Working for Democracy: Working-Class African-American Women, Citizenship, and Civil Rights in Detroit, 1940-1954

Abstract

Louise Thomas was tired. She had worked hard for no pay at Commerce School in Detroit, learning riveting in a defense training class. She spent 120 hours in classroom, sacrificing weeks of income for chance at a wartime job, one that paid much more than average job an African-American woman in Detroit could get at that time. She passed riveting course with flying colors, and in 1942 she went to Ford's Willow Run bomber plant to secure employment as she had heard that factory desperately needed female riveters. On two separate occasions she spent money on bus fare to get to site, only to sit and wait in an employment office. Finally, two different personnel officers told her that they could not place her. When Thomas returned to school to question her riveting instructor about situation, she overheard him telling other teachers that the school was not for colored girls and they were not going to get any employment.1 She also heard him tell another black woman that if African American women had left jobs to take riveting class, they had better return to them, as Detroit factories would never hire them. Thomas was not going to go back to her former job. She had trained for a war-defense position, and she was going to fight for right to work at a skilled job for decent pay. Moreover, she was familiar with fact that many women had already complained to Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) about Ford's hiring practices, but that FEPC had failed to eliminate discrimination in Willow Run plant. Thomas took her story to one of Detroit's major black newspapers in order to publicize situation African-American working-class women faced in city. She spoke for many black women when she stated: