Educational Media Reviews Online

This documentary weaves together historical footage with dramatic reenactment by actress Frances Sternhagen as Frances Perkins (1880-1965), suffragette, cabinet minister under Governor Al Smith and Secretary of Labor under President Roosevelt. The text for Perkins’ words comes from interviews conducted with her in the early 1950s for the Columbia University Oral History Collection. As such, this work conveys her role in what most take for granted today—workman’s compensation, unemployment insurance, child labor laws and her signature piece of social legislation, the Social Security Act.

Known for her direct, New England manner coupled with a strong conviction of social justice based in Christian values, Perkins suffered as much for her gender as for her unpopular attitudes towards labor and the poor, who were usually credited with drunkenness as the root of their economic misery. In cabinet meetings, she was found to be honest and forthright, speaking directly to an issue without unnecessary verbiage. Yet, she was not a media darling. Further, she was hounded with impeachment for not deporting a communist sympathizer (who also coincidentally happened to be the head of the longshoreman’s union on the West Coast). Yet, one of the highest pieces of praise accorded her was, “She had a man’s brain.”

While a rather plodding presentation, this work does make available for those who are interested in labor history and social justice movements in America a name that deserves to be remembered not simply because she was a woman, but because Frances Perkins was a force for profound and long-lasting social change in America.