President Biden is set to designate a national monument in Maine commemorating pioneering Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, who served as the nation’s first woman cabinet secretary under Franklin Roosevelt, the White House said Monday.
Perkins, appointed by Roosevelt in 1933, served 12 years in the role, making her both the longest-serving official in his cabinet and the labor secretary with the longest tenure. The namesake of the Labor Department’s headquarters, she played a pivotal role in developing and implementing Roosevelt’s sweeping New Deal programs, most notable Social Security.
During Perkins’s tenure, the Labor Department oversaw Immigration and Naturalization Services, a role she used to aggressively lobby to admit larger numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.
Perkins was considered a stalwart ally of labor unions during her tenure, which included her counseling Roosevelt against breaking a 1934 waterfront strike that shut down much of the West Coast. She also refused to deport Australian-born longshoremen’s union head Harry Bridges for his membership in the Communist Party, which led the House Un-American Activities Committee to introduce an unsuccessful impeachment resolution against her.
She claimed to have been radicalized after she witnessed the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, in which 146 garment workers were burned or leaped to their deaths after they were locked inside for the workday.
The national monument will comprise the nearly 60 acres that were once Perkins’s family’s homestead in Newcastle, which her family has owned for nearly three centuries.
The designation comes after Biden earlier in March signed an executive order calling on the Interior Department to identify sites with significance in women’s history in America.
“Frances Perkins’ values have shaped the American workplace. From the 40-hour work week to the minimum wage, to workplace safety and fire prevention, to the abolition of child labor, to the creation of Social Security, Perkins remains one of the most influential women in US history,” Keith Mestrich, Chair of the Board for the Frances Perkins Center, said in a statement.
