With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Juanita M. Kreps, Commerce Secretary, Dies at 89

Juanita M. Kreps, who was President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of commerce from 1977 to 1979, the first woman and the first economist to hold a post traditionally occupied by men with business interests, died Monday in Durham, N.C. She was 89.


The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter, Laura Anne Kreps, said.

Dr. Kreps, who lived in Durham, wrote books and taught economics much of her life. But economics was no abstract subject to this daughter of an Appalachian coal mine operator, a child of the Depression and a broken home who had worked her way through college, climbed rungs of academic achievement to become vice president of Duke University and won high marks running the Commerce Department....
Read entire article at NYT