Dear Miss Perkins

A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany

Rebecca Brenner Graham

• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9780806543178
• eBook ISBN: 9780806543192
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.
 
“Immigration problems usually have to be decided in a few days. They involve human lives. There can be no delaying,” Perkins wrote in her memoir, The Roosevelt I Knew. In March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor by FDR. As Hitler rose to power, thousands of German-Jewish refugees and their loved ones reached out to the INS—then part of the Department of Labor—applying for immigration to the United States, writing letters that began “Dear Miss Perkins . . .”
 
Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House and as a firsthand witness to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire shaped her determination to advocate for immigrants and refugees. As Secretary of Labor, she wrestled widespread antisemitism and isolationism, finding creative ways to work around quotas and restrictive immigration laws. Diligent, resilient, empathetic, yet steadfast, she persisted on behalf of the desperate when others refused to act.
 
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.

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE - Becoming Frances Perkins
• CHAPTER TWO - Becoming American Immigration Law
• CHAPTER THREE - Becoming Nazi Germany
• CHAPTER FOUR - Charge Bonds Controversy
• CHAPTER FIVE - Child Refugees
• CHAPTER SIX - Resolution to Impeach Frances Perkins
• CHAPTER SEVEN - Dear Miss Perkins
• CHAPTER EIGHT - Alaska
• CHAPTER NINE - The Transfer of the INS from the Labor Department to the Justice Department
• CHAPTER TEN - The Trapp Family Singers
• CHAPTER ELEVEN - Remembering the Holocaust in the U.S.
• CHAPTER TWELVE - Remembering American Immigration Law
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Remembering Frances Perkins
• AFTERWORD - Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind American Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany, 1933–1940
• Acknowledgments
• Notes