The Multiracial Activist - www.multiracial.com

 

Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 13:12:06 -0700
From: 
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Subject: Research Help is Needed

The following is an open letter by Rosalind Maya Lama.
She has asked me to post this freely. This will also be on my website
later today. [http://www.ibar.com/voices/]

Dear Friends,

Most birth mothers lost children through the combined pressures of parents, adoption agancies, and society.

Some of us who refused to relinquish our children were brought to trial and prosecuted under the Wayward Minor Act and other laws. I am
one of those mothers and I am searching for others who had the same experience. Although I know that laws of this type existed throughout
the United States, at this time I am particularly interested in collecting data on women who were separated from their children
through the use of the Wayward Minor Act or PINS in New York City, especially if they had a biracial child.

 I would like to communicate with you if you were at the Lakeview Home for Unwed Mothers on Staten Island from July 1959 through February
1960 when I was there.

I would also like to hear from women who were at Lakeview during the fifties and sixties and may remember the names of staff members,
social workers, psychiatrists, and others connected with the Jewish Board of Guardians that ran the home and Louise Wise Services, the
adoption agency connected with it.

I would like to know your experiences in the court system, and whether or not you had any contact with the judges Justine Wise
Polier or Patrick J. Fogarty, a probation officer known as Miss Mandel, the psychiatrist Dr. Bertran New, Mrs. Amy Kubie of the
J.B.G. or Mrs. Ruth Panger of the Bureau of Child Welfare.

Were you committed to a mental hospital or ordered by the court to receive psychiatric treatment, for the purpose of obtaining your
signature? Was the father of your child threatened with prosecution or prosecuted? Was he also deprived of his parental rights?

I would like to hear about any racial issues surrounding forced relinquishment that you may have experienced, and I would like to know
whether or not you have found your children and what happened to them.

I would like to hear from any bi-racial adoptees whose adoption took place in N.Y.C., and especially from any bi-racial people who were
*not* adopted, but raised in foster homes or institutions administered by the Jewish Board of Guardians, the J.C.C.A. or Louise Wise
Services.

I would like very much to hear from people who worked for any of the above agencies and can provide information. In the
course of my own investigation of the system, I learned that most of the bi-racial children taken from their white mothers in the late
fifties and early sixties were never adopted, although their records were sealed in the same manner as adoptees. I believe that the
treatment of these children and their parents is one of the main reasons for the adoption agencies adamant support of closed record
policies.

My son was passed from hand to hand in foster care, placed in an unhappy adoption, and died from an overdose of drugs before I
was able to find him. I am hoping that some of you will be able to help me with my research into the persecution of unwed mothers and
fathers and their bi-racial children that will lead to an investigation of human rights abuses in the adoption system.

I will be very grateful to hear from you:

Please write:
Rosalind Maya
Lama P.O. Box 342 382 Kingston Avenue Brooklin, NY 11230
********************************************
Oregon Adoptee Rights Initiative Measure 58
Our Birth Certificate: Our Right
http://www.plumsite.com/oregon/
PO Box 353 Nehalem Oregon, 97131.
Make checks payable to Open 98;
**********************************************

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