One day in the 1880s, Elizabeth Black Kander spotted a boy selling matchboxes. The sight disturbed her.

The boy, a recent arrival from Russia, must have been 12 years old. His face was caked in dirt. Everyone in that store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that day could hear him practically shouting as he offered to sell the owner matches for cheap.

Kander confronted the boy outside. Why wasn’t he in school, she wondered aloud. He responded sincerely, telling her he needed to work to support his family.

The boy’s admission saddened Kander, but she also felt a flush of shame—for the kid, for herself. Kander’s parents, Jewish immigrants from Germany, had come to the United States in the 1840s. They had done a remarkable job of blending in by the time Kander was born in 1858, mastering American English, American ways of dressing, the American art of making money. But in the 1880s, a new wave of Jewish immigrants from Russia like this boy made Kander worry. She found them so uncouth. Kander feared their behavior would reflect poorly on previous Jewish immigrants like her parents who had gone to great lengths to acclimate to America. Maybe these immigrants would inspire a new rush of anti-Semitism.

Kander’s concern kindled a lifelong crusade as a social worker who pushed for immigrants to assimilate to America. “It is a selfish motive that spurs us on,” she would say of her mission, “it is to protect ourselves, our own reputation in the community that we must work with tact, with heart and soul to better the home conditions of our people.” As part of her project, she began working at the Settlement House, a social service agency in Milwaukee. She spent her evenings teaching immigrant Jewish women, many of them fresh from Poland and Russia, how to cook American dishes.