Exploring the evolving identities and legacy of Frances Perkins, the pioneering labor secretary who navigated gender, politics and personal transformation in her groundbreaking career.
Fannie Coralie Perkins was born in the South End of Boston on April 10, 1880, to 29-year-old Susan and 35-year-old Frederick Perkins, both from Maine. She later chose not to correct people who claimed that she was born in the fancier Beacon Hill neighborhood.
Perk was a hard-working and well-liked member of the Mount Holyoke College Class of 1902. As class president, she delivered a speech titled “Be Ye Steadfast” after the biblical line that she quoted earnestly in it. The café in the college library is now called Frances Perk.
Frances left Fannie behind her by choosing her new, more sophisticated name, spelled like the saint. She changed faiths from Congregationalist to Episcopalian and found her calling in social justice while volunteering at Jane Addams’ famed settlement home Hull House.
Frances Perkins Wilson wrote to her new mother-in-law in 1913, “I’m so glad you don’t mind me marrying Paul. I’ll be good to him, you know. He is a dear and I thank you for all that you have given me in giving him life and health and character and sweetness. I’ll not forget.” Newly married, she planned to continue social justice work by volunteering as a respectable wife without added pressures.
Miss Perkins reentered the workforce full time after her husband fell too ill to support their family, strategically dropping any sign of marriage from her name in professional settings so that male colleagues wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in the presence of another man’s wife. Maintaining a carefully constructed persona, Perkins was able to focus on the work that drove her from a member of the Industrial Commission for the state of New York under Gov. Al Smith, to industrial commissioner for the state of New York under Gov. Franklin Roosevelt, to Roosevelt’s top pick for U.S. secretary of labor.
“Frances,” President Roosevelt asked at the first Cabinet meeting in March 1933, “don’t you want to say something?” She had “resolved not to speak unless asked to do so,” to navigate complex gender politics around the eight-sided mahogany table, under which her handbag and heels stood out from men’s shoes.
“Madam Secretary,” Speaker-elect of the U.S. House of Representatives Henry T. Rainey told reporters to call the new labor secretary as she emerged from the Cabinet meeting. An “expert on parliamentary procedure,” Rainey cited the Robert’s Rules of Order revisions.
“The Madam,” some reporters continued to mislabel her.
“Dear Miss Perkins,” acquaintances began letters to her on behalf of the growing number of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition, Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
“Dearest Frances,” wrote some who knew her more personally, such as her friend Dorothy Thompson, the first American journalist to report on the rise of Nazism from on the ground in Germany, until Adolph Hitler banished Thompson from the country in 1934.
“Greetings to the Red Paint,” a piece of hate mail addressed Perkins in 1938, calling her a Communist in reaction against key New Deal legislation to which she had contributed.
“Mrs.?? Perkins, why do you not go by your married name, or are you really married in the eyes of God! No wonder you take the side of the Reds—you low-down…” Another piece of hate mail grasped for tools of misogyny.
Matilda Watsky, conspiracy theorists piled on attempting to label Perkins as Jewish. They found another Paul Wilson, the same name as her husband, who married a Russian-Jewish immigrant named Matilda Watsky. If Perkins were Jewish—which she was not—then bigoted adversaries would have another tool in their belts to harass her.
“Dear Miss Perkins,” mutual acquaintances continued to reach out with increasing frequency on behalf of refugees throughout the 1930s. They knew she’d do all that she could.
“Dear Frances,” close friends asked how to navigate the complex immigration system after FDR transferred the Immigration Naturalization Service (INS) from Perkins’s Labor Department to the Department of Justice in 1940.
The Roosevelt I Knew, she titled her memoir in 1946, drawing attention away from herself.
“Frances Perkins Wilson,” reads the simple headstone in Newcastle, Maine, beside her husband, Paul Wilson, the one who married no Matilda Watsky. To survive, Paul Wilson, like many, relied on the first woman Cabinet secretary, though only he lies next to her in the ground. For her funeral in New York in 1965, the words she wanted associated with her were—the same as her speech to her Mount Holyoke classmates: “Be ye steadfast.”
