Frances Kellor

Frances Alice Kellor (October 20, 1873 – January 4, 1952) was an American social reformer and investigator, who specialized in the study of immigrants to the United States and women.

During Kellors’ childhood, her father left the family, forcing her mother to move to Michigan to work as a laundress.

At the University of Chicago she wrote her first scholarly article about equality among women and men in physical education, and began her study of prisons which led to her first book, Experimental Sociology (1901).

She became managing director of the North American Civic League for Immigrants and a member of the Progressive National Committee.

Ultimately, she argued it would "unite foreign-born and native alike in enthusiastic loyalty to our national ideals of liberty and justice.

Kellor and her cohort of white reformers focused on improving recently emancipated African-American women's efficiency, rather than attempt to challenge the racially restrictive segregationist practices of the Northern society.

Roosevelt lost the election to Woodrow Wilson, but Kellor continued her fight for immigrant rights.

She began advocating for increased collaboration between private, state, and national efforts, aimed at assimilating, educating, and protecting the rapidly growing immigrant population.

She began pressuring the federal government to act and aide immigrants in regards to protection, education, and opportunity.

Ultimately, she argued it would "unite foreign-born and native alike in enthusiastic loyalty to our national ideals of liberty and justice.

"[8] Kellor felt that crime was due to poor education and unemployment, which ran contrary to the popular belief of the time that criminality was biological.

In her research, Kellor examined race and the many conditions that led Southern African Americans to engage in crime.