Elizabeth Kite was the author or uncredited co-author of the two most sensational works on the “feeble-minded menace” that pervaded American life between 1910 and the late 1920s. Both works—The Kallikak Family (1912) and “The Pineys” (1913)—were set in New Jersey. My presentation will explore the New Jersey locations of Kite’s writings, which were sponsored by the Vineland Training School in Cumberland County.
Elizabeth Kite (1864-1954) came from a Quaker family rooted in Philadelphia since the 1680s, but she also had deep emotional ties to Burlington County, New Jersey, where two nieces and a nephew grew up in the 1880s and 1890s. Kite became their legal guardian in 1898 after their parents died. One of these nieces, Albanae “Bonnie” Kite, was committed to Norristown State Hospital in Pennsylvania in 1906 on dubious grounds of “feeble-mindedness.” Bonnie Kite remained there until her death in 1958. After Elizabeth Kite was hired at Vineland in 1909, her work was clearly influenced by Bonnie’s experience, a fact that has gone untreated in histories of the eugenics movement. My talk will link Elizabeth Kite’s work in New Jersey to Vineland Training School’s expansive ambition, while treating the emotional and spiritual issues that drove her.
About the Presenter: James T. Fisher (Rutgers History Ph.D. 1987) is Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Theology at Fordham University. He is the author of four books including On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Cornell University Press, 2009).
This program is co-sponsored by the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance.