Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II
INTRODUCTION 3 explain its policy of admitting only whites to the university In 1939 famed singer Marian Anderson was denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution DAR to sing at their hall Constitution Hall in Washington DC because she was black When America entered the war in 1941 no one could have anticipated the changes that would shape the future for women But postwar America held hope for many black women The opportunities that they took advantage of during the war years in the 1940s set the stage for the 1950s 60s and 70s decades that saw the emergence of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement In the 1950s the women of Thomasina Walker Johnson Norford’s generation wondered what it would mean for their children when the US Supreme Court ruled that racial segrega tion in public schools was unconstitutional They heard about a black woman named Rosa Parks who challenged life as it was in the South by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus in Mont gomery Alabama Many Americans participated in marches that resulted in equal rights for women and minorities in the 1960s In 1963 a man named Martin Luther King Jr spoke about having a dream for future generations The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sex or race was passed by Congress As the 1970s and 80s dawned Thomasina and the women of her generation began to enter their elder years The US Supreme Court again took actions that were intended to bring equality to the nation’s education system when it ruled that busing of students could be used as a tool to force integration of public schools in America Black and white women entered political life as never before Many were encouraged when Sandra Day
4 INTRODUCTION O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court And some wondered if victory over racism had really been achieved when race riots broke out in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four white police officers of beating a black man By the end of the 20th century fewer and fewer women of Thomasina Walker Johnson Norford’s generation remained Throughout their lives many of their stories of triumph over the challenges they faced as women were overlooked Many of their accounts of victory over racism were ignored It’s up to the children grandchildren and great-grandchildren to recover the stories of the women who have gone and to pay attention to the stories of the women who survive It is their responsibility to ensure these victorious women are not forgotten It will be a double victory
5 In August 1944 factories across the country were in dire need of workers to build guns bombs planes and ships for the US mili tary The country had been at war for almost three years The government contracted with factory owners to provide the mil itary with critical supplies but thousands of men had left their factory jobs to join the fighting overseas With the urgent need for skilled workers defense plants looked first to unmarried white women to fill the positions As the war effort mounted and the need for defense workers increased the plants began to recruit and hire married white women Some plants hired black men Last to be considered for employment were black women But in some plants the hiring of colored women was never 1 war workers Negroes Cannot Be Accepted I stood in line with the others but a guard came up and said it was no need to wait that there was no hiring of colored women Miss Ethel Bell
6 DOUBLE VICTORY a consideration because racial discrimination was an accepted practice in the America of the 1940s When Ethel Bell responded to a newspaper advertisement seeking workers for jobs at a plant in St Louis Missouri a guard made it clear to her that she wouldn’t be considered for employ ment because she was black In 1944 it wasn’t against the law for a factory to refuse to hire someone because of race or gender There was nothing Ethel could do to force the factory owner to look beyond the color of her skin and consider her skills and qualifications Ethel went home without a job and the factory owner continued with the profitable government contract The Negro Problem Ethel was one of the many women who were eager to get jobs in the defense plants in the war years The jobs paid well Some of the jobs required special expertise and the workers were given opportunities to learn new skills In addition the women felt they were doing something to support the war effort at home while other family members were fighting the enemy overseas The idea of women of any color working in factories was new to Americans in the 1940s It was a time when most mar ried women stayed home and worked as housewives while their husbands went to work outside the home Some women worked in professional positions as doctors lawyers teachers and writers for example but those professions were dominated by men Women with high school educations or less who worked outside the home often worked in service jobs as store clerks waitresses or house cleaners Many black women worked as maids or domestics for white families Life as a domestic included long hours and little pay A typi cal workday was 12 hours and most employers expected their
