Mick Caouette

In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins as the first woman on a presidential cabinet. Against overwhelming odds, she became the driving force behind Social Security, the 40-hour work week, the eight-hour day, minimum wage and unemployment compensation. Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare features compelling interviews with David Brooks, Nancy Pelosi, Amy Klobuchar, Lawrence O’Donnell and others while telling Perkin’s heroic story which explores the history of women in politics, Social Security, our attitudes toward immigration, poverty, Socialism, and the role of government. Without this context our current dialogue is ill-informed and diminished.

For the last half of the 20th century, America was consumed by two struggles: the civil rights movement and the cold war. For 30 years, Hubert Humphrey stood at the center of both. As a soldier of the New Deal and the Great Society, he amassed one of the most prolific legislative records in senate history, sponsoring hundreds of billsfrom Medicare to the Peace Corps to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall's triumph in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate America's public schools completed the final leg of a journey of over 20 years laying the groundwork to end legal segregation. He won more Supreme Court cases than any lawyer in American history, making the work of civil rights pioneers like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks possible.