26 Facts About Gene Weltfish

Gene Weltfish had studied with Franz Boas and was a specialist in the culture and history of the Pawnee people of the Midwest Plains.

Gene Weltfish is known for the 1943 pamphlet for the US Army, called The Races of Mankind, which she co-wrote with Ruth Benedict.

Gene Weltfish was blacklisted and unable to find an academic position for nearly a decade.

Regina Weltfish was one of two daughters; she was born in 1902 into a German Jewish family in New York City's Lower East Side.

Gene Weltfish grew up speaking German as her first language, taught by a German governess hired by her grandfather.

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Gene Weltfish's mother had to submit formal notarized petitions for every disbursement.

Gene Weltfish transferred to Columbia University's Barnard College, where she minored in philosophy under John Dewey.

Gene Weltfish graduated from Barnard in 1925 and enrolled in Columbia's graduate program in anthropology.

Gene Weltfish had already taken courses with Franz Boas during her senior year and continued to study with him as her adviser.

Gene Weltfish traveled to the reservation in Oklahoma, where tribal members still mostly spoke Pawnee language.

Gene Weltfish had not previously studied that language but learned it during her years of studies.

Gene Weltfish focused on the study of aesthetics and craftsmanship, learning the art of basket-making, which was practiced exclusively by Pawnee women.

Gene Weltfish completed her dissertation in 1929, but did not formally receive her Ph.

Gene Weltfish intervened on behalf of Weltfish at a board meeting, when the trustees were considering terminating the younger woman's employment.

In 1953 Gene Weltfish lost her position at Columbia University after 16 years of employment as an adjunct lecturer.

The FBI investigated Gene Weltfish's activities, noting her political engagement in the Congress of American Women, her signatures on civil rights petitions, and her appearance on the radio station WNBC.

The FBI had classified the Congress of American Women, of which Weltfish was once president, among subversive organizations in the 1940s after its spokeswomen criticized some of President Harry S Truman's foreign policies.

In 1952 Gene Weltfish was quoted in the Daily Worker as repeating a claim made by Soviet critics that the US Army had used germ warfare in the Korean War.

Gene Weltfish refused to answer questions about her political affiliations, but when asked about the Daily Worker article, she said that she had been misquoted.

Gene Weltfish was called in for questioning regarding her role in writing the pamphlet, The Races of Mankind, which the committee had declared to be subversive.

Two weeks before she was scheduled to appear, Gene Weltfish was told by the trustees of Columbia that her employment contract would not be renewed at the end of the year.

Gene Weltfish maintained that she was fired because she was a woman.

Gene Weltfish responded negatively to the committee's demands that she name colleagues with communist sympathies.

Gene Weltfish simply said that "she thought of herself as a good American and acted on issues as her conscience and knowledge dictated".

In 1961 Gene Weltfish was hired at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, where she worked until 1972, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 70.

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Gene Weltfish died on August 7,1980, just 5 days short of her 78th birthday.