lou had a more Californian demeanor.  I call Kellor our Founding Mother because she helped launch so many aspects of our modern world. The existence of Federal unemployment programs provides one example.  But, her influence went deeper as well.   My family, as well as many others, was intimately touched by Kellor’s work.   

In summary, bye Uncle Lou, I will always cherish having known you!

Kellor at Trans*Studies Conference 2012

I learned an amazing amount from my attendance at the Association for Gender Research, Education, Academia & Action Trans*Studies conference.  I, of course, went to present on Frances Kellor (1873 - 1952).  California just passed bill SB48 which requires the inclusion of LGBT persons and ideas in public school curriculum.  My talk, which can be read by clicking here, argued that Kellor should be the content of the LGBT inclusion.

The trans*gender conference taught me a lot.  Sel J. Hwahng, Ph.D. taught us about the increased health risks faced by trans persons.  Early death is especially prevalent among trans people of color.  At one point I got uneasy.  I thought he said that having been abused in childhood made one more likely to become transgender.  No.  He reassured me that it is the other way around.  Trans youth are much more likely to be physically and sexually assaulted by their family members and peers.

The only trans judge in California Victoria Kolakowski discussed the struggles faced by trans people in the work place.   So in addition to early abuse, trans people often have difficulty finding employment.  This can lead to homelessness and sex work.  And once in the penal system, trans people face even harsher physical and sexual abuse. We spoke of going beyond arguing for inclusion and ending discrimination against trans persons to celebrating trans people.  But, overall, the conference taught me about trans persons' vulnerability.

The conference added urgency to my desire to get Kellor into the California curriculum.  When Judge Kolakowski first attempted to take the bar, she was stopped due to being of "unsound mind."  Many in society think trans people crazy and thus not valuable.  We need role models which will show that trans people are as mentally stable and creative as any other group.  In short they are fully human. Getting this message out is a matter of life and death.

Place Frances Alice Kellor in the California Curriculum to Fulfill SB48

In 2011 California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB48 into law, thereby requiring that the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) persons get taught in his state’s public schools.  While districts have content and grade-level discretion, they must do so in beginning in 2012. And by 2019 textbooks should overtly include LGBT characters. To fulfill the mandate of SB48, Frances Alice Kellor (1873 – 1952) should enter California’s curriculum and textbooks. 

Most obviously, conservative moral concerns plague the introduction of LGBT role models and curriculum into the schools. Judy Chiasson is the Program Coordinator for Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity for California’s largest school district - the Los Angeles Unified School District.  She summarized the public relations problem, “People sexualize homosexuality and romanticize heterosexuality.”[i] In other words, to make LGBT figures less threatening, we must see them as people rather than simply a sexual orientation and gender challenges.

 Kellor’s Victorian attitudes towards relationships make her a perfect LGBT role model. Her 47-year relationship with Mary Elizabeth Dreier serves as a model of devotion and monogamy in an LGBT relationship. Their private letters hint strongly at sexuality. They shared a home and grew old together.  The two went out frequently, yet maintained a strong sense of public decorum. Their relationship demonstrates that LGBT persons can have conservative romantic relationships.

Kellor also helps challenge the sexualizing of homosexuality due to the broad range of issues for which she worked.  Using people victims of gay-bashing or LGBT rights advocates in the curriculum will not counter critics of SB48.  Including such figures will strike them as bald propaganda for “the LGBT lifestyle” rather than substantive content. Since Kellor engaged in a wide array of issues at the highest level, we can include her accomplishments and include her LGBT status incidentally. 

Kellor got suffrage put on the Progressive and Republican national party platforms. She ran much of Theodore Roosevelt 1912 and Charles Evans Hughes’ 1916 Presidential campaigns. She ran State and Federal Bureaus and more. She was seminal in changing the way we currently view criminality in our nation. She merits inclusion in the curriculum regardless of her LGBT status. In fact, all immigration historians consider Kellor the main leader of the Americanization movement. And California’s Department of Education curriculum requires that teachers “trace the effect Americanization movement.”[ii] As such educators are already nearly mandated to discuss her.

Frances Kellor's Quest for Participatory Democracy

Frances Alice Kellor (1873 – 1952) tried to cultivate unity via getting people to work collectively for social justice.  She did so as the leader of the Americanization Movement that greeted immigrants from 1906 - 1921.  Historians portray the Americanization Movement as coercive.  But, having earned a law degree at Cornell and done graduate work in sociology at the University of Chicago, Kellor was a formidable social philosopher.  Her Americanization movement worked to cultivate social unity via participation in alternative forms of governance she designed.   

We first see Kellor create unity via collective social action in the system of certifying employment agencies she created to address both the exploitation of domestic workers and to help employers’ difficulties find good help. The problems would totally resolve when employees and prospective employers only used approved employment agencies. And female sociologists investigated and certified the agencies.  Thus a female network tackled “the servant problem” by involving all parties in a solution that addressed all parties’ concerns. 

Later, Kellor’s Progressive Service constituted one-half of the Progressive Party and an alternative national form of government.  Local groups sent representatives to the State conventions who, in turn, populated the national conferences.  The Service’s Legislative Branch turned sociologists’ findings, researched by locals, into Bills. The Education Branch brought all American towns attention to harms and their legal solutions.  Thus legislators would only exist to implement sociologists’ popular remedies. Thus, while the political wing of the Progressive Party cultivated votes for candidates, the Service unified the nation via focusing on issues. 

When the Service failed, Kellor advocated for civilian training camps. Popular with progressives, these would bring unity to our population as they cultivated civic virtue. Rather than xenophobic, our strident social philosopher noted we must use, “civilian training camp and universal service as a melting pot for natives before we can make America a successful melting pot for aliens.”  But when America’s voting population got active, they simply clamored for shutting down foreign language newspapers and restricting immigration. While Kellor kept foreign language newspapers alive, few agreed with her proposals for treaties to protect “international human beings.”

Perhaps disillusioned with the masses, Kellor’s American Arbitration Association (AAA) ended conflict via cultivating cooperation amongst the elite.  She ran the AAA from 1926 until her death in 1952. The year prior to her death, 11 governments recognized her arbitration guidelines and the AAA arbitrated conflicts between 47 countries. Her pride in getting businessmen to volunteer and pronouncements about arbitration constituting “self-regulative procedures,” “befitting . . . democracies” mirrors her other formulas for cultivating unity via cooperation. Currently solving over 200,000 disputes annually, the AAA demonstrates the consistency with which this social philosopher sought to foster unity via alternative governance systems.

As a social philosopher, Kellor also sought to bring unity via her Americanization Day endeavors. On the 4^th of July these vastly popular parades got long-term Americans to publically cheer immigrants.  But, Kellor more consistently created alternative forms of popular participatory governance to address our social divisions and cultivate civic virtues. 

Foucault, Butler, and Kellor

You will excuse my shaky grasp of Judith Butler’s theories.  She believes that gender is “performed.”  That is, rather than characteristics being in essential categories authentically inhering in people (a mouth full), people make up forms of sexuality and gender and perform them.  Frances Kellor provides evidence for Butler’s position. 

Michel Foucault discussed the use of sexuality by regimes of power.  And, my Foucault is vulnerable to refinement.  However, heterosexuality being crucial to the socio-economic structure and reproduction provides evidence that sex and power impact each other. Furthermore, the very title of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, implies that it changes over time.  Like Butler, Foucault eschews the idea of essential gender types over time.

We do not know about the intimate details of Kellor’s sexual relationship.  She hunted little curly hairs from her lover Mary Dreier.   However, Kellor had a somewhat Victorian sense of decorum.  So raunchy sexual details will not be forthcoming. However, illustrating both Butler and Foucault’s ideas, Kellor performed gender consciously to impact the power structure.

People who were children along with Kellor in her small town of Coldwater, Michigan, claimed she walked and talked like a boy.  She had biological transgender tendencies.  But in changing her name from the feminine “Alice” to the masculine “Frances” and her use of athletics to impact gender characteristics shows she also understood gender to be performative.

In her book Athletic Games in the Education of Women, Kellor said that sports would help women shake their femininity.  By this she meant they would exchange their passive subjective domestic concerns for an active role in righting public problems.  Sports would teach women to fight in public and thus perform gender differently as Butler would expect.  And, herein, ala Foucault, Kellor’s call to have women mend public ills, conveyed an understanding that gender can impact the power structure. 

Frances Kellor Conversations

Saturday, February 18th, at 7 pm, at Manhattan's Bluestockings Book Store I will be having a book launch for Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Quest for Progressive Democracy.  Mostly in my presentation, I hope to have questions as Kellor's ability to raise them is what makes her so fascinating.

Right now I am at The Affect Factory Conference which looks at the intersection of gender, affect, and labor.  Right now is a performance and I am a word guy.  But Kellor was transgender and wrote on labor issues, so I am at the conference seeking questions. 

In a presentation on exuberance in Latin American labor movements, I got to wonder about Kellor.

What place did her "play spirit" in her basketball work play in her depiction of the "creative" input of workers?  

At the beginning of March, I will be speaking at a trans*studies conference in California.  I wrote of Kellor within the discussions around Intellectual History.  I need transgender scholars to answer another question I had today. 

In an informal conversation here someone asked me if Kellor was misogynistic and, if transgendered, properly a lesbian (being then perhaps a man who loved women).  

Great!  Sex change operations did not happen popularly in America until the 1940s.  And I do not think she would not have had the language to call herself a man.  But since childhood she identified with masculine traits. I hope to learn more about where she fits in modern trans discourse in California.  

Kellor's masculinity made her disrespectful of stereotypical women's passivity and gossipy concern with "women's virtue."  She cared about social justice writ large and wanted all to engage in activism.  But her piece  [sex] Cloisters in American Politics makes clear that she admired women's sensibilities and she lived only in women's communities.  Questions of consistency and meaning call for study and interpretation.

Frances Kellor fascinates me because of the number of ways in which we can ask questions about her.

Please join at one of these events and generate some questions!