Frances Perkins Program

Summary - AARP Maine: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins

Congratulations to the FP Class of 2023!
🎓💜🎓enjoy this amazing day!

In recognition of Labor Day, we're honoring labor rights pioneer and New Deal champion Frances Perkins -- who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor throughout President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four-term presidency. As one of the most trailblazing women in the history of the U.S. government, Perkins is largely responsible for many of the New Deal reforms including the creation of child labor laws, social security, unemployment insurance, and the federal minimum wage.

After attending Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University, Perkins became head of the New York Consumers League in 1910 and sought better working conditions and hours during a time when labor rights and factory safety standards were nearly nonexistent. The following year, she personally witnessed the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in which 146 garment workers -- most of them young girls and women -- perished. Many of victims jumped to their deaths out of windows because the doors and stairwells of the factory were locked.

Witnessing the fire and the large loss of life due to the absence of safety regulations was a pivotal event in Perkins' life. She soon joined the Committee on Safety of the City of New York. The work of this Committee and others led the 60 new state safety and labor regulations in the two years following the tragedy. In 1929, she became the New York State Commissioner of Labor; a role in which she worked to end child labor, reduced women's workweek to 48 hours, and championed other reforms including the creation of the first unemployment insurance laws.

In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression when unemployment had reached 25% nationwide, Roosevelt appointed Perkins as U.S. Labor Secretary, a position she held for twelve years. During this period, Perkins was the main force behind much pioneering legislation including the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps; the Public Works Administration; the Social Security Act; and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the 40-hour work week and the first minimum wages and overtime laws.

In addition to her tremendous legacy on behalf of American workers, Perkins was also a trailblazer for women as the first female Cabinet member. As she once stated: “The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.”

For a fantastic picture book biography about Frances Perkins, we highly recommend "The Only Woman In The Photo: Frances Perkins & Her New Deal for America" for ages 5 to 10 at https://www.amightygirl.com/the-only-woman-in-the-photo

For an excellent biography for adult readers about this trailblazer, we recommend the excellent biography: "The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins" at https://www.amightygirl.com/the-woman-behind-the-new-deal

To introduce young readers 12 and up to this incredible role model, we also recommend "A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements Of Frances Perkins" at https://www.amightygirl.com/a-woman-unafraid

Frances Perkins is among the inspiring female leaders featured in the fun picture book "Isabella: Girl In Charge" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/isabella-girl-in-charge) and the fascinating book for ages 9 and up "Leading the Way: Women In Power" (https://www.amightygirl.com/leading-the-way)

For books for children and teens about the contributions of girls and women to the fight for workers' rights, check out our post "Fighting For Justice: 25 Books About Women and the Labor Movement" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=9881

And, for more inspiring stories of pioneering girls and women throughout history, you can sign-up for A Mighty Girl's free weekly email newsletter at https://www.amightygirl.com/forms/newsletter

Happy 140th Birthday Frances Perkins
On this day in 1880, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a cabinet position, was born in Boston. Raised in Worcester, she attended Mt. Holyoke College, where she became committed to improving the lot of working people.

She came to the rescue during the Great Depression. Now her work is still aiding jobless Americans If it weren't for Frances Perkins, born 140 years ago today, millions of Americans might not be receiving unemployment benefits during the coronavirus pandemic.

Yvaine 2020 welcomes new FP Aime. A beautiful day to begin a new journey at Mount Holyoke.

Congratulations to Veronika Kivenson. So proud of this scientist and a that she is accomplishing 🌟

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A tribute to Frances Perkins on her birthday

Frances Perkins Born in Boston On this day in 1880, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a cabinet position, was born in Boston. Raised in Worcester, she attended Mt. Holyoke College, …

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Retired nurse, 72, pursues Mount Holyoke BA

Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - 1:30pm
Delores Ojunga-Andrew, Mount Holyoke College
After 50 years of fitting classes in around work and family, Delores Ojunga-Andrew is within reach of her BA.

By Sasha Nyary

When Delores Ojunga-Andrew was 17 years old and living in Chicago, she took an aptitude test. Her high school guidance counselor told her excitedly, “You knocked it out of the ballpark on the manipulatives section!” Then she added, “You should work in a factory.”

Ojunga-Andrew was both offended and inspired. She decided to go to nursing school instead.

She graduated as a registered nurse from a three-year program, which was the standard training at the time. But on the day of the graduation ceremony, the director of the nursing program announced that the American Nurses Association had decided that in the future, students must earn a bachelor’s degree to be considered a professional nurse.

Inspired again, Ojunga-Andrew decided she would start her career but also return to school. She took classes right away, in 1967, but it would take nearly 50 years for her to come within reach of her bachelor’s degree.

Now, Ojunga-Andrew ’18, is just a few credits shy of achieving the goal she’s longed for and worked toward since she was a teenager. At 72, she is the oldest student on the campus of Mount Holyoke College.

“I wanted to make sure that I was recognized as a professional nurse, as someone who could stand toe-to-toe academically and professionally,” she said. “I had to get the credentials to go with it.”

Ojunga-Andrew, an Africana studies major, is a Frances Perkins Scholar and part of a program at Mount Holyoke for students of nontraditional age who have experienced an interruption in their education.

When her application was being considered, the admission committee was particularly interested in Ojunga-Andrew because of her lifelong commitment to learning and education, said Carolyn Dietel, the director of the Frances Perkins Program.

“She had been pursuing educational opportunities whenever she could,” Dietel said. “She was always able to squeeze in a class between working and raising a family. The dean of admission at the time said, ‘With her life experience, her passion, and her perspective, it sounds like she will really bring something special to our classrooms.’ ”

Balancing work with school

Nursing gave Ojunga-Andrew flexible hours so she could take classes and, after she married, be with her children. In her 42-year career, she won outstanding commendations for her nursing, working in intensive coronary care, intensive surgical care, the emergency room, psychiatry, and as the charge nurse on the evening shift.

“I wanted high-tech, high-drama nursing,” she said. “I wanted to save lives.”

In 1988 Ojunga-Andrew and her family moved from Chicago to Springfield, Massachusetts. She raised her three small children and worked at Baystate Medical Center and Hartford Hospital. She took classes when she could, and she decided her BA would be in something other than nursing, but she wasn’t sure just what. Then she learned she could go to Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) for free when she turned 65. So she enrolled after she retired in 2009.

“I never forgot my vision,” she said. “I was going to get that degree. And I had all As.”

Ojunga-Andrew graduated with a 4.0 from STCC in May 2013. With her associate’s degree in general studies, she was eligible to apply for transfer into the Frances Perkins Program, which she had learned about many years earlier.

Her Mount Holyoke experience

Ojunga-Andrew had spent her life thinking scientifically about anatomy and physiology, and the needs and symptoms of patients. At Mount Holyoke, she now takes three classes a semester in areas such as anthropology, psychology, and religion. The transition had its challenges, including learning to use a computer. She found help at the SAW (Speaking, Arguing, and Writing) Center in organizing and strategizing her assignments.

“I was asked to rewrite my first paper, and an older person who had gone to college as an adult helped me,” she said. “She knew what I was going through.”

One of her first classes was Women and Buddhism, taught by religion professor Susanne Mrozik, who said Ojunga-Andrew was a great contributor in the class.

“I really appreciated her passion for social justice and her willingness, as a self-identified Christian, to work with Buddhist materials to see what could she learn from Buddhist feminists that would be helpful in her own community for addressing issues of justice,” Mrozik said.

Her children, now in their thirties, are supportive of her, Ojunga-Andrew said, noting that all three of them are college graduates.

“My daughter said, ‘Mommy, you’re living the life!’ ” she said.

An artist in her spare time who paints and crochets, she feels deeply grateful for the opportunity to be at Mount Holyoke, Ojunga-Andrew said. She plans to write after she completes her degree, and to remain involved with her church, St John’s Congregational Church in Springfield.

“I’m going to do my best, get this degree and make good use of it,” she said. “You’ve got to reach back and help somebody else. I have a feeling people will say, ‘If she can go to school and read all those books, I know I can.’ ”

FROM New York Times: March 4, 2016

Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet, as labor secretary, upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration on this day in 1933.

About 13 million people, a fourth of the labor force, were unemployed at the time, and she sought to get them back to work through an alphabet soup of new agencies and programs.

Ms. Perkins was pivotal in the development of much of the New Deal’s social legislation: establishing worker safety, maximum hours and minimum wages. She led the cabinet committee that drafted the Social Security program.

A native of Massachusetts, Ms. Perkins graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1902 and became a social worker in New York. She was having tea at a friend’s townhouse in 1911 when screams and sirens interrupted them.

The Triangle shirtwaist factory had gone up in flames nearby, eventually killing 146 workers, most of them women trapped in a locked, 10th-floor sweatshop.

Ms. Perkins became a leading advocate for stronger safety measures in the city and was recruited to work for New York’s state government.

From there, Roosevelt, the New York governor, took her to Washington, where one of the greatest periods of organization in U.S. labor history occurred under her 12-year tenure.

Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins at a factory in 1934. Credit The New York Times