Dec. 16 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden on Monday will sign a proclamation establishing a national monument in Maine honoring Frances Perkins, the first woman to sit in the presidential Cabinet who was responsible for many of today's social safety nets.
Perkins was the "leading architect" behind the successful "New Deal" policies and led many labor and economic reforms "that we continue to build on today" to benefit Americans, the White House said in a release.
"Honoring Frances Perkins with a national monument does more than acknowledge her work to establish Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage and overtime pay, it is a challenge for us," Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said in a statement.
Biden will sign a presidential proclamation designating the Frances Perkins National Monument in Newcastle to honor the historic contributions of the first woman Cabinet secretary and the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of Labor appointed in 1933 by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The new national monument will encompass the 57 acres of the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark site in the small Lincoln County town where she spent her childhood summers and frequently returned to rest throughout her ground-breaking career. The 2.3-acre homestead area was donated to the National Park Service. It's reserved as part of the new monument which will include the Perkins' family home, a barn, gardens, and other parts of the property.
Perkins is best known for leading the creation of Social Security and helping millions of Americans get back to work during the Great Depression. She fought for the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Perkins also established the minimum wage, overtime pay, prohibitions on child labor and unemployment insurance.
"We must all remember that the gains we enjoy today were not gifts, they were hard-fought victories because Frances Perkins dared to believe that workers should thrive and not just survive," Su said.
Perkins died in May 1965 aged 85. Her grandson says Perkins "made the world a better place" and that her work was guided by values she learned in the Maine community.
"While she is a figure of incredible historical importance, to me she was my grandmother and I treasured the time that we had together," Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, the late secretary's grandson, told Bangor Daily News. "I'm so proud that she is being honored by President Biden and her contribution is being recognized with a national monument."
The announcement of the new monument came the same day U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland was set to unveil five new National Historic Landmarks to increase the representation of women's history in historic sites across the nation in the nation's capital, South Carolina, New Mexico and Virginia.
When Roosevelt chose his group of advisors in 1993, he announced he selected Perkins because of her abilities in an appointment which received bitter criticism from William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, who said at the time labor never could be "reconciled" to the choice of a woman.
The Biden administration has invested more than $40 million to restore and support sites that recognize and elevate the stories of women who have shaped American history.
The Frances Perkins monument will represent Biden's 13th use of the Antiquities Act of 1906 and his fourth new national monument. Other designations under Biden include the creation of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, the Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument and more recently the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania.
