- [Announcer] This program was made possible in part by the Big Sky Film Grant, the Greater Montana Foundation, the Foundation for Montana History, and Humanities Montana.

Additional funding provided by.

(gentle music) - Simply put, if you don't take into consideration you are eradicating a history of half the human race.

- She was often referred to as the heart and the historian of White Sulphur Springs because she remembered everything and she was so kind.

- So much of what we know about Chinese family formation, the inner workings of America's Chinatowns is because of the academic work of Rose Hum Lee.

- I think Helen Clarke is really remarkable.

Anyone who faces a challenge could look to you for inspiration because she steps up to the plate time and time again and shows, not only is she competent in what she does, but she excels at it.

(gentle music continues) (soft music) - [Narrator] Since time immemorial, indigenous nations have lived on the Montana landscape.

As the fur trade pushed west, interactions between Europeans and tribes increased.

Trade was built on relationships and was often bolstered by marriages between fur traders and indigenous women.

- It was sort of a common thing I would think for the fur trappers to come in, and I believe it may have been used as a tactic to being able to grant access to the lands because once you were a friend or ally or family of the Blackfeet, you were considered Blackfeet.

- [Narrator] A young Blackfeet woman, Coth-co-co-na grew up on the planes of what would be Montana during this time.

In 1844, the teenager married Malcolm Clarke, a trader for the American Fur Company.

Soon after their marriage, Coth-co-co-na gave birth to a son they named Horace.

Their daughter Helen soon followed.

- There were about six or seven children in the family.

Helen and her sister went to Cincinnati for most of their childhood, where they were educated in a very well-to-do private school.

So she's getting a really fine education.

- [Narrator] In the 1860s, Helen returned to her family in Montana.

Her father, Malcolm, had grown in prominence and built a ranch north of Helena.

He was known for his bad temper and violent behavior.

Many believe he raped the wife of his tribal relative, Owl Child.

Soon after, Owl Child and his allies visited the Clarke Ranch.

- [Laura] They went outside supposedly to look at livestock and Owl Child shot Malcolm Clarke and killed him.

Horace Clarke was also shot.

He was shot through the face, but he lived.

The bullet went through his neck and out his face and he lived.

Helen Clarke witnessed this, the murder of her father by people that were her mother's relatives, and it was extremely traumatic.

- [Narrator] This event not only had lasting effects on Helen, it reshaped the relationship between the Blackfeet tribe and the white settlers.

- Malcolm Clarke's murder was really used by the United States to go to war against the Blackfeet.

- [Narrator] The US Army demanded that the Blackfeet surrender Owl Child and his group.

When this effort failed, Major Eugene Baker was ordered to attack the Blackfeet.

Baker did so and attacked a small band near present day Shelby.

- [Laura] The report that comes out in the paper is that Baker is a hero and that it was men, combatants who were killed.

And it takes months before the real story actually comes to light, which is that 217 Blackfeet were killed, most of them are women and children.

For the Blackfeet, this was an absolutely terrifying event.

- The Baker Massacre kind of leaves a bad taste in everybody's mouth here.

It really opened the nation's eyes that the government can't quite be trusted, even though you have a peace medal.

- [Narrator] For her own safety, Helen went to live in Minneapolis with an aunt and continued studying after her father's death.

She attended drama school in New York and began a career performing on stage.

- [Laura] She's very beautiful.

She's got this great upright posture and she has to have been an extremely captivating actress.

- [Narrator] In her late 20s, Helen returned to Helena and connected with her father's wealthy friends.

One of these notable characters was Wilbur Sanders and his wife Harriet.

While in Helena, she taught at the local school.

Even though she was admired by many, her mixed heritage couldn't overcome the discrimination of the day.

- One of the people who doesn't like Helen Clarke because she is a quote unquote halfbreed is Elizabeth Chester Fisk.

And Elizabeth pulls her children out of the public schools and tells the newspaper that she won't have a halfbreed teaching her children.

- [Narrator] Proud of her mixed ancestry, Helen didn't let the discrimination stop progress.

While in her mid-30s, Helen ran for superintendent of the Lewis and Clark County School District, and she won, becoming one of the first two women elected to public office in Montana.

- [Laura] And she has a vision going into it that she wants to bring up the teaching profession.

She starts holding conferences for teachers to increase their professionalism and to improve the standards that teachers had to meet in order to become teachers.

- [Narrator] Helen served two more terms as superintendent.

Meanwhile, the Dawes Allotment Act passed in Congress, changing the tribal reservation system forever.

Instead of owning the land communally, the Dawes Act allotted lands to individual families.

- The darker side of allotment is that when people looked at reservations like the Blackfeet Nation reservation and they saw, oh, if we give the head of every family 160 acres, there's all this quote extra land, and that can be opened up for white settlement.

So the pressure to enact the Dawes Act really came from people who wanted Indian land.

- [Narrator] This shift would change indigenous life forever.

Helen felt compelled to use her education to help tribal members transition into a She became an allotment agent and was sent to Indian territory in Oklahoma to work with the Oto-Missourias and Ponca tribes.

Both tribes were opposed to allotment, and Helen faced two challenges.

She was a woman, and she was an outsider.

- She encounters opposition from other white agents who basically tell the Otos and the Poncas, "Oh yeah, she's a woman.

She probably won't do her job very well."

- [Narrator] Despite the opposition, Helen persevered, and finished her job in Oklahoma.

After her work with the Bureau, she moved to San Francisco and became a self-employed teacher.

Helen advertised her services in the local papers, which later proved detrimental.

- A newspaper article is published in the San Francisco Chronicle that exposes her as this quote unquote halfbreed, and does so in a very demeaning and demoralizing way with the intention of ruining her career.

And it comes from a special correspondent from a Helena newspaper.

Interestingly enough, Elizabeth Chester Fisk happens to be married to an editor of a Helena newspaper.

And this is the same woman who had pulled her children out of school when Helen was a teacher in Montana.

- [Narrator] The article ruined Helen's career in San Francisco.

She moved back to Montana in the early 1900s and lived on her allotted land next to her brother Horace.

She actively served the Blackfeet tribe, always promoting education and advocating for her people.

- I think Ms. Helen Clarke's legacy should be something that's noted, bringing the women to a higher level of being and existing here.

So I think that her legacy should be encapsulated as helping the Blackfeet women rise up a little bit more and be viewed from the off-reservation perspective, just as competent as any of the men are.

- [Narrator] Helen Clarke died on March 5th, 1923.

On July 8th, 2021, a stretch of Highway 2 was dedicated to Helen in honor of her work improving the quality of life for tribal communities and equality of opportunity.

- Dedicating that stretch of highway is a great way to acknowledge Helen, and an important way to remind us not to forget that people had to fight for kinds of things that she accomplished.

A woman holding a professional career, several professional careers, professional positions, working for the government, being elected, these are important accomplishments.

(bright music) - If someone said where's the most important place in Montana in 1900, the answer would be Butte.

Butte becomes the largest city.

It has an enormous population of immigrants and first generation born in the US.

- [Narrator] By the turn of the 20th century, Butte, Montana had become the second largest American city west of Chicago.

Butte's rich copper reserves generated a dynamic mining economy, which depended heavily on immigrant labor.

Butte was divided ethnically into a number of colorful neighborhoods, including Dublin Gulch for the Irish, Corktown for the Cornish, Fintown for the Finnish, and a sprawling Chinatown for Chinese immigrants.

(soft music) - Butte's Chinatown in the 1890s was the largest Chinese community in the Rocky Mountain region, and by this point in time, most of the Chinese in Butte and across Montana were not involved in gold mining anymore.

They'd really been pushed out of that part of the economy and sought opportunities in laundry work, restaurant work, and as merchants, and Hum Wah Long was one of the most successful of Chinese merchants in Butte.

- [Narrator] Because of his success, Hum Wah Long was eventually permitted to bring his Chinese bride Jin Fong to America.

Most Chinese immigrants were not allowed to bring their wives because the US government assumed that Chinese women would only work as prostitutes.

- [Mark] So for the Chinese in the American West, there was a lot of animosity and oppression against them.

- [Narrator] By 1902, Hum Wah Long and Jin Fong found themselves starting one of the only full Chinese families in Butte.

They went on to have seven children, and Rose Hum was their second.

She was born in August of 1904.

- So for Rose and her family growing up, it was quite important that the kids get this American-style education.

Much of that was because of the contrast she saw in her own mother.

Her own mother was illiterate, her own mother was not able to really advance in society.

She was basically kept behind closed doors, only able to come out several times a year at festivals and things like that because it was thought to be immodest for a Chinese woman to be seen outside too much during the year.

And so her mother being so constrained, Rose grew up wanting the opposite of that, wanting ultimate freedom and full acceptance into American life.

She saw education and just assimilation as key to that.

- [Narrator] Growing up, Rose often helped her father in the mercantile.

Because of her fluency in both Chinese and English, she would've been a key intermediary between Hum Wah Long and any non-Chinese resident.

But Rose's education was always most important to her family and she spent any spare time studying.

- In 1921, she married a Chinese student who she'd fell in love with, who was an engineering student here on a student visa from China.

The difficulty was that even though she was an American citizen by birth, because she married a Chinese citizen, because of the Expatriation Act of 1907, the woman's status followed that of her husband.

And so she actually gave up through that marriage her cherished American citizenship.

In 1929, she and her husband went to southeastern China to live with her in-laws, and she stayed there with her husband for 10 years.

Things didn't go very well there, maybe because of her Americanness and her in-law's family's Chineseness, it just didn't quite fit.

And there was constant tension between Rose and her in-laws.

While she was there in Southern China, the war, the Second World War broke out, and she worked with Madam Chiang Kai-Shek to try and advance a cause to try and help support this group called warphans, orphans caused by the war.

And so she was quite engaged with that and a key ally because of her multilingual abilities.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] By 1939, the citizenship laws of the US changed so that Rose was once again recognized as a full citizen.

Following her divorce in China, she returned to the US to continue her education.

Even though she was glad to regain her citizenship, Rose never felt fully accepted by either the United States or China.

But her feelings of alienation didn't stop her from excelling in school.

By 1942, she earned a bachelor's degree in social work from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.

She then went on to receive a master's and PhD from the University of Chicago's Department of Sociology.

- Throughout her PhD dissertation and then her first published work tended to be on Chinatown communities throughout the Rocky Mountain region, very specifically on Butte.

As a sociologist, she really aimed for objectivity and neutrality in the subjects that she studied.

We know now that these are her family members.

- [Joyce] She was ostracized from the Chinese community for most of her life for writing that book.

There was huge, huge resistance to having anybody, particularly one of our own, write about the Chinese and the United States of America.

You don't air your dirty laundry in front of whites.

- Shortly after that, she goes on to help found Roosevelt University and becomes the first woman and the first Chinese-American to head a sociology department at a major American university.

- [Narrator] Rose's work studying Chinese settlements across the American West provided scholars with much of what they now know about the cultural importance of America's Chinatowns.

Rose's work focused on women's roles, family formation, marriage traditions, the difficulties of assimilating, and problems with citizenship.

- So some of Rose's most important or maybe most controversial intellectual ideas were that the Chinese in America's Chinatowns had to do away with their cultural traditions and their old world habits, move out of Chinatown, and become fully assimilated into American life.

This was somewhat controversial in Chinatowns across the region.

Many Chinese wanted to have both an appreciation and a continued practice of their Chinese cultural traditions, plus an acceptance in American society.

And Rose thought the only way to get the latter was to do away with the former.

I think Rose's continual feeling of not being fully accepted by the Chinese community nor fully accepted by the American community really caused a feeling of marginality, but it it left her feelings somewhat untethered, somewhat not connected to broader communities.

And throughout the '40s and '50s, especially with the onset of the Cold War and the threat of not only communism, but Chinese communism, Rose felt that there were communist threats or Chinese secret society threats that were targeting her because of the work that she had done to expose some of Chinatown's secrets and to advocate for Chinatown's dismantling so that the Chinese could fully become Chinese-American.

So Rose dies in 1964.

She's only 60 years old.

I don't know the circumstances of it.

It does seem like her growing paranoia and suspicion had worsened, and she did not seem like a mentally healthy person during that time period.

I think Rose Hum Lee's legacy is the transition that an immigrant family can make from humble origins to the heights of an American institution like an academic university chair.

And her work really gives us insights, key insights into the Chinese experience in the American West.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] After the Civil War, the US focused on expansion into the west.

Places like White Sulphur Springs rose in popularity.

- So White Sulphur Springs was the center of a pretty vigorous mining economy there.

And White Sulphur Springs becomes a center not only of mining, but also of ranching.

- [Narrator] In the 1880s, John and Anna Gordon moved to the area and set up residence.

- I think they moved to White Sulphur Springs for the opportunity that John could find there as a chef.

And then I really think they fell in love with the place.

- [Narrator] In 1883, they gave birth to their second child and only daughter, Rose.

Like many families of the time, the Gordons were no strangers to tragedy.

In 1893, while Anna was pregnant with her fifth child, John died in a railroad accident.

(train honking) Anna was left to raise her five children alone.

She worked mainly as a caterer and laundress, and her eldest children helped earn a living for the family.

Rose worked long hours with her mother, and still kept her schoolwork at the highest level, even though she often missed school.

- A lot of her teachers gave her extensions on work because while it may not have been on time, it was really good.

- [Narrator] Because of her work load at home.

It took Rose an extra two years to graduate, but her talent as a writer and scholar was unmatched.

She graduated in 1904 as valedictorian of her class.

- She gave a valedictorian speech called "The Progress of the Negro Race," and it ran front page on the Mara County News.

They devoted an entire column to the text of her speech, which is really rare, rare for any high school student, but even more rare for a Black woman.

- [Narrator] After graduating high school, Rose attended a nurse training program in Helena for a short time before she was needed at home.

She worked in domestic life, helping her mother feed and clothe the community.

Life was not easy, but Rose and her mother eventually opened a catering business, and their own restaurant.

- [Jeff] Rose Gordon was probably a bit disappointed that she couldn't pursue her ambitions right away of becoming a healthcare worker.

But at the same time, if she can't take care of people, she can feed them.

And I think she truly took pride and enjoyed all of her various restaurant ventures, and she was good at it.

- [Narrator] Rose's nature to help her neighbors proved vital when the pandemic of 1918 ravaged the United States and Montana.

White Sulphur Springs suffered greatly as the virus killed one person a week.

- [Dee] When the influenza pandemic hit Montana, Rose Gordon was a young woman, and she volunteered to nurse people who were ill.

The influenza was deadly.

It could kill you in 24 hours.

And so a lot of people who were healthy said, "I'm not going near a house full of sick people."

Well, Rose Gordon was so interested in healthcare, she said, "Yeah, I'll nurse my neighbors."

And she was one of those unsung heroes of the influenza pandemic, a woman who volunteered to nurse others, and whose care made the difference between life and death.

- [Narrator] Just a few years after the pandemic ceased, Rose's care turned toward her own mother.

After battling pneumonia, Anna died in 1924.

- Anna Gordon was around 80 when she died.

She had worked her entire life.

This devastated Rose.

And so now Rose is without her mother and pretty distraught.

- [Narrator] Despite her heartache, Rose continued to help provide for the family.

Meanwhile, White Sulphur Springs was not immune to the underlying racism of the nation.

Even though she was well-received by her white neighbors, Rose faced discrimination.

In the late 1930s, she lost a job as a seamstress at the Works Progress Administration.

Even though her employer needed more seamstresses and admitted she was very capable, the color of her skin was the only reason for her removal.

- So one of the things I think that people think about Rose Gordon is how well she assimilated into White Sulphur Springs.

And she was accepted, but she always knew that she was different.

You could make a list of all those achievements of hers that you could argue as a demonstration of her acceptance into white society.

And you could, on the other sheet of the paper, tally up all the slights based on race that she received over her life.

- [Narrator] Rose's passion for medicine continued.

And in the 1940s at the age of 60, she received a diploma from the College of Swedish Massage in Chicago.

- Rose has been wanting to be in healthcare her whole life.

So she changes careers completely in her 60s and finally is going after what she wants to do.

People would be complaining about an ailment and it'd be like, "Go see Rose."

Or if something was stiff, Rose would massage it out.

And apparently she was just a very deft practitioner of massage and of physiotherapy and of nursing.

- There wasn't a doctor here in town.

He came like, I don't know, maybe once a week.

And Rose was his assistant.

And when he was not here, she was the one that people went to because she was knowledgeable and willing and took good care of people.

- [Narrator] Rose had two passions in her lifetime, medicine and writing.

The honorary community historian, Rose wrote letters for the area's weekly newspaper.

In 1951, she ran for mayor, despite knowing her election was doomed to fail.

She lost, but celebrated her right to run regardless of race, color, or creed.

One of her most significant contributions to Montana literature was an article about her mother Anna, titled "My Mother Was a Slave."

- And it's a very important part of Montana literature because it's the only as told to really first person account of an African-American migrating to Montana after the Civil War.

Anna wanted many things, I'm sure, but one of the things she wanted was to keep her family together, because even though she tells Rose that her masters treated her well, she also tells them that she saw her parents and siblings sold away and never found them again.

So for many African-American women who gained their freedom at the end of the Civil War, being able to have a family and keep that family together was more important than anything in the world.

- [Narrator] Rose also fully embraced the role of matriarch for her family.

In 1959, she took in her younger brother, Taylor, who was a well-known singer and suffered from poor mental health.

Rose died November 19th, 1968.

She left a legacy for every Montanan and set an example of using every talent and passion given to you for the good of your community.

- And she was always happy, when I was around, I never saw her be crossed with anyone, but Rose always was smiling.

- I think she should be remembered with great admiration because she was such a giving person for this community for a long time.

- Rose Gordon was one of the most extraordinary Montanans that I've ever come across.

She was born and died in the same county and just had this long life of caring and community service as a Black woman in a rural western town that came to appreciate and value her as a full member of the community.

(gentle music) - [Mary] We can't understand the fabric of our nation without understanding women's history.

- [Narrator] When armed with an education, women were able to uniquely shape Montana's future, often from the hidden corners of history.

- It's okay to be proud of who you are, that education should be something that and that having a career should belong to everyone.

- Their work is invisible because it wasn't paid, but it was that unpaid labor that allowed the development of many into the institutions in Montana that we now value.

- [Narrator] The women of Montana make up more than individual stories.

They are a collection of Montana's basic foundation, full of color, honor, and hope.

(gentle music continues)