04-10/11/1995 Women of Achievement and Herstory 

      MY weekend double-header ...

      B. 04-10-1880, Francis Perkins*, first woman member of a US
Presidential cabinet; was secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt
1933-45.  Attempts to impeach her were thinly disguised disgruntles
that the job should have gone to a man. 
      Perkins had conducted an influential survey of New York's
notorious Hell's Kitchen district while completing work on her master's
degree from Columbia.   
      In 1918 she received an appointment to New York State's
Industrial Commission and named to head the board in 1926 and
remained head of the board when Franklin Delano Roosevelt became
governor.  (She had been an eye-witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
of 1911 that killed 146 workers, mostly young girls who jumped out of
third and fourth story windows rather than be burned alive.  The
management had locked exit doors that the women could have used to
escape to prevent stealing.)
      Her nomination of Secretary of Labor in 1933 was vehemently
opposed by Republicans who said the job should have gone to a man
and all during her administration she was violently opposed by
Republicans and conservatives both because she was a woman and pro-
labor.
      She was instrumental in writing many acts for reform including
the Social Security Act (1935), and the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938),
as well as early legislation actions which were aimed at halting the
Great Depression. She reorganized the Bureau of Labor Statistics and
the Women's Bureau.
      She was known to have opposed several actions regarding
women's rights including the ERA, but some see it as a defense against
revelations regarding her personal life as a lesbian.  
      She had been influenced early in life by Florence Kelley and
worked at Jane Addams' Hull House.  She was acquainted, although not
known to be particularly close to Eleanor Roosevelt before her
appointment to FDR's cabinet through the noted Heterodoxy network in
New York City to which many of the prominent women of the day were
either members or friends of members.  
      She resigned her cabinet post in 1945 after the death of Franklin
Roosevelt.

04-10 Anniversaries ...............................................

      B. 04-10-1850, Fanny Davenport, English actress and manager of
her own theater company.

      Event 04-10-1862, the New York state legislature (while people's
attention was centered on the Civil War) *took away* a mother's right
of equal guardianship over her children and the control of minor
children's person and property on the husband's death that had been
granted for the FIRST TIME in history a few years before.  Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, who had campaigned for the reform, succeeded in having
it reinstated soon afterwards. 

      Event 04-10-1960, Women are ordained as pastors in Sweden's
Evangelical Lutheran Church for the first time in that church's history.

      Event 04-10-1970, New York State legislature passed into law
unrestricted abortion rights during the first six months of pregnancy.

04-11 Anniversaries ...............................................

      B. 04-11-1865, Mary White Ovington, white woman who helped
found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), served as chair of its board from 1919-1932 and became its
treasurer.  Acting many times as a mediator between factions within the
organization, she found herself in later years at odds with W. E. B. Du
Bois who favored limited integration while Ovington favored full
integration and was active in the fight for school desegregation. She
wrote several books on black leaders and several novels. 

      Event: 04-11-1953, Oveta Culp Hobby is sworn in as Secretary of
Health, Education, and Welfare as the second woman to ever hold a U.S.
President's cabinet post. 


(C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there
weren't notable and effective women throughout history.  They were
always there, but historians failed to note them in our histories so that
each generation of women has had to reinvent themselves.