Via Zoom and In-Person Monday, November 20, 2023 @ 6:00 pm EST
A discussion of the women who supported Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins in their pathbreaking endeavors to rescue the nation and create a better future. The panel will feature preeminent Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook and Roosevelt House historian Deborah Gardner, and will be moderated by professor emerita of American history at Columbia University Alice Kessler-Harris.
When Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins went to Washington in March 1933, they did so with the support of millions of women who had voted for FDR’s promise of a “New Deal”. As Labor Secretary, Perkins launched some of the New Deal’s most consequential programs, which the First Lady then promoted in her speeches and columns. Those initiatives included the Civilian Conservation Corps, Social Security, minimum wage, worker’s compensation, unemployment insurance, and a ban on child labor.
Blanche Wiesen Cook (’62) is Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center, and former vice-president for research at the American Historical Association. Her definitive three-volume award-winning biography of Eleanor Roosevelt was called “monumental and inspirational…[a] grand biography” by the New York Times.
Deborah Gardner has served as the Roosevelt House Historian and Curator since 2010. She is an expert on the history of the Roosevelts in New York and their New Deal associates, among them Frances Perkins, and has curated numerous exhibits on Roosevelt history. She is an active member of the New York City chapter of the Living New Deal.
Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History at Columbia University, Professor Emerita in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and former president of the Organization of American Historians, specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender. In 2020, she was honored with the “Intelligence and Courage Award” from the Frances Perkins Center.
Join us for a discussion of interracial experiments and activism that influenced New Deal programs. Victoria Wolcott, winner of the 2022 New Deal Book Award will be joined in conversation by Kimberley Johnson, NYU Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis. They will discuss Wolcott's deeply researched book, Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, and the little-known histories of American utopian activism that inspired the Civil Rights Movement and the activists who dreamed of a better world and fought to build it. REGISTER for the free Zoom event.
Victoria Wolcott is professor of History at the University of Buffalo, and director of the university’s Gender Institute. Her fields of specialty include 20th century United States History; African American History; Gender and Sexuality; Social and Cultural History; and Urban History. She is the newest member of the New Deal Book award review committee.
Kimberley Johnson is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Johnson’s research focuses on American and urban political development, urban and local politics, and race and ethnic politics. Johnson chairs the New Deal Book Award review committee and is a member of the Living New Deal Research Advisory Board.
The Living New Deal documents the vast legacy the New Deal (1933-1942) left to America
and the spirit of public service that inspired it.
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Victoria Wolcott is professor of History at the University of Buffalo, and director of the university’s Gender Institute. Her fields of specialty include 20th century United States History; African American History; Gender and Sexuality; Social and Cultural History; and Urban History. She is the newest member of the New Deal Book award review committee.
Kimberley Johnson is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Johnson’s research focuses on American and urban political development, urban and local politics, and race and ethnic politics. Johnson chairs the New Deal Book Award review committee and is a member of the Living New Deal Research Advisory Board.