WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has signed a proclamation establishing a national monument honoring the late FDR-era Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. Perkins was the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet and was a driving force behind Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that followed the Great Depression. Biden made the announcement Monday at the Department of Labor. The monument will be established in Newcastle, Maine, where Perkins and her family had deep roots. She also was buried there after her death in 1965. Perkins is credited with helping establish the Social Security Act and laws that established workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively.
