Author: Rebecca Brenner Graham

Rebecca Brenner Graham is author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany (Kensington, January 2025). She is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, Time, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.

‘What Do We Call You?’ The Many Names of Frances Perkins

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.