By Rebecca Brenner Graham
Back in 2014, when I first began studying the immigration policy of the first woman cabinet secretary, Frances Perkins, I assumed that she was able to save people left and right because she was a progressive with an unwavering belief in human rights at the helm of the Immigration Naturalization Service in the Labor Department. I underestimated the extent and entrenched power of the antisemitism, isolationism, and especially the xenophobia in the American public and government structures surrounding her. My new book, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany, puts those social forces front and center. The protagonist navigating them is an under-appreciated icon: Frances Perkins.
Perhaps she was an unlikely person to be the foremost advocate for German-Jewish refugees in the early Roosevelt administration in 1933. Perkins was the first female cabinet secretary. She also came across as an unconventional choice for labor secretary because she was not a rank-and-file union leader. While she was a devout Christian descended from settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Perkins was an ally of Jewish communities and immigrants who found Perkins to be a steadfast supporter.
A decade before the Nazis murdered at least six million people between 1941 and 1945, without knowing the extent of the devastation that would occur, some Americans advocated for German-Jewish refugees. What stood in the advocates’ way was not Nazism, but rather, traditions of xenophobia and self-interest in U.S. foreign policy. Despite individuals like Perkins, the forces of bigotry were dominant and definitive. For example, the State Department instructed officials overseas to deny any immigrant deemed “likely to become a public charge” even if the person in question was attempting to flee Nazi persecution.
I wrote Dear Miss Perkins for people interested in learning accurate American history through an engaging tour guide, Sec. Frances Perkins. She was born in Boston in 1880, volunteered for Jane Addams at famed settlement home Hull House, witnessed the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire from across the street in 1911, and dedicated her remaining career to improving economic and labor conditions in the U.S. She faced the Great Depression by serving as a key architect of the New Deal. She worked on advancing fair and safe workplace practices, legalizing unions and strikes, establishing social security, and more.
My book shows that at the same time as the New Deal, a robust child refugee program and tens of thousands of individual immigration cases captured Perkins’s attention. At the beginning of my book, Perkins channels her energy into combatting the State Department in a turf war over accepting immigrants who were “likely to become a public charge.” She prevailed in that battle and used the leverage to partner with Jewish activists to build a child refugee program out of the Children’s Bureau in the Labor Department. She circulated ideas about welcoming more refugee children and even the possibility of refugee settlerism in Alaska.
Before allies in Congress brought those ideas to Capitol Hill, however, Perkins’s adversaries in Congress introduced a bad-faith resolution to impeach her in early 1939. Focused on the unlikely subject of a Communist immigrant from Australia, the resolution represented backlash against New Deal progressivism and Perkins’s approach more broadly. Despite no grounds for impeachment, the resolution damaged Perkins’s political capital and reaffirmed to her the limits of her position. Perkins learned the odds stacked against her humanitarianism while fighting against the impeachment resolution. Readers learn the odds stacked against Perkins’s humanitarianism from my book.
Antisemitism, xenophobia, and the power of backlash might seem more familiar to readers today than they were to me when I began researching this topic in 2014. As these forces resurface in American politics, studying their roots teach us how we got here and to try not to repeat past mistakes.
I hope that Dear Miss Perkins provides must-read histories of the first woman cabinet secretary, immigration to the U.S., and American responses to Nazism, as well as the compelling narrative in which these three converge. Even more, I hope that my book sparks discussions about individual versus structural contributions to progress and backlash. Frances Perkins was an extraordinary individual who combated powerful social and structural forces on behalf of people in need. To each immigrant who found safety thanks to her help, Perkins’s contributions meant the world.
Rebecca Brenner Graham is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. Previously, she taught at the American University in Washington, DC, where she also received her PhD in history and an MA in public history. She also holds a BA in history and philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. In 2023, she was awarded a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation and a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association.
