Frances Perkins – Women’s History Month
Written by Robyn Andrews
The Americans and the Holocaust exhibit on the lower level of the Duke Library examines sentiment in America during that time and it doesn’t always show us in the best light. But one of the people who had a tremendous impact on America’s response to the Holocaust was the FIRST woman to hold a position in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, before Ellen Sullivan Woodward – it was Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins.
The first woman appointed to a U.S. Presidential cabinet, Frances Perkins is sometimes called the architect of the New Deal and is known for our social safety programs – Social Security, a federal minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, unemployment compensation and the abolition of child labor.
What people may not know is that Frances Perkins was behind the loosening of immigration rules and quotas to allow more immigrants from Germany to enter the United States to escape from the Nazi rule of Adolf Hitler.
Despite the growing refugee crisis after the rise of Nazism, Roosevelt did not ask Congress to reconsider the quota system that limited immigration. Because the Immigration Service was within the Department of Labor at that time, Perkins got creative.
By 1937, her efforts admitted over 50,000 immigrants for permanent residency, two-thirds of whom were Jews and over 230,000 foreign ‘visitors.’ Perkins persuaded Roosevelt to allow approximately 12,000 people who were born in Germany and who were in the United States on temporary visitors’ visas, to remain in the country indefinitely – most of these people were Jews.
After Germany annexed Austria, Frances Perkins came up with the idea of combining US immigration quotas for Germany and Austria to give greater immigration opportunities to Austrian Jews, increasing the maximum number of visas issued to 27,370 per year for immigrants born in those countries. But it was hardly enough as nearly 140,000 people were still on the German quota waiting list for US immigration visas, estimated to be years-long.
In 1936, Frances Perkins’ interest in aiding immigrants led to an antisemitic rumor that she was hiding a secret identity and was actually a Jewish immigrant born as Matilda Wutzki. Perkins called it “un-American propaganda” and an “appeal to racial prejudice.” Nevertheless, she issued a public statement: “If I were a Jewess I would make no secret of it. On the contrary, I would be proud to acknowledge it.”
Between 1933 and 1945, between 180,000 and 225,000 refugees entered the United States, the majority of whom arrived during Perkins’ tenure as Secretary of Labor.
I encourage you to visit the Americans and the Holocaust exhibit – it won’t be comfortable, but it’s important to remember the challenges our country has faced when making decisions on how to be the best global citizen we can be.