A nonprofit preserving the legacy of a crusader for workers’ rights and the nation’s first female Cabinet secretary wants her Maine family homestead declared a national monument.
That goal may be closer than supporters realized.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that President Joe Biden is planning to sign an executive order declaring the Frances Perkins Homestead a national monument, based on interviews with three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
It’s not yet clear when that will happen, the Post reported. A U.S. Department of Interior spokesperson told the Bangor Daily News they had “nothing to share” Thursday.
The news coincided with the Thursday launch of the Frances Perkins Center’s campaign to win national monument status for the property, which includes a brick house and barns on 57 acres along the Damariscotta River in Newcastle.
The nonprofit is collecting signatures for a petition urging Biden to use his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to declare the homestead a national monument. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark on Aug. 25, 2014.
“We have an opportunity to create a new national monument honoring one of the most influential women in US history, right here in Maine,” said Giovanna Gray Lockhart, executive director of the Frances Perkins Center.
Perkins was the country’s first female Cabinet secretary. She served as labor secretary under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Perkins played a critical role in reshaping labor law in the United States, particularly banning child labor, creating Social Security, unemployment insurance and a minimum wage, and instituting a 40-hour workweek.
Before ascending to the national stage, Perkins was an advocate for workers’ rights and served on the commission that investigated the deadly 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 workers, many of whom were young women and some of whom jumped several floors to their deaths to escape the flames.
The building had only one fire escape, which collapsed during efforts to rescue the workers, and managers had locked the doors inside to prevent theft but also prevented workers from escaping.
Lockhart said in an interview the campaign to make the homestead a national monument began only in recent months and that “the time is right” to tell Perkins’ story to even more visitors. The designation would not result in a vast amount of changes to the existing site, Lockhart said, but it would bring the iconic arrowhead emblem of the National Park Service to Perkins’ homestead.
“Everything she touched and everything she believed in is really still relevant today,” Lockhart said.
Young girls and women also take plenty of inspiration and lessons from visiting the homestead, Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, said.
“We fully expect people who are visiting and maybe going up to Acadia [National Park] to take a look at the Frances Perkins Homestead and stop by and learn about her,” Brengel added.
The campaign has support from various Maine politicians, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, independent U.S. Sen. Angus King and state Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, who sits on the center’s board.
King praised Perkins for her deep devotion to workers’ rights, noting she played a pivotal role in the New Deal era, “truly a historic moment in time for the nation.”
“Frances Perkins made her home in Maine. She was a trailblazer, the first female presidential Cabinet member, the mother of the modern labor movement, and a pioneering advocate for social justice, economic security, and workers’ rights,” Pingree said Thursday.
In a July 31 letter to Biden obtained by the Post, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said a national monument designation would ensure Perkins’ legacy and accomplishments are “recognized and celebrated.”
“Maine is honored to count Frances Perkins as one of our own, and we would be honored to have a new national monument in her honor,” Mills wrote.
