Frances Perkins: The Most Consequential Woman You’ve Never Heard Of

Who was Frances Perkins? First woman in a US presidential cabinet. ✓ Longest-serving Secretary of Labor. ✓ Architect of the 40 hour work week and Social Security. ✓ Drafted the act that banned child labor. ✓

Her influence on American life is profound, but unlike other American female pioneers of the time, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ida B. Wells, and Amelia Earhart, Perkins’ name is not widely known. And as Giovanna Gray Lockhart, Executive Director of the Frances Perkins Center explains in our recent sit-down, not being a household name was how she liked it.

Recently, though, Frances Perkins has been receiving increased recognition thanks to the upgrade of the Frances Perkins Center from a National Historic Landmark to a National Monument within the National Park Service.

Get to know a bit more about the fascinating, one-of-a-kind life of Frances Perkins in the following interview as Giovanna discusses some of the highlights of Frances’ life and career, while also detailing the exciting changes happening at the Frances Perkins Center.

Also recommended is the newly published book Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany by Rebecca Brenner Graham, written by a former Frances Perkins Center intern. Go back further in time and read the words of Frances Perkins herself in her best-selling portrait of FDR, The Roosevelt I Knew. And for everything from a detailed timeline of her life to contemporary connections and learning opportunities, visit the online home of the Frances Perkins Center.

Jessica Weingartner: What is the mission of the Frances Perkins Center?

Giovanna Gray Lockhart: Our mission is to educate and inspire current and future generations about the government's responsibility to provide economic security and social justice for all.

The vision we have is to inspire women to go into public service. And we want to make sure that the Frances Perkins story, not just her accomplishments, but the way in which she did her work, is remembered.

She was a lobbyist for the New York Consumers League—that's how she met Franklin Roosevelt when he was serving in the legislature in New York. She would frequently travel to Albany to lobby for a 54-hour work week bill. A 54-hour work week seems outrageous to us now, but that was one of the more progressive work bills at the time. She then goes on to push for codification of the 40-hour work week as Secretary of Labor. Also on her to-do list in her time as Secretary of Labor was universal health care—it was her one New Deal goal left unaccomplished due to the economic pressures of the Great Depression and World War II.

We want to help people understand her history and why Frances Perkins' contributions are significant and relevant to today.

Jessica: Tell us more about the Frances Perkins Center.

Giovanna: We're a very new organization. We have only had professional staff in the last couple of years. Before that it was sort of volunteer driven and was a museum founded by Perkins' grandson, Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, to share his grandmother’s legacy. Tomlin lived for around 25 years in the house that’s the main structure of the Center. He sold the property to the Frances Perkins Center in 2020. We're really grateful that he did that and grateful for his long friendship. Tomlin sadly passed away on January 7. I was very lucky to have been with Tomlin, who was quite sick at the time, this December in Washington for the proclamation ceremony with President Biden designating the Frances Perkins National Historic Landmark as a national monument.

We launched a campaign on August 8, 2024 to request national monument status, which equates to becoming a piece of property that the federal government owns, with management under the National Park Service. And we were successful!

Just before Biden left office we went to DC. Any president can utilize the Antiquities Act to establish a national park (they're called national monuments). We were very fortunate to get approved in the time that we did. It's a testament to the power of Frances’ life story—her impact on workers’ rights in this country and how those policies were the foundation to our civil society and our fair labor laws. President Biden recognized a lot of what he was able to do in his time as president and in his years of public service as very much on the back of what Frances Perkins had established. Biden gave a very moving speech about how incredible and ahead of her time she was and the impact that Frances had. It was a celebration of her labor legacy. Many people spoke, including myself, which was really exciting, along with historian Heather Cox Richardson, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, and people from the rural coastal Maine community where the Center sits who feel a sense of pride and ownership in Perkins.

Jessica: I understand that being part of the National Park Service will also expand your educational programs?

Giovanna: Yes. The National Park Service is the gold standard in the United States for historic interpretation. Once you donate your property to the federal government, they are then responsible for it in perpetuity. It’s going to allow access to scholars, research, and more archives that were not readily accessible before.

As of today our center is sitting on federal land, which is kind of exciting because when we walk into the building, it no longer belongs to us—it belongs to the American people. To speak to why this matters: there are only 433 national parks in this country and 13 of them are designated to women in history. That's a pretty terrible percentage. We are trying to change that and put a light on the fact that women have contributed to American history.

Jessica Weingartner: As Secretary of Labor under FDR, part of Frances Perkins' remit was Immigration and Naturalization. In what ways did Frances help Jewish refugees looking for asylum from Nazism?

Giovanna: As you note, Immigration and Naturalization Service was under the Department of Labor at the time, a designation that eventually changed in 1940. Something particularly inspiring to me is that the Roosevelt administration's policy was not aligned with what Perkins was trying to do. So she found loopholes in various state department and immigration programs to get as many Jews out of Europe as possible. Perkins worked both with advocacy groups and Jewish organizations in New York to try to circumvent the administration, and she faced severe backlash for her efforts—but it was all worth it to her. She focused primarily on saving children and worked with Congress to write a bill to get thousands of children out of Germany—but the bill didn't pass.

This is very unusual behavior for an administration official—a cabinet secretary during a time of war—to go against the policies of the administration, and during a time where there were no other women in her position. But this was very much in keeping with what we know about Frances Perkins: she had a strong moral compass and was focused on doing the right thing. In the end, she was only able to get a small portion of children and other refugees out of Europe, but without her there would have been even fewer saved.

Jessica: Frances’ impact on US policy is huge, but she’s not a well-known figure. Why is that?

Giovanna: She did not like talking to the press. She hated getting her photo taken. I would say in like 90% of the photos taken of Frances Perkins, she is not smiling. She did not take credit for what she was doing. Her personality didn't lend itself to being that sort of front person. She gave FDR credit. If she were in this interview today, she would insist, “It was all about doing what was important for the American people.” She was famous for saying, “I was serving FDR, God, and the American people.”

Roosevelt was sort of jolly, gregarious, and charming, right? This was not Frances. But he totally relied on her. He relied on her to not just write policy, but to navigate the politics of Congress and her fellow cabinet members. To move things along. He relied on her for intelligence, not just within the cabinet, which she did very well, but also with members of Congress.

Frances Perkins is one of those people who just demonstrates how you don't have to be in the limelight to be an upstander. She stayed very much in the shadows, but she got things done. Tomlin, Frances Perkins' grandson who created the Center, didn't even know until he was an adult the full impact of his grandmother’s legacy. It wasn't until President Jimmy Carter named the US Department of Labor Department building in Washington “The Frances Perkins Building” and invited Tomlin and his mother to the unveiling ceremony that her impact hit him.

Jessica: Do you feel like you have insight into what activism or government reforms she would pursue if she was alive today?

Giovanna: She would work on access to healthcare, like a universal health care plan. I think that she would also look at fair wages and the tax code because during the Great Depression the wealthiest Americans were asked to pay a 90% tax income tax. We just can't even fathom that now, right? I think she'd be shocked at the lack of collective spirit and patriotism today—which was very much on display during the Great Depression and World War II. I don't think that she would recognize this country and she would be surprised to hear that her crowning career achievement, the Social Security Act, is something that's debated. Even though it is the most widely popular government program ever for 100+ years, it's used as a political foil.

Jessica: Can you tell me a bit more about Frances Perkins’ early background and the influence of her grandmother?

Giovanna: Cynthia Otis Perkins was Frances' paternal grandmother—her dad's mom—and she came from a family whose history mirrored many Mainer families of the time: so farming and light industry, like brick making. Frances considered Maine her one true home, but her father eventually took their family to Worcester, Massachusetts, and that's where she went to school and grew up. But she returned back to Maine to Cynthia as often as possible because Cynthia was the person telling her, “You can do anything you want.” She was not a warm and fuzzy person, I’ve gathered from research, but insisted to Frances that when a door opens for you, you walk through it. And that was not something that people were telling their daughters born in 1880. They were instead telling them to find a good husband, settle down, have some children. And if you weren’t married by the time you're 25, something must be terribly wrong with you. Frances was 34 when she got married. And while women of her era did attend college, it was not to pursue a career.

When she graduates in 1902 from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in chemistry and physics, she goes right into a career. And since she was choosing a career over a more traditional path, she had to learn to support herself. She began to teach, and she started volunteering in settlement houses, gaining direct insight into the dire conditions of the poor.

One of the things I talk about with younger audiences is Frances’ gender achievement at the time. She was lobbying in the New York legislature for legal changes before she had the ability to vote.

Jessica: What inspiration for changemaking and upstanding do you think young people today can take away from the life and work of Frances Perkins?

Giovanna: She believed that the best way to enact change was to have a seat at the table—to be in a position of power. And that power could be in any type of role—advocacy, whistleblowing, grassroots work. Even in your community, If you want to see change in your community, join your city council or the select board. I think that she believed that if you don't have a seat at the table, then your values are not going to be reflected in the decisions that are being made. And this is something I believe in too.

Frances thought that change that equaled large amounts of impact, through institutions such as the federal government or by lifting millions of people out of poverty—which is what she did with the New Deal—was only possible once you held a position of power.

Through her work in both in Chicago and in New York, working in the poorest immigrant communities, and witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire with her own eyes, she realized, “Wait a second, there are no laws in place for preventing a fire like this. Laws could have helped people get these young women out of that building.” When she gained first-hand knowledge of what was happening in people's lives, she decided that she could either help one-by-one as a social worker—or she could create policy that could aid millions of people at a time.

The other lesson I think she would point out is that change is incremental. You're not going to get everything you want. It's a negotiation.