Join author Rebecca Brenner Graham for a discussion of her new book Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany.

This outstanding, inspiring new narrative of the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet, reveals the full, never-before-told story of her role in saving Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime. She was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving labor secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments there is another dimension to Frances Perkins’s story. Without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition, Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.

Based on extensive research, including thousands of letters housed in the National Archives, Dear Miss Perkins adds new dimension to an already extraordinary life story, revealing at last how one woman tried to steer the nation to a better, more righteous course.

Rebecca Brenner Graham is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. Previously, she taught at the Madeira School and American University. She has a PhD in history and MA in public history from American University and a BA in history and philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. In 2023, she was awarded a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation and a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association.

Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Time, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.