Lizzie Black Kander

The American social activist Lizzie Black Kander graduated valedictorian from Milwaukee East Side High School in 1878. In her commencement address, titled “When I Become President,” she satirized American politicians and considered what she would do were she elected president. After completing her formal education, she was involved with immigrant aid organizations primarily serving Russian Jews arriving in Milwaukee. She married local politician Simon Kander in 1881 and in 1900 helped form the Milwaukee Jewish Mission, known as the Settlement, the first of a network of social welfare agencies that developed in her city at the turn of the century. Kander’s Settlement cookbook, which raised millions of dollars for charities, has been revised more than forty times.