Americanization
Of all Grace Hebard's accomplishments, she reportedly valued her Americanization work as “perhaps most precious.” Scholar Frank Van Nuys notes that a Wyoming News testimonial expressed in 1935 that Dr. Hebard's "certificates of preparation for naturalization were accepted by the United States District Court in lieu of examinations for citizenship."
Van Nuys goes on to note: "That sort of clout suggests that Grace Hebard's Americanization enterprise beginning in 1916 deserves some scrutiny. While the evidence of her work is fragmentary, it nonetheless places Hebard within an essentially progressive tradition of qualified optimism about immigrants’ ability to assimilate to Anglo-American cultural norms.
Hebard's indoctrination of new Americans came on the heels of the greatest wave of migrants to every enter the country. Millions of new immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe entered the United States, mostly through Ellis Island, from 1880 to 1915. New Americans, with their new languages, foods, and customs were not always welcome. One of the early targets where the Chinese who were locked out from immigrating to the U. S. by the Chinese Seclusion Act. This federal act passed in 1882 coincided with Hebard's arrival in Cheyenne.
Hebard's progressive work with immigrants in Laramie would have been in stark contrast to the national tension between residents and immigrants. Such tension spurred the National Origins Act of 1924, which favored Northern European immigrants, but restricted East European Jews.
Hebard's view of immigration from the High Plains of Wyoming would have been shaped by news that reached her while living in Cheyenne. On September 2, 1885, rioters killed at least 28 Chinese miners and wounded 15 in a violent labor dispute, since dubbed the "Rock Springs Massacre." In Rock Springs (about 155 miles west of Cheyenne) the local newspaper endorsed the outcome of the riot, while other Wyoming newspapers, limited support to sympathy for the causes of the white miners.
Hebard's activism placed her against the prevailing social and political winds that swept through Wyoming and the nation. The way Hebard lived her feminist life, including her deep relationship with fellow Professor Agnes M. Weregeland, spoke volumes about her worldview. Wergeland, like Hebard a feminist, was a trail breaker in her own right. The Norwegian immigrant was the first woman from her country to earn a Ph.D. Wergeland, who became a U.S. citizen in 1902, found in Hebard an ideal tutor for Americanization. Hebard noted: "Dr. Wergeland had never had a realistic conception of what absolute suffrage for women meant until she came to Wyoming, where women are not restricted in their right to vote in any way."
Read more about this topic: Grace Raymond Hebard