Congress, the play was directed by or sun wells. On the Opening Night in 1936, 10,000 people crowded the streets of harlem in preferred to score a ticket. We were a discouraged people. Because we were the first to lose our jobs when the old man depression came along. The struggle while depression fear and failure stop the nation. A tenth of the population of the United States went out of every four of us was in vain we sought for something to restore our confidence, our whole our courage. Without jobs we had no money. Without money if we could not purchase food for the hungry mouths at home. Our only hope late and charity. It youll wear people to the bread lines. We waited for some sign of better days. Then came the federal governments work program. One by one, it took us out of the bread land and gave us a new chance to take a normal place in the life of our community. It made a self supportive. It changed the haggard hopeless faces of the bread line into face is filled with hope and
Now this is a self selecting crowd. I know some of you already know who Frances Perkins is, but a lot of people dont. So, lets start by asking this question. How many of you know who Frances Perkins is . Oh, yes. This is great. Good, good, good. How about this . How many of you know someone on Social Security . Please raise your hand. How many of you know someone who is receiving Unemployment Insurance or who has ever received Unemployment Compensation . How many of you know someone working a 40hour week . More or less. Frances pirngs work. How many of you know a 12yearold who has quit going to school so she can work fulltime in a factory . Frances perkins work, her ban on child labor enacted in the fair standards act made it possible to keep kids in School Longer instead of in mills and factories. Its awfully noisy here. I want to talk more so you know about the breadth of Frances Perkins accomplishments. A middleaged woman waited expectantly to meet with her employer at his residence
Supposed to be a test at the end. The title of my talk on which i forgot until jamie just mentioned is the unknown aaron burr. Im going to tell you what i read a book about aaron burr. The title of my book is called the heartbreak of aaron burr. I cant tell you the whole story without giving away the ending. I dont want to give away the ending because its not just that i want you to buy the book and read the book and enjoy it and hang around till the end, but it has to do with the reason i wrote the book in the first place. This goes back to my experience of writing, my experience of reading and in particular, my experience of listening to a question that my mother has een put into me for the last 23 or 24 years. And the question i would get to in a moment. But it goes to the heart of why people wait and why people read. I teach history at the university of texas. I also teach writing. I teach writing to graduate students bear the graduate students in my writing seminar also completed
And we didnt have a car. So, ive been in this uniform for almost seven days. Havent taken a shower or a bath in seven days. I was dead tired. So, i asked my mother, i said first of all, i said, ive got to take a bath. I said, can you press my uniform for me . I showed her how to do it because in the navy, you fold your clothes inside out, you make inside creases. I went upstairs and took a bath. Didnt have a shower. Put on new, clean underwear out of my seabag. And then my mother finished pressing my uniform. And i got dressed and we went to church. I was one of the first ones back. Of the serviceman. I went down to church. It was good to be home. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] youre watching American History tv, 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter csp anhistory for our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. You