Double Victory (3 page)

In March 1945 another Missouri company agreed to begin hiring black women. The electrical firm had been employing black men, and a personnel manager stated that the plant “has experienced no difficulty as a result of its Negro men workers.” However, the company agreed to hire the women only after several months of negotiations with the FEPC.

Although the FEPC successfully encouraged some employers to hire black workers, it had little authority to force them to open their doors to all qualified workers. It was often criticized for not doing its job. A black social worker commented about the FEPC, “It is as toothless as a month-old baby.” Another government agency—the United States Employment Service (USES)—also often came under fire from black leaders.

In September 1942 the
Afro American
newspaper reported that USES—an agency that helped hire workers for defense plants—had published an “operations bulletin.” The bulletin stated that USES would refer workers to companies “without regard to race, color or creed” except when the company specified a preference. This meant that any company could tell USES not to send black job applicants—and USES would comply. When officials at USES were questioned about this, they said they couldn't force a company to accept an applicant it didn't want.

In May 1943 the same newspaper reported that USES discriminated against black women who tried to apply for defense plant jobs. The
Afro American
interviewed black women who had applied for war jobs at the USES office in Baltimore and were told that jobs were “not available.” This came as a surprise to the women, as they had seen ads in the newspapers and heard reports on the radio that women were needed at the plants. Instead, the women reported that they were referred to menial jobs in canneries, hospitals, hotels, and bus terminals. Some black women reportedly took jobs as street sweepers for the city when they were turned down for war jobs by USES.

In some businesses, the only positions open to black women were cleaning jobs. And in some cases, black women were assigned to the night shifts only. Dirty and dangerous jobs were sometimes the only war jobs open to black women.

When an arsenal in New Jersey needed ammunition workers it embarked on a campaign to recruit black women in nearby Harlem, New York. The plant was praised by government officials for showing “faith and appreciation in the colored workers.” Other plants that “show[ed] less enthusiasm for employing Negro workers” were encouraged to follow the example of the New Jersey arsenal. But what the officials didn't mention was the highly dangerous nature of ammunition jobs. Explosions
occurred frequently, and injuries were common. Most people looking for war work did not consider ammunition jobs in arsenals highly desirable. However, over 1,700 black women responded to the arsenal's “urgent call” for workers.

Although defense plants were desperate for workers, some were unsure about hiring black women in jobs that required special skills such as riveting and drilling. At a plant that built military airplanes for the army and navy in St. Louis, Missouri, a program was started to train and hire black men as an experiment. After the men proved they were capable students and responsible workers, the experiment was expanded to include black women. The first group of women successfully completed five weeks of training and were “hard at work along with their men folks” a newspaper reported. The experiment was considered a success, and the plant was “hiring Negro women as fast as they can be trained.”

On-the-Job Discrimination

After they were hired, many black women faced additional discrimination. In November 1944 white women workers at a plant in St. Louis walked out of their jobs to protest the hiring of a black woman. In the same year black women who made up the night shift at a plant in New York were fired when they protested the lack of sanitary facilities and the poor working conditions at the plant. White women were quickly hired to replace them. In 1942, after only nine days on the job at an East Coast navy yard, 18-year-old black welder Corona Browner was fired, even though she had completed a 320-hour welding course at a government training center. Her firing came after a trade union protested the navy yard hiring a black woman for a job other than janitor. The union leaders knew that many white workers
would refuse to work with a black woman, and they encouraged the racist beliefs by protesting the hiring of Corona. They claimed the hiring of black women in skilled trades would “lead to serious trouble between the races.” But in reality, the trouble was caused by the white workers who refused to work with anyone of a different race. When black women removed signs designating toilets for “coloreds” in an arsenal plant in Maryland, plant managers replaced the signs with black silhouettes over the toilets.

Toilets became a major issue for Western Electric Company in Baltimore, Maryland, late in 1943. The company had a government contract to provide war materials to the military. About 7,000 people—both black and white—worked at the plant. In October, 1,800 union employees voted to strike after the company refused to provide separate toilets for black and white women. Twenty-two white women walked off their jobs. Since Western Electric had a contract to supply the government with war materials, President Roosevelt became involved in the situation. The president said that, by calling a strike, the striking workers were engaging in actions that “impair the war effort.” He ordered the US Army to seize control of the plant in order to keep production going.

Despite the presence of the army at the plant, employee attendance and the level of production fell. Eventually the union leader and some of the plant managers were fired. The War Department and the union finally reached an agreement. A new and enlarged locker and toilet area was constructed. The lockers were assigned in blocks—some sections that “happened” to be assigned only to whites, other sections that happened to be assigned only to blacks. And of course it only made sense that the workers would use the toilets closest to their block of lockers. That meant black workers used the toilets near their locker
blocks—separate from the whites. It was still segregation and discrimination, but no one admitted it.

Black Rosie the Riveters

Despite the barriers black women faced during World War II, thousands contributed to the war effort. Their work in shipyards, steel mills, arsenals, ordnance plants, electrical equipment factories, and aircraft plants helped their employers fulfill their government contracts.

The days were long and hard. Women in defense plants worked eight-hour days, six days a week. Some of the jobs required them to stand in a production line completing the same task all day with only occasional breaks. The women had to purchase the tools they used on the assembly line—usually at a cost of about $30. After the workday ended, many women faced long commutes by bus or train to their homes. Some black families lived in housing that the government provided. Old buildings were converted into “dormitories” for defense plant workers who had traveled from their homes to work in the plants. But some of the housing the government provided was in the form of trailer camps and tents.

Welders Alivia Scott, Hattie Carpenter, and Flossie Burtos prepare to weld their first piece of steel on the ship SS
George Washington Carver,
Kaiser Shipyards, Richmond, California, 1943.
National Archives AFRO/ AM in WWII List #252

The work could be boring and monotonous. It could be dirty and dangerous. In arsenals women worked as inspectors, carefully examining ammunition storage boxes or binocular lenses. Or they could be found shoveling and mixing sand at steel mills. In other factories they made molds for military equipment. Black women in electrical factories assembled equipment and tested finished products. In aircraft plants they operated machinery, assembled parts for airplanes, and inspected the finished planes. Black women in ordnance plants tested guns, tanks, and other fighting equipment before it was shipped to soldiers at the battlefront.

Women performed various duties in the country's steel mills during the war. They fabricated shells, guns, nails, spikes, and bolts. As raw materials such as iron ore, coal, and limestone arrived at ports by boat, cranes scooped up tons of the material and dumped it inside the mills. But every bit of ore was needed for the war effort; none could be wasted, so workers had to go into the bottoms of the boats to shovel and sweep the ore that the huge cranes missed. Most of the women performing these dirty, backbreaking jobs were black. Inside the steel mills they worked in blast furnaces shoveling mud and mixing clay. They operated machines that cut huge plates of steel for aircraft guns.

Mary Newson left her family farm in Texas and moved to California during the war. At first she worked cleaning train cars, but she soon took a job as a riveter in a naval yard. After a few months Mary's supervisor wanted to move her to the night shift. She had a new baby and didn't like the idea of working nights, so she found a job at another plant. Although Mary was a skilled worker, at the new plant she was given a job as a janitor—a job typically assigned to black employees. But Mary soon moved up to an assembly line job.

Willie Mae Cotright left her home in Louisiana for a job in California. As she boarded the train bound for Richmond she was sent to a special section with a curtain across the door—the Jim Crow section. Behind the curtain the air was hot and stuffy. This is where she and other black riders rode—sitting on long wooden benches and separated from the white travelers who rode on padded individual seats in air-conditioned cars. As soon as the train left the southern states behind, Willie Mae and the other black passengers began to experience liberties that were inconceivable in the Jim Crow South. Their first taste of freedom occurred as they learned they could move to any section of the train as they continued their journey west. And when Willie Mae arrived in California, she began to experience some of the opportunities that she had heard about back in Louisiana. She was offered a job at a shipyard where she received on-the-job training to learn the best techniques for welding. She needed to know how to weld because she was helping to build a ship that would carry American military personnel and materials to war.

Bertha Stallworth inspects the end of a 40 mm artillery cartridge case at Frankford Arsenal.
National Archives AFRO/ AM in
WW
II List #253

Willie Mae lived in an apartment with several other war workers. The roommates worked different shifts—some at night, some during the day. They joked that their beds were always warm because when one roommate left for her shift, another returned, falling into the bed before it got cold.

Aller Hunter was working as a domestic for a white family in Texas in 1943 when she heard that black women could get well-paying jobs at war plants in sunny California. Before she knew it, she was on a train headed west. Aller arrived in the San Francisco Bay area, where the damp ocean breezes were foreign to this Texas girl. But she soon landed a job at a shipyard in Richmond. While Aller was happy to find work, she knew welding wasn't the job for her. She was happy to get a job cleaning up after the welders. Using a broom and pails of water, she scrubbed up the metal shavings that dropped to the factory floor as welders joined the seams of the ships together. Sometimes she had to climb ladders on the outside of the ship and walk on scaffolding as she carried her broom and water pail. She liked her job, but there were times when the winds coming off the bay made her wish she was back in Texas.

A Man's Job for a Man's Wages

While the war provided black women like Mary Newson, Willie Mae Cotright, and Aller Hunter opportunities in plants that held government contracts, it also opened doors for black women in other areas of work. In civilian industries black women worked in food processing plants, restaurants, hotels, garment factories, and in the railroad industry. Lula King, a 64-year-old farm worker, supervised 80 celery pullers and bean pickers on a 2,700-acre farm in Florida. Although she was near retirement age, she said she wanted to do her share to win the war: “They say they need food to win the war, and I'm trying to do my part. I work every day—ain't missed but three Sundays since August. I'll be 65 next year and eligible for a pension, but I am going to keep right on working if the war's going on.”