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Rebecca Brenner Graham ’15 is the author of “,” a never-before-told story of Frances Perkins, class of 1902, and her role in saving Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime. In March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Perkins Secretary of Labor, making her the first woman to serve in the presidential Cabinet. As Hitler rose to power, thousands of German-Jewish refugees and their loved ones reached out to the Immigration and Naturalization Service — then part of the Department of Labor — applying for immigration to the United States, writing letters that began “Dear Miss Perkins ….”

Graham was in South Hadley recently to read from her book at the . While in town, she stopped at Frances Perk and discussed the genesis of “Dear Miss Perkins,” MoHome stickers and finding both a future career and a community at Mount Holyoke.

Talk about your journey to studying at ���챬��.

I applied to 10 colleges in fall 2010, with a vague understanding that I wanted a small liberal arts college where students and professors are focused on learning, with classrooms where students can get to know each other and their professors. At the same time, my much younger siblings were 9 years old when I left for college, so proximity to Rhode Island while offering a different geographic landscape were factors in my decision. I also received a Leadership Award scholarship. In retrospect, Mount Holyoke was an ideal fit for me for more reasons than I could have imagined at the time.

I entered Mount Holyoke as a history major, and I added a philosophy major after taking Introduction to Philosophy with Professor Sam Mitchell in fall 2011. My history major was my future career, and my philosophy major was my community.

Is it true “Dear Miss Perkins” was suggested by Frances Perkins’ biographer and later became your senior thesis?

In spring 2014, as a junior looking for a summer internship, I received an email from the Career Development Center with a subject line along the lines of “Paid American History internship in Washington, D.C.” The opportunity was funded by the in Maine, facilitated by the and located at the home of Frances Perkins biographer in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.

The project entailed organizing Downey’s extensive research collection for donation to a combination of the Mount Holyoke Archives and the Frances Perkins Center. I interviewed with Leslie Fields [former MHC archivist] at Mount Holyoke and started the position in early July 2014. While I was organizing the research, Kirstin told me about overflowing boxes of letters to Perkins on behalf of refugees. In early August, she brought me to the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, where these documents are housed, marking my first archival research trip. This research endeavor became my undergraduate honors thesis, advised by Jeremy King in the history department. I pursued a different topic for my Ph.D., but barely a month after defending my dissertation in August 2021, I found myself back on the Frances Perkins refugee policy trail.

What was it like talking about your book at the Odyssey?

[The] Odyssey is a hub of the Mount Holyoke community. So many [alums] are bookish, and [the] Odyssey even sells MoHome stickers. My book talk at [the] Odyssey felt like coming home. I’m so grateful for the staff, especially owner Joan and event manager Robin, for welcoming me and for their work behind the scenes to ensure a successful event. I’ll be back to speak at [the] Odyssey again on May 23, 2025, at 7 pm, as part of my 10-year Reunion Weekend at Mount Holyoke.

What’s next for you?

I moved to Providence last summer for a three-year postdoctoral position at Brown University, coordinating a university-wide set of programs, including curricula and events, to the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of American independence. I’m currently developing a first-year seminar to teach in the fall. It’s called American Revolution in Popular Culture, and I’m writing a book on the same topic. Essentially, the American Girl doll universe overlaps with the “1776” to “Liberty's Kids” to “Hamilton” pipeline in a narrative from 1976 to the present.