History Talk: Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins (1880-1965) led a long life of service, first working in Chicago at Jane Addams Hull House, where she was inspired to become an activist by witnessing the Triangle Factory Fire tragedy in 1911. Ms. Perkins worked in NY State government under Governors Al Smith and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When FDR became president in 1933, he brought Perkins to Washington, D.C., where she became the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet as Secretary of Labor. During her term there, she helped to create the Social Security Act, plus other government efforts of the New Deal. Please join MCC Professor of History Mark Sample as he tells the story of this important woman.