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Relentless Reformer: Josephine Roche and Progressivism in Twentieth-Century America
Josephine Roche (1886–1976) was a progressive activist, New Deal policymaker, and businesswoman. As a pro-labor and feminist member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, she shaped the founding legislation of the U.S. welfare state and generated the national conversation about health-care policy that Americans are still having today. In this gripping biography, Robyn Muncy offers Roche’s persistent progressivism as evidence for surprising continuities among the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society.
Muncy explains that Roche became the second-highest-ranking woman in the New Deal government after running a Colorado coal company in partnership with coal miners themselves. Once in office, Roche developed a national health plan that was stymied by World War II but enacted piecemeal during the postwar period, culminating in Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. By then, Roche directed the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund, an initiative aimed at bolstering the labor movement, advancing managed health care, and reorganizing medicine to facilitate national health insurance, one of Roche’s unrealized dreams.
In Relentless Reformer , Muncy uses Roche’s dramatic life story―from her stint as Denver’s first policewoman in 1912 to her fight against a murderous labor union official in 1972―as a unique vantage point from which to examine the challenges that women have faced in public life and to reassess the meaning and trajectory of progressive reform.
Muncy explains that Roche became the second-highest-ranking woman in the New Deal government after running a Colorado coal company in partnership with coal miners themselves. Once in office, Roche developed a national health plan that was stymied by World War II but enacted piecemeal during the postwar period, culminating in Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. By then, Roche directed the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund, an initiative aimed at bolstering the labor movement, advancing managed health care, and reorganizing medicine to facilitate national health insurance, one of Roche’s unrealized dreams.
In Relentless Reformer , Muncy uses Roche’s dramatic life story―from her stint as Denver’s first policewoman in 1912 to her fight against a murderous labor union official in 1972―as a unique vantage point from which to examine the challenges that women have faced in public life and to reassess the meaning and trajectory of progressive reform.
- GenresHistory
440 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
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February 15, 2024
Denver has a street called Josephine, which few know for whom it is named. It's one of my favorite secret histories. Some, in the know, will say she was Denver's first female cop. Which she was. But she was so much more important to all women in America.
Feminism is such a fun concept in that it's adherents fight for equality and it is also used to cause division among those with the same goals. I am a feminist. The kind that is grateful everyday for the Suffragists who got us the vote and birth control, the bra-burners and writers of the 70s who got us into the work force and made abortions legal, the women of the 2000s who declared their bodies their own and their right to do whatever the fuck they wanted, and the women who came forward in the #metoo movement. I believe that men are as harmed by the patriarchy as women, and that LBGTQIA folks deserve the same rights I'm fighting for. I believe taking care of each other and treating each other dignity is not political, it's just right.
And so, Josephine Roche is one of my Heroes. Like, Frances Glessner Lee, Josephine came from money, and like Frances, she used it to benefit others. In her long career, she was Denver's first female cop--Inspector of Amusements--and advocated for female laborers and prostitutes (if in a misguided attempt to help them by sending them to a farm). She helped build the social security administration, ran for Governor of Colorado, unionized her mines, and created a model of hospitals and healthcare for her miners that became the blue print for Medicare and Medicaid...
Read more at Protect Your Nips
Feminism is such a fun concept in that it's adherents fight for equality and it is also used to cause division among those with the same goals. I am a feminist. The kind that is grateful everyday for the Suffragists who got us the vote and birth control, the bra-burners and writers of the 70s who got us into the work force and made abortions legal, the women of the 2000s who declared their bodies their own and their right to do whatever the fuck they wanted, and the women who came forward in the #metoo movement. I believe that men are as harmed by the patriarchy as women, and that LBGTQIA folks deserve the same rights I'm fighting for. I believe taking care of each other and treating each other dignity is not political, it's just right.
And so, Josephine Roche is one of my Heroes. Like, Frances Glessner Lee, Josephine came from money, and like Frances, she used it to benefit others. In her long career, she was Denver's first female cop--Inspector of Amusements--and advocated for female laborers and prostitutes (if in a misguided attempt to help them by sending them to a farm). She helped build the social security administration, ran for Governor of Colorado, unionized her mines, and created a model of hospitals and healthcare for her miners that became the blue print for Medicare and Medicaid...
Read more at Protect Your Nips
Displaying 1 of 1 review