Figure 1.--This 1920s photograohs looks like two new arrivals from eastern Ruropoe at Elis Island. That is only half true. The unidentified little girl is a newly arrived immigrant. The woman is not. She is Ludmila Kuchar Foxlee a YWCA social worker at Ellis Island. She caught the attention of the press by posing with newly arrived immigrants in colorful folk costumes and then immediately afterward in stylish American clothes. This was her way of demonstrating the first step many immigrants took to assimilate in their new country.
Ludmila Kuchar Foxlee immigrarted from Bohemia as a 4-year old girl (1890). Bohemia was the heart of the Czech homeland. At the time it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We do not have a photograph of her as a girl. We do have a photograph of Ludmila as a girl. We do have a photograph from the 1920s on Ellis Island with a young immigrant girl, perhaps another Czech girl. Czechoslovakia declared indroendence (1918). The U.S. Immigration Service allowed social workers to assist the immigrants on Ellisd Islsnd, Foxlee is the best known. She was hired by the YWCA to work on Ellis Island following World War I (1920). She assisted thousands of detained Christian European immigrants--Protestants, Eastern Orthodox and Catholics. Foxlee was perfectly suited for the job. Having lived through the immigrant experience herself as a young girl. She was familiar with the cultural values, customs, and traditions of these new arivals. She also understood American exceptionalism which created unprecented opportunuty for immigrants. Foxlee kept meticulous records and handled a huge number of cases. She was an ethusiatic singer and entertainer and ran the Ellis Island Annual Christmas parties and other festivities organized for the detainees and deportees. Foxlee was differenbt than the current crop of social workers. She saw America as a haven and beacon of opportunity, not as an evil, heartless state that needed to be fundamentally changed.
