On March 4, 1933, Frances Perkins was sworn in as the 4th Secretary of Labor. It was the first time in United States history that a woman served in the Cabinet, only 13 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Perkins came into office with a long list of to-do items, and she succeeded in accomplishing nearly all of them in her long tenure, as a central architect of many of the programs of the New Deal, especially the Social Security Act. More quietly, but no less importantly, Perkins also worked to institute more humane policies around immigration, especially as the rise of Nazism in Europe created a refugee crisis of Jews attempting to flee to the US. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham, a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University and author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins: Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The additional audio is from a radio address of America’s Town Meeting of the Air from December 19, 1935, titled “Should We Plan for Social Security,” in which Frances Perkins defends the new legislation; the audio is available on the Social Security Administration website, and there is no known copyright. The mid-episode music is “Minimal Piano” by Sakartvelo from Pixabay, free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is Frances Perkins, c. 1935-1936. Courtesy Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections

Additional Sources:

• “Who Was Frances Perkins? Meet the Trailblazing Workers’ Rights Advocate Whose Homestead Just Became a National Monument,” by Sarah Kuta, The Smithsonian Magazine, December 19, 2024.
• “The Woman Behind the New Deal,” The Frances Perkins Center.
• “Frances Perkins,” Social Security History, the Social Security Administration.
• “Frances Perkins became the First Female Cabinet Member,” Library of Congress.
• “Frances Perkins: Breaking Glass Ceilings in the Cabinet,” by Rebecca Brenner Graham, The White House Historical Association.
• “Frances Perkins,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
• “A Proclamation on the Establishment of the Frances Perkins National Monument,” The White House, December 16, 2024.

On June 15, 1933, the all-white, all-male Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Florence Price’s award-winning Symphony Number 1 in E minor, the first institution of its caliber to play the work of a Black woman composer. It was a monumental achievement, but not one that Price achieved alone. She was supported by a sisterhood of Black women who created an environment in Chicago in which composers and performers like Price and Margaret Bonds could find success. Joining me in this episode is musicologist and concert pianist Dr. Samantha Ege, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and author of South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Dr. Samantha Ege performing Nora Holt’s Negro Dance, composed in 1921; the composition is in the public domain, and the recording is used with the permission of Dr. Ege. The episode image is a portrait of Florence Price, circa 1940, taken by George Nelidoff; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “Now Hear This ‘Florence Price and the American Migration’ [video],” PBS with host Scott Yoo, April 15, 2022.
• “About Florence,” International Florence Price Festival.
• “How Women of the Chicago Black Renaissance Changed Classical Music Around the World,” by Stephen Raskauskas, WFMT, April 10, 2018.
• “The Curious Case of ‘Naughty Little Nora,’ a Jazz Age Shape Shifter,” By Samantha Ege, The New York Times, November 12, 2024.
• “Nora Holt: The Most Famous Woman You've Never Heard of,” by Imani Perry, The Atlantic, December 1, 2021.
• “Maude Roberts George facts for kids,” Kiddle Encyclopedia.
• “A trailblazing Black, female composer’s work is revived by Opera Philadelphia,” by Peter Crimmins, WHYY, January 31, 2023.
• “Margaret Bonds: Composer and Activist,” Georgetown University Library Booth Family Center for Special Collections.
• “History of NANM,” National Association of Negro Musicians.
• “125 Moments: 072 Price’s Symphony in E Minor,” Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
• “The Rediscovery of Florence Price: How an African-American composer’s works were saved from destruction,” by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, January 29, 2018.
• “The Chicago Black Renaissance is Harlem’s radical counterpart,” by Crystal Hill, The TRiiBE, February 10, 2022.

As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, life became increasingly hostile for women scientists, especially women of Jewish descent, but also those who expressed anti-Nazi sentiments. The sexism in academic that had held them back in their careers also made escape from Germany difficult, as they didn’t look as strong on paper as their male counterparts. But four women physicists – Hertha Sponer, Hildegard Stücklen, Hedwig Kohn, and Lise Meitner – managed to flee, taking their scientific knowledge and rugged determination with them to the United States and Sweden. Joining me in this episode is writer Olivia Campbell, author of the forthcoming book, Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Classical Piano (Sad & Emotional)” by Clavier Clavier from Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Hedwig Kohn in her laboratory, 1912;” the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Timeline of the Holocaust: 1933-1945,” Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles.
• “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service,” Holocaust Encyclopedia.
• “Albert Einstein’s Little-Known Correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois About Equality and Racial Justice,” by Maria Popova, The Marginalian.
• “Hertha Sponer,” Duke University Department of Physics.
• “Dr. Slucklen Retires In September,” Sweet Briar News, Volume 29, Number 24, 16 May 1956.
• “Hedwig Kohn, April 5, 1887–1964,” by Brenda P. Winnewisser, Jewish Women’s Archive.
• “Interview of Hedwig Kohn by Thomas S. Kuhn on 1962 June 7,” Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,College Park, MD, USA.
• “Google Honors Pioneering Physicist Hedwig Kohn Who Fled Nazi Germany,” by Madeline Roache, Time Magazine, April 5, 2019.
• “Lise Meitner,” Atomic Heritage Foundation.
• “Lise Meitner – the forgotten woman of nuclear physics who deserved a Nobel Prize,” by Timothy J. Jorgensen, The Conversation, February 7, 2019.
• “Why the ‘Mother of the Atomic Bomb’ Never Won a Nobel Prize,” by Katrina Miller, The New York Times, Originally published October 2, 2023, and updated November 8, 2023.

As the federal workforce grew during the Civil War, department heads began employing women, without any explicit authorization from Congress that they could do so. When Congress finally acknowledged the employment of women in federal departments in 1864, it set their salary at $600 a year, half of what the lowest-paid men clerks were making. Surprisingly, though, a few years later Congress debated – and nearly passed – a resolution requiring equal pay for women employed by the federal government, something that wouldn’t become law for nearly another century. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Jessica Ziparo McHugh, author of This Grand Experiment: When Women Entered the Federal Workforce in Civil War-Era Washington, D.C.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “I Love the Ladies,” composed by Jean Schwartz, with lyrics by Grant Clarke, and performed by William J. Halley on May 18, 1914, in Camden, New Jersey; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Among the Greenbacks – The Cutting and Separating Room the Treasury Building – Washington,” from Ten Years in Washington: Life and Scenes in the National Capitol, as a Woman Sees Them, by Mary Clemmer Ames, 1873.

Additional Sources:

• “History: A legacy of service to the Nation since 1861,” The U.S. Government Publishing Office.
• “History of the Treasury,” U.S. Department of the Treasury.
• “Behind the Scenes in Washington: Being a Complete and Graphic Account of the Credit Mobilier Investigation, the Congressional Rings, Political Intrigues, Workings of the Lobbies, Etc. ... with Sketches of the Leading Senators, Congressmen, Government Officials, Etc., and an Accurate Description of the Splendid Public Buildings of the Federal Capital,” by James Dabney McCabe, Continental Publishing Company, 1873.
• “Gendered Merit: Women and the Merit Concept in Federal Employment, 1864-1944,” by Cathryn L. Claussen, 40 Am. J. Legal Hist. 229 (1996).
• “FACT SHEET: On Equal Pay Day, the Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Actions to Continue Advancing Pay Equity and Women’s Economic Security,” The White House, March 12, 2024.

Plantation owners in the Southern United States regularly furnished their enslaved workers with goods – clothing, shoes, axes, and shovels, that had been manufactured in the North. Many Northern manufacturers specifically targeted the Southern plantation market, enticed by the prospect of selling cheap goods on a regular schedule. While in some cases the Northern manufacturers supported surprising politics – joining the Republican Party and donating to Abolitionist causes – they had no qualms about making their money in an industry adjacent to the slave economy. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History at Brown University and author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Relaxing Enchanted Piano” by Mikhail Smusev from Pixabay and is used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Brogans, Manufacturer Little & Co., third quarter 19th century,” Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Herman Delman, 1955; image is in the public domain.

Additional sources:

• “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation,” by Matthew Desmond, The New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019.
• “Industrialization and Conflict in America: 1840–1875,” by David Jaffee, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
• “8. The Market Revolution,” The American Yawp.
• “Industry and Economy during the Civil War,” by Benjamin T. Arrington, National Park Service.
• “In search of slave clothes: A museum director’s hunt for a painful symbol,” by J. Freedom du Lac, The Washington Post, January 20, 2012.
• “Antebellum Tariff Politics: Regional Coalitions and Shifting Economic Interests,” by Douglas A. Irwin, The Journal of Law & Economics 51, no. 4 (2008): 715–41.

In 1879, a group of Spiritualists purchased 20 acres of land, halfway between Buffalo, New York, and Erie, Pennsylvania. The gated community they created, now a hamlet of Pomfret, New York, became known as Lily Dale. Each summer, people came to Lily Dale (and still come) to speak with the dead through Lily Dale’s many licensed mediums. In its early years, modern Spiritualism, which began with the young Fox sisters (Maggie and Kate), often intersected with Women’s Suffrage, and suffragists like Susan B. Anthony were frequent visitors to Lily Dale. Joining me in this episode to help us understand more about Lily Dale and Spiritualism more generally is Dr. Averill Earls, Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College, Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast, and one of the authors of Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Night Whisper,” by by Sergio Prosvirini, Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photograph of “The Lily Dale Museum,” by Plazak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• Lily Dale Assembly
• “In Good Spirits: Lily dale, New York, is a curious little village where the still-quick commune with the once-quick,” by Bil Gilbert, Smithsonian Magazine, May 31, 2001.
• “Lily Dale, the Town That Speaks to the Dead,” by Bess Lovejoy, Mental Floss, August 26, 2015.
• “This Community Welcomes Mediums, but First You Have to Prove Yourself,” By Anna Kodé, The New York Times, October 27, 2023.
• “The Art of Belief: On Talking to the Dead in Lily Dale,” by Laura Maylene Walter, LitHib, March 23, 2021.
• “In the Joints of Their Toes,” by Edward White, The Paris Review, November 4, 2016.
• “The Mystery of the Three Fox Sisters,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, Psychic Science, October 1922.
• “The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism,” by Abbott Kahler, Smithsonian Magazine, October 30, 2012.
• National Spiritualist Association of Churches.

Isabel Truesdell Kelly earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932, with a dissertation on the “Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture,” having researched the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. After graduating she led excavations in Mexico and then began a career as an anthropologist with the US State Department, which had a growing interest in assisting the scientific and technological development of countries like Mexico as a way of maintaining a toehold in the region during the growing cold war with the Soviet Union. Joining me this week is Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman, Professor of History at Georgia College, and author of Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly and Rural Development in Mexico.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Hermoso Mexico,” composed by R. Herrera, arranged and conducted by Guillermo González and performed by Banda González (Victor Band) on May 16, 1919, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Isabel T. Kelly portrait,” DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

Additional Sources:

• “Isabel T. Kelly Ethnographic Archive,” Southern Methodist University (SMU) Libraries.
• “Isabel Truesdell Kelly,” The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
• “Isabel T. Kelly's Southern Paiute Ethnographic Field Notes, 1932-1934, Las Vegas,” compiled and edited by Catherine S. Fowler and Darla Garey-Sage, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
• “Isabel T. Kelly: Pioneer Great Basin Ethnographer,” by Catherine S. Fowler, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 36, no. 1 (2016): 172–76..
• “With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology,” by Nicole M. Herzog and Suzanne Eskenazi, University of Utah Press, 2020.

At the end of August 1787, after three long months of debate and deliberation, the Constitutional Convention had neared the end of its work. They were poised at that time to write into the Constitution that the President of the United States would be elected by the legislature, but at the last minute they referred the matter to the Committee on Unfinished Parts to resolve. It was that committee, guided by future president James Madison, that drafted a compromise Electors plan, answering the concerns of the small states and slave states who wanted to keep the advantages they held in the legislature but also, theoretically at least, avoiding the corruption likely in a system where the legislative branch chooses the chief executive. Of course, it didn’t take long for political actors – including some of the founders themselves – to find ways to exploit the system of Electors for their own ends. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Carolyn Renee Dupont, professor in history at Eastern Kentucky University and author of Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College--And Why It Matters Today.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Three Little Drummers from the George Washington Show,” by The United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps,” performed by the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps on April 11, 2011; the audio is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode artwork is “Signing of the United States Constitution with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton (left to right in the foreground),” painting by Howard Chandler Christy; image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Constitutional Convention and Ratification, 1787–1789,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.
• “Electoral College History,” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “Article II Executive Branch,” National Constitution Center.
• “12th Amendment: Election of President and Vice President,” National Constitution Center.
• “10 reasons why America’s first constitution failed,” by NCC Staff, National Constitution Center, November 17, 2022.
• “Why Was the Electoral College Created?” by Dave Roos, History.com, Originally posted July 15, 2019, and updated October 7, 2024.
• “How the Electoral College Became Winner-Take-All,” by Devin Mccarthy, Fair Vote, August 21, 2012.
• “Letter from James Madison to George Hay explaining views on Electoral College,” August 23, 1823.
• “Federalist No. 68,” Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History, Library of Congress.