Born in Boston, Mass. (1880) and graduated high school in Worcester. Earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics from Mount Holyoke College where she became involved in progressive politics and the suffrage movement.
Held a variety of teaching positions and volunteered at settlement houses, including Hull House in Chicago, where she worked with Jane Addams. She moved to Philadelphia where she worked as a social worker and enrolled in the Wharton School where she studied economics.
Moved to Greenwich Village, where she attended Columbia University, earning a master's degree in 1910. She became active in the suffrage movement, speaking on street corners and attending protests.
Achieved statewide prominence as head of the New York office of the National Consumers League where she lobbied for better working hours and conditions. As a professor of sociology she taught classes at Adelphi College.
She witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, a pivotal event in her life. As the appointed head of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York she promoted fire safety; in 1912 she was instrumental in getting the New York legislature to pass a "54-hour bill" capping the number of hours women and children could work.
She married Paul Caldwell Wilson, an economist and was insistent on keeping her birth name. Gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, in 1916. Throughout the remainder of her marriage her husband would be institutionalized frequently for mental illness. She supported herself and raised their young daughter alone.
In 1929 New York governor Franklin Roosevelt appointed her as the state's Industrial Commissioner where she championed the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, workplace health and safety and an end to child labor.
In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed her the Secretary of Labor becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the United States. She helped shape the New Deal, working to design and implement the Social Security Act of 1935.
She helped millions of people get back to work during the Great Depression and she fought for the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively.
Was the longest-serving Secretary of Labor (12 years) whose successful programs were supported consistently by President Roosevelt.
Following her career in government service she remained active as a teacher and lecturer until her death in 1965, at age 85.
In 1980 President Jimmy Carter named the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor as "The Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building." On Dec. 16, 2024 President Joe Biden designated the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark in Newcastle, Maine. President Biden's designation was issued as he directed in Executive Order 14121, Recognizing and Honoring Women's History (March 27, 2024).
In 1933, Roosevelt summoned Perkins to ask her to join his cabinet. Perkins presented Roosevelt with a long list of labor programs for which she would fight, from Social Security to minimum wage. "Nothing like this has ever been done in the United States before," she told Roosevelt. "You know that, don’t you?" (Wikipedia)
Sources from which I summarized, paraphrased or quoted directly:
Wikipedia, "President Biden designates Frances Perkins homestead as new national monument," press release, 12/16/2022; Executive Order 14121, Section 3a report, Dec. 2024; Hall of Secretaries, U. S. Dept. of Labor.
