Rebecca Brenner Graham received a 2025 Grateful American Book Prize Honorable Mention for Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany. She notes that the recognition underscores the importance of introducing young Americans to Frances Perkins’s career and her stand against bigotry in support of refugees. In this interview, Graham reflects on Perkins’s enduring legacy and its relevance to current U.S. policy.

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You wrote Dear Miss Perkins while working full-time as a high school teacher. How did teaching shape the way you structured the story and chose what to emphasize for middle-grade readers?

One day when I was writing Dear Miss Perkins while working as a high school teacher, I noticed a twelfth grader walking around carrying a copy of A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell. I thought to myself that I hoped that my narrative nonfiction, too, would be accessible and engaging to young readers like this student.

Dear Miss Perkins is structured into “Becoming” (Frances Perkins, American Immigration Law, and Nazi Germany); the crux of the story in chapters four through ten; and “Remembering” (the Holocaust, American Immigration Law, and Frances Perkins). The three Becoming chapters provide background and context that is necessary to understand the main story, assuming audiences – especially middle-grade readers – might not already know it. Becoming Frances Perkins explores Mount Holyoke College, Hull House, and New York’s influences on the woman who became FDR’s Secretary of Labor. Becoming American Immigration Law explains the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Immigration Act of 1917, and the National Origins Act of 1924. Becoming Nazi Germany traces the growth of the Nazi Party, its failed coup in 1923, the effects of the Great Depression in 1929, and Germany’s presidential election of 1932, transitioning to open chapter four with what otherwise might have been the beginning of the story: the Roosevelt administration began fewer than two months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, quickly noting an influx of immigration applications from Jewish people trying to leave Germany.

The three Remembering chapters engage one of my favorite classroom conversations from when I was a high school teacher: where does this new information and interpretation fit into what we thought we already knew about it? Remembering the Holocaust traces the history of remembering the Holocaust in the United States from the end of the Roosevelt administration through the twenty-first century. Remembering American Immigration Law explains the development of false assumptions that the United States was always welcoming to immigrants. Remembering Frances Perkins explores how she faded from collective memory after the Roosevelt administration, until a combination of the founding of the Frances Perkins Center and the publication of journalist Kirstin Downey’s The Woman Behind the New Deal began to revive her in 2009.

While the middle seven chapters are more standard for narrative nonfiction, both including whole chapters for background and context and including whole chapters for situating the new story into what we thought we knew emerged directly from teaching high school students.

Your book spotlights Frances Perkins’s efforts to aid refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. What drew you to this chapter of her life, and what did you learn in your research that you think most readers don’t know?

In spring 2014, when I was a junior at Mount Holyoke College, I was looking for a summer internship. I received an email from the Mount Holyoke Career Development Center with a subject line, “Paid American History Internship in Washington, DC.” The opportunity was to organize the research of author Kirstin Downey who lived outside Washington, DC, for donation to a combination of the Frances Perkins Center in Newcastle, Maine, and the Mount Holyoke Archives. While organizing Kirstin’s research, she would kindly stop by and talk with me, especially while she was having her kitchen redone. She told me about a series of letters at the National Archives in College Park Maryland: people from throughout Perkins’s life and career writing to her on behalf of family and friends trying to leave Nazi Germany. These letters, which mostly began “Dear Miss Perkins,” were the starting point for my book on this lesser-known chapter of Perkins’s tenure.

After the incomprehensible tragedy of the Holocaust, many Americans assumed either that the United States government did not have enough information to offer refuge to Jewish Europeans, or even more commonly, that they did not want to help. This story of one woman in a position of authority who desperately wanted to help illuminates the enormity of social forces and structural barriers stacked against aiding refugees. These obstacles prevented the Secretary of Labor, even though the Immigration Naturalization Service (INS) was in her department from 1933 through 1940, from offering refuge in most cases.

The Grateful American Book Prize aims to engage readers in grades 7–9 with American history. What kinds of conversations do you hope Dear Miss Perkins sparks in classrooms or at home—especially about what it means to stand up for others?

Sections of Dear Miss Perkins are primed to teach about the American social history of her lifetime from 1880 to 1965, the history of American immigration law from 1882 to 1965, and the history of American responses to the Holocaust. I would hope for all three topics to spark conversations about individual versus collective action. Despite powerful structural opposition, the actions of an individual mattered to individuals who benefited from her compassionate approach to immigration policy.

What social forces and structural barriers did she face? How did an individual still make a difference? Why are collective action and structural reform necessary to enable more people to create positive change? I would then expect young readers to generate ideas about building individual care and generosity into government structures through law and reform, just like Frances Perkins.

Ultimately, I hope that these conversations prompt students to reflect on their own actions, ethics, and values.

In your statement about the Grateful American Book Prize honorable mention, you highlighted Perkins’s fight against American bigotry in support of refugees. How did you approach writing about prejudice and moral courage in a way that’s honest, age-appropriate, and emotionally accessible?

I suspect that most people who work with teenagers have found that in many cases, they are more inclined toward moral courage than adults. A colleague sometimes would joke “what chaos will adults create today,” also known as “what crises will adults manufacture today,” which was ironic because we were working in a school to serve children. But children have a strong sense of right and wrong that the world has not diminished yet. As a result, while drafting parts of Dear Miss Perkins, I would imagine that I was speaking directly with my students. I aimed to access their inherent sense of justice and passion for doing what is right for no more complicated reason than it is the right thing to do.

Frances Perkins is often remembered for her broader public service legacy. After writing this book, how would you describe the “Frances Perkins” you most want young readers to meet—and why does that version matter now?

Beneath her signature tricorn hat, pearls, and less-than-revealing primary sources, Frances Perkins was an emotional, dynamic, astute observer and participant in historical events throughout her lifetime and career. She was a thirty-year-old who witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, who decades later, became a distinguished Cabinet Secretary and always kept in mind that vulnerable people asking for help needed support before it was too late. Perhaps her rarest quality was an ability to care about and act on behalf of people outside of her immediate orbit. She did not need to meet them in person to care about people in need.

Many of the policies Frances Perkins helped shape—such as labor protections and social welfare programs—continue to influence public life today. In what ways do you see her ideas and leadership reflected in modern policy debates, and where do you think her legacy is most clearly felt now?

Based on her memoir about the president, The Roosevelt I Knew, Perkins would likely see her three foremost accomplishments as Secretary of Labor to be the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the Social Security Act of 1935, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. While all imperfect and incomplete, each piece of landmark New Deal legislation transformed American life especially for workers. The NLRA provided legal mechanisms for strikes, labor unions, and collective bargaining. Social Security enabled the government to provide for Americans who cannot support themselves. The FLSA aimed for safer, more manageable workplaces, including limited hours and a minimum wage. These enduring reforms were all on Perkins’s to-do list when she accepted the job.

Immigration policy was not on that list – but it is an area that has continued to affect people’s lives. When Perkins first entered the Department of Labor, a disproportionate amount of its resources was tied up in raiding immigrant communities and deporting people, in a heartless, misguided attempt at protecting American jobs. The onset of the German-Jewish refugee crisis, too, increased the imperative to navigate immigration policy with compassion and empathy.

Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany was published on Tuesday, January 21, 2025, the same day when Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde urged in a post-inauguration prayer service, “May I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President,” on behalf of immigrant families and other vulnerable populations. Her moral clarity and steadfastness reflected the enduring legacy of Frances Perkins.

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Learn more about the writer, teacher, and historian on her website.