U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm’s blazing trail as the first black woman elected to congress and first black women to run for president earned her the merits of a monument from the She Built NYC city government initiative of Public Surveys for the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers. She is among seven others chosen so far. This Commission is charged with honoring “…women who have shaped New York City while addressing the absence of female statues in our public spaces. “ Rightly so! Of 150 memorial statues in New York City, only 5 honor women.

The selections derive from an innovative public survey, “an open call”, as the survey is described, to which 327 nominations were offered resulting in a final list of nominated personages ranked according to the number of portal suggestions. Out of 2905 online submissions, Francesca Xavier Cabrini was selected as the subject of the first monument of the survey, a rather wide margin of consensus.

She received an astonishingly 219 votes followed by Jane Jacobs who received 93. Besides a statue of Chisholm, who received 91 votes, others are planned throughout the city’s five boroughs: Billie Holiday (16) Elizabeth Jennings Graham (17), Dr. Helen Rodriguez Trías (7), Katherine Walker (68), Marsha Johnson (7) Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who isn’t even on the list.

Much has been stressed by the De Blasio administration that public inclusiveness would guide the process of the survey, so much so that there just might be something disingenuous about this final selection process and as to why, in the end, it is so exclusively left to three unelected vs. appointed officials of the City of New York led by First Lady Chirlane McCray, former Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen and Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl, NYC Cultural Affairs. In spite of the “inclusive process” claim, the public must now yield to the preferences of these mayoral appointees who have in their power selection and disbursement authority, blatantly flouting their own well executed survey findings, but more importantly, absolutely refusing the wishes of certain groups to build a monument to Frances X. Cabrini. In December 2018, this committee requested a meeting with Commissioner Finkelpearl to present a formal detailed proposal to have Cabrini selected. This was to no avail. The Committee was stonewalled for nine months. After several more attempts, however, the Commissioner finally sent a letter on August 26th. With many “soothing” words, and as some would sense, conveyed with a rather patronizing tone. The Committee was informed by the Commissioner that Cabrini was not among names they were considering; that Cabrini’s name, the number one chosen name among 327 of a public survey sponsored by his own department “…may be drawn in pursuing future monuments…” “We appreciate the passion and enthusiasm for honoring Mother Cabrini’s remarkable life and work, and we’re proud that New York City is home to a shrine honoring her along with a street and parkland named in her honor. Her name continues to be a part of the active list that may be drawn in pursuing future monuments under She Built NYC.”

That was met with extreme disappointment but had the result of bolstering the Committee’s determination more than ever. And so, on August 27 the Committee launched a FOIL request to the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs and the NYC Economic Development Corporation demanding full disclosure of the She Built procedures. This includes memos, rules and such, plus protocol, committee minutes, and essentially any and all information that, in a final analysis, results in a full understanding how the decisions were made by the selection committee, now suspected of being covert.

The Committee also plans an extensive city, state and national campaign with the intent to expose this travesty as an egregious, hypocritical departure of the good faith principles set forth by the Mayoral Advisory Commission, which blatantly ignores majority sentiments and contradicts the mayor’s oft repeated sentiments about social issues, especially his solemn pronouncements about the plight of immigrants ‐a burning and time‐relevant national issue so much associated with Frances Xavier Cabrini, considered worldwide as the “Patroness of Immigrants”.

As the undeniable next choice, a Cabrini monument in Manhattan would signify not only due acquiescence of the survey consensus, but the sentiments that she is one among other notable women who built up New York City. To add, it would finally acknowledge the long overdue recognition of the enormous public welfare contributions Cabrini made addressing social conditions of her day, not to mention her ingenious business sense founding an extensive network of hospitals and schools. The portal respondents seemed to recognize this apart from her association as a Roman Catholic nun. This is not a religious issue. The Committee is firmly resolved to honor the sentiments of those portal respondents.

Frances X. Cabrini is rightly recognized as the “Patroness of Immigrants” all over the world. Sorely noted however is that she has never been recognized as a reformer to the degree and stature historians consider other celebrated heroines of the Progressive Era years (1890‐1920). In fact, historians writing about this period of American history invariably omit references of the parallel experience of Italian and other Southern European immigrants of that period. This is not an omission necessarily committed with a pernicious intent. When describing this period historians usually place emphasis on the range of social reforms carried out by social activists of the day, such as labor and child labor laws, birth control, tenement conditions, women suffrage, the Americanization of immigrants, etc. And while describing these reforms they associate them with the reformers that championed them; Emma Goldman/Suffrage, Margaret Sanger/Birth Control, Jane Addams/Settlement House Pioneer, and among those who were particularly active on the Lower East Side, i.e., Jacob Riis/Journalist‐Social Reform Activist and Lillian Wald/Founder Henry Street Settlement and the Visiting Nurse Service of NY.

To add, historians of the Lower East Side settlement house movement usually write their founding narratives embellished with the heroics of their founders, including claims as if each particular founding purpose of a settlement house was inclusive of the interests of all immigrants, including Southern European immigrants. But this interpretation of that movement is, to be sure, skewed. Lower East Side settlement houses were, in the main, founded upon commitments to serving Eastern European and Russian immigrants. Cabrini is the only real personage that addressed the horrible conditions Italian immigrants were facing in their enclaves. The product of her work was as no less a reformer and as no less a reformer than one can consider Lillian Wald, who for example, was establishing the Henry Street Settlement House and the Visiting Nurse Service of NY just blocks away in 1893. Cabrini had already established Columbus Hospital in 1892.

Another historical fact seriously omitted in the annals of the history of the Progressive Era and in general immigrant history narratives is the fact that local Catholic parishes and schools within these Lower East Side enclaves were the center of immigrant integration into American life, no less the objectives of the settlement house movement – but transitions by these immigrant made on their own terms and without loss of their national heritage. Parishes represented a variant of what is formally meant by settlement houses. Some parishes were founded, financed and supported by immigrants themselves. All of them were aided assiduously by scores of selfless women religious communities through parish schools. One congregation of sisters actually sponsored a settlement house, Madonna House on Cherry Street. Parish priests, along with the sisters were the abiding sole sources to serving the spiritual, educational and material needs of Southern European immigrants; the immigrant parishes and schools, for example, of St. Joachim, St. James, Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Transfiguration, St. Mary, St. Teresa, ‐never ever mentioned. Because they were churches or perhaps even Catholic churches might be the reason for this blatant omission. As also might be the reason that Frances X. Cabrini is never recognized among the social reformers of the day. Though widely known by many as “America’s First Social Worker”, she was a Roman Catholic, a religious, and as an Italian immigrant herself, one of the ‘Other Half”, as then Jacob Riis would have implicitly described Cabrini’s immigrants in the title of his famous chronicle “How the Other Half Lives”. Just by that title alone he reveals the condescending, paternalistic attitude of social reformers of the time…“these people[, who] are not fit to live in a nice house.”1 Yes! Jacob Riis. The connotation being that because the other half resisted any attempts to be proselytized and conform to the ideals of the reformist, Protestant‐Christian based “Americanization” process; ideals residing very much in the agendas of the early settlement house movement, they were the different “Other”.

History can be appropriated to how historians want it to be interpreted. But in the end interpretations can be deemed prejudicial and, therefore, must be challenged so that it yields to truth. It is now necessary to correct the interpretation of this period of American history so that it’s telling will be inclusive of and finally recognizes the foresight and contributions of Frances X. Cabrini; not a nurse, but a nun who also healed a forgotten group in profound ways. Not an activist social reformer according to preferred purist definition, but a brilliant astute business institution‐building woman who not only identified causes of social ills, but provided the cures. Not a founder of health care workers, but among all that she accomplished, she was foundress of a group of Catholic sisters still serving the comprehensive needs of immigrants all over the world. With her immigrant ingenuity, Cabrini built hospitals and schools, eventually extending her reach to many countries around the globe. She was so inspiring as to re‐form the thinking of her immigrants to care for themselves; to encourage them, in spite of their poverty and hardships, to draw upon their own initiative so as to value, protect and to keep intact their faith and cultural values as they became Americans.

For More Information: Victor J. Papa, 917‐881‐5008), (victorjpapa@gmail.com), COMMITTEE FOR A CABRINI STATUE, C/o Mr. Frank Alfieri, 263 Mulberry Street, NY, NY 10012