Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II

211 Pages·2013·3.25 MB·English

by  Cheryl Mullenbach

Copyright © 2013 by Cheryl Mullenbach All rights reserved
First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated 814 North Franklin Street Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-56976-808-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mullenbach, Cheryl.
Double victory : how African American women broke race and gender barriers to help win World War II
/ Cheryl Mullenbach. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-56976-808-2 (hardcover) 1. World War, 1939-1945—African Americans. 2. World War,
1939-1945— Women—United States. 3. African American women--History—20th century. 4. African
American women—Employment—History—20th century. 5. United States—Race relations--History--20th
century. 6. African American women—Civil rights—History—20th century. 7. African Americans—
Employment. 8. African Americans—Civil rights. I. Title.
D810.N4M85 2012
940.53082’0973—dc23
2012021343
Interior design: Sarah Olson Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1
For
Zola (Emerson) Mullenbach—One of the greatest of the “greatest generation”
Richard L. Wohlgamuth
Jake, Bailey, Zack, Brooklyn, Ty, Sophia, and Emerson
In memory of Ralph Mullenbach
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 WAR WORKERS
“Negroes Cannot Be Accepted”
2 POLITICAL ACTIVISTS
“I Am Not a Party Girl, I Want to Build a Movement”
3 IN THE MILITARY
“Will All the Colored Girls Move Over on This Side”
4 VOLUNTEERS
“Back the Attack”
5 ENTERTAINERS
“We Don’t Take Your Kind”
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
INTRODUCTION
In 2002, Thomasina Walker Johnson Norford died quietly in her sleep at the age
of 94. The New York Amsterdam News described her as “the epitome of elegant
refinement, culture, and determination.” Her parents, who were long dead,
would have been pleased and proud to know that their daughter had retained her
elegance and refinement in her old age. But they most likely would have been
surprised, considering the direction their daughter’s career had taken.
When Thomasina was growing up, her parents had tried to convince her that
“nice little girls are not interested in politics and labor unions, they teach.”
Thomasina tried to obey her parents—she became a teacher. But when she ran
into problems because she was black, she left the teaching profession. Thomasina
turned to politics and labor unions—becoming an influential lobbyist in
Washington, DC, where a woman in the halls of Congress was an unusual sight
and where a black woman in a prominent professional position was almost
unheard of in the 1940s.
Professional opportunities for women of Thomasina’s generation were
limited. But for women who were not white, the options were more restrictive.
Yet Thomasina managed to overcome the double barriers of gender
discrimination and race discrimination. She was one of a generation of women
who did so.
Thomasina was a young adult in the early 1940s, a time that was a turning
point in American history. The world was at war—America entered World War
II in 1941. As more and more men were needed to fight at the fronts, women
were reluctantly accepted in now-vacant positions that had been previously
closed to them. They entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers and
became official members of the military for the first time in history. Female news
reporters followed stories to the battlefields across war-torn lands. Female
entertainers sang and danced across continents, performing for the fighting
armies in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Women served in hospitals around the
world, caring for the wounded and comforting dying soldiers.
Although it was expected that, after the war, women would return to the lives
they had led previously, there was no turning back for many—especially for
black women. These women were part of what became known as “the greatest
generation.”
Thomasina was born in 1908—when the first Ford automobiles were selling
for about $800. But in 1908 it was illegal for women to drive cars in some cities.
It was the year before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) was formed. Eighty-nine black citizens were lynched in the
United States that year.
The women of the greatest generation were teenagers in the 1920s and ’30s.
In 1920 the 19th Amendment was passed, allowing women to vote for the first
time; however, black men and women were kept from voting through
intimidation in most southern states. In 1925 the state of Georgia introduced a
bill that made it illegal for a black person to marry a white person. In 1935 the
NAACP petitioned the University of Maryland to 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 segregation 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 Montgomery, 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 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.
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
In August 1944, factories across the country were in dire need of workers to
build guns, bombs, planes, and ships for the US military. The country had been
at war for almost three years. The government contracted with factory owners to
provide the military 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 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 employment 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 married 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 typical workday was
12 hours, and most employers expected their domestics to be “on call” six days a
week. The job duties included cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, and serving
meals. Sometimes domestics cared for the white families’ young children, too.
The typical wage for a domestic worker was $7 a week. Domestic workers in
southern states made as little as $3 to $4 a week. So when black women who
worked as domestics heard about war jobs in defense plants that paid as much as
$35 per week, they were interested in applying for those positions.
The federal government created agencies to deal with issues related to war
work. The War Manpower Commission was formed to deal with the labor
shortage caused by the large number of men entering military service. The Office
of War Information relayed news and information about the war to the public.
The two agencies worked together to recruit women for the war industries.
A government official from the War Manpower Commission said in an
interview with Time magazine that as the nation geared up for war it would need
to look for workers in untapped sources. He predicted that over 7 million people
outside the paid workforce in the United States—92 percent of whom were
women—could be convinced to “forsake kitchen or lounge for office and
factory.” He warned that such a move would “shake U.S. living habits.” He
explained, “More women in the war effort means fewer women in the home—as
wives, daughters, or servants; it means eating more meals out, fewer socks
darned, fewer guests entertained at home, and many another change in the