Admit One, An American Scrapbook
by Martha Collins
© 2016 Martha
Collins
University of
Pittsburgh Press
Pittsburgh, PA
ISBN 13:
978-0-8229-6405-6
ISBN 10:
0-8229-6405-8
Sofbound, $15.95,
89 pages
Review by Zvi A. Sesling
Poetry is the poet’s version of what he or she observes or believes. There
is “found” poetry which might be prose made into verse or roadside signs and
billboards converted into poetic endeavors.
Within Collins’ book Admit One,
poetry becomes a combination of many things: memoir, research, history,
newspaper clippings, World Fair ads. It is a political statement and a
revelatory expose of eugenics and racism.
There is a glorified view of America as a pure nation open to all as Emma
Lazarus wrote in “The New Colossus”:
"Give me your tired, your
poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Yet behind that “golden door” Ms. Collins shows the negative nature of
“white” America and her exposure of 20th century thoughts and actions
spares no one, not even her own grandfather who published and edited a
newspaper which referred to others as “subjects of the Mikado” or as “…fierce Cassocks; sooty Nubians, jostled yellow Mongols, and picturesque Turks, Moors,
and Sudanese, added rich color to the picture…”
On page 12, entitled “Otta Benga, Part One” Collins presents the following”
Samuel P. Verner
Acquisition List
One Pygmy Patriarch or chief
One adult woman, preferably
his wife
One adult man, preferably
his son
one adult woman, the wife
of…
…
Two infants of women in the
expedition
Four more Pygmies,
preferably adult but young
including a priestess and a
priest
or medicine doctors,
preferably old
Collins continues showing more of Verner’s “acquisitions” based on superior
whites displaying non-white subjects as part of an exhibition in which foreign
acquisitions are reduced to exhibits at the 1904 World’s Fair.
Collins next directs her attention to American Indians and the purchase of
various items produced by different Indian tribes citing:
a representation of … human
development
from savagery…toward
enlightenment
as accelerated by
association and training
She scrutinizes the Philippine Reservation in which humans are described as
“Negritos, Igorots, Moros, Visayans” and so forth, each having different
attributes such as the “lowest, most warlike, more intelligent and highest.”
Otta Benga, the African Pigmy was presented by the New York Times as
follows:
BUSHMAN SHARES A CAGE
WITH BRONX PARK AGES
their heads are much alike
and zoo director Hornaday said:
Madison Grant gave full approval
We are taking excellent care
He has one of the best rooms
in the primate house
Her tale of Otta Benga is not a pretty one and in many ways a modified
extension of how blacks were treated during the slavery years.
Collins points out anthropologists declared that within the white race were
three distinct types: Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean and added race to
eugenics “which was already leading to segregation and sterilization of the unfit…"
In 1911, Collins states the Iowa State Fair held its first Baby Health
Contest where the questions was asked: You
are raising better cattle…horses…hogs, why don’t you raise better babies?
This resulted in babies being “measured for height, weight, anthropometic traits and mental development, and
advertised and displayed an an automobile in the Fair’s Parade, as Iowa’s Best
Crop.”
Charles Davenport supervised the “Eugenics Record Office and helped train
social workers to interview defective
persons in mental institutions, hospitals for epileptics, prisons, orphanages,
circus midways. In 1915, he called for the ultimate sterilization of the lowest ten percent of human stock.”
Collins notes that “Between 1910 and 1963, Iowa sterilized 1,910
persons. In 1979 the Eugenics Board of
Iowa was abolished.”
Thorough in her research, Collins presents well documented facts. There is
much historical racism she makes public again, such as two laws passed in
Virginia including the state’s 1924 Racial Integrity Act, the most strict
anti-miscegenation law in the country.
Her book details the horrors of the possible connections between American
racism and the rise of Hitler and antisemitism in Germany including the
concept of the “master race” and Aryan supremacy.
This is a book of great merit, not only for its scholarly research but also
for the revelations either not known or forgotten by Americans. During this
political season in which race – racism – is a focal point not only for the
candidates, but for law enforcement and communities at large, Collins reminds
us of more than a century of interracial ills which may help explain our
current societal struggles. This is a
highly recommended book for those familiar with the conflicts of American race
relations and enlightening for those who are not.
______________________________________
Zvi A. Sesling
Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene
Author, Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva, 2016)
Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011)
King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Press, 2010)
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Publisher, Muddy River Books
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8
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