Democracy Awakens
An all-encompassing history, Democracy Awakening is by Heather Cox Richardson, mid-coast Maine resident and professor of history at Boston College. You may already know her by the popular daily blog followed by multitudes. Richardson’s daily newsletter is “Letters From An American.” She has been widely followed on C-SPAN Book TV and scheduled recently for a lecture/panel at the Washington Cathedral.
This book was published in 2023 and is dedicated “[t]o the people who have joined me in exploring the complex relationship between history, humanity, and modern politics — this book is yours as much as it is mine.”
With our 250th celebrations all summer long, I found both Ken Burns back cover praise and Joanne Freeman, Yale professor of history, recommendations helpful. Reading only a few pages, I discovered another Maine woman of note, Frances Perkins. Her family and colonial ancestors spent years in “small town…Maine.” Her education as a social worker made New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory historic fire in 1911 central in her work. “146 workers, mostly young women, leaped to their death from a burning building after their bosses had locked the doors to keep them from sneaking breaks on the fire escapes. The catastrophe inspired Perkins to bring the idea of old-fashioned community responsibility to the government…with their immigrant populations and their unregulated industries.”
Perkins became FDR’s secretary of labor, serving from 1933 to 1945. Not only the longest serving labor secretary in American history, she was also the first woman appointed to a president’s cabinet.
My Menlo Park, CA book group just read The First Ladies, a terrific novel about Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McCloud Bethune, the first black woman to serve on a president’s cabinet. Eleanor’s influence on FDR and her friendship with Mary were beautifully portrayed in this novel.
The Perkins Social Security Act was “for women and children and workers out of a job from unemployment or retirement…Finally, the government invested heavily in infrastructure, bringing to ordinary Americans new opportunities available only to the wealthy.”
Jane Addams Hull House work in Chicago was instructive to Frances Perkins, not only her Maine experience in small town life. Even before women had the right to vote, Perkins was changing fire codes in factories, “but also at long hours, low wages, child labor, overwork, and ‘almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for years,’ as Perkins later recalled.”
Our American history is complex and this 250th gives readers a chance to learn more and gain a love of our country in all its phases.
“Notes on the State of America” begins with Heather Cox Richardson selecting an 1871 Walt Whitman quote from Democratic Vistas: “We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawaken’d.”
Both Whitman and Mary Lincoln spent days and weeks visiting Civil War victims in the many D.C. hospitals. Whitman even watched Lincoln as he rode his horse alone from the White House along Vermont Avenue towards the Soldiers’ Home Cottage in D.C., near the Maryland border, for cooler rest from the heat of the city. Lincoln alone wearing his top hat and Whitman in silence showing respect during a time of division and death.
Frances Perkins has a historic site to visit in Maine. This New Castle area National Monument has 57 acres for hiking and a renovated barn with the Perkins Homestead to explore. I understand one of the book groups at Belgrade Library has been planning a trip there. Wish I could go along with these history buffs, readers of enlightening books.
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