Double Victory (English, Cheryl Mullenbach)

Product description About the Author Cheryl Mullenbach is a former history teacher, librarian, and public television project manager and is currently a K–12 social studies consultant. She contributed several entries to Women in American Military History: An Encyclopedia.Cheryl Mullenbach is a former history teacher, librarian, and public television project manager and is currently a K'12 social studies consultant. She contributed several entries to Women in American Military History: An Encyclopedia. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Double VictoryHow African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War IIBy Cheryl MullenbachChicago Review Press IncorporatedCopyright © 2013 Cheryl MullenbachAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-56976-808-2ContentsIntroduction, 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, CHAPTER 1WAR 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 BellIn 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 ProblemEthel 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 "fo