Changes in the Workforce | Liberty Ships | MD Military Successes

Changes in the Workforce

African Americans
During World War II, thousands of migrant workers flocked to northern cities for jobs in booming war industries. Most were poor and white, but enough were African Americans escaping segregationist policies in the economically depressed south that their trek became known as The Second Great Migration (the first being just after the Civil War).

From 1940 to 1943, migrants pushed the population of Baltimore from slightly more than 800,000 to nearly 1.5 million. In that time, the city absorbed almost 35,000 African-American migrants. Yet until selective service depleted the male work force, the small number of African Americans hired often got the dirtiest and lowest paying jobs.

In 1943 the newly swelled ranks of African-American voters temporarily bolstered the Democratic party to help the city’s enlarged working class elect the liberal Republican, Theodore McKeldin, as mayor.

Activist organizations like the NAACP gained new clout. Union membership, numbering 35,000 before the war, jumped to nearly 150,000 in three years. The number of African American defense workers in Baltimore grew from slightly less than 10,000 in 1942 to 40,000 in 1944, with many finally landing the better jobs.

Women
Women likewise found opportunity on the Home Front. About 3 million women nationwide worked in war-related industries while another three million were forced by necessity to find work.

Defense employers were reluctant to hire women, but that changed as the war siphoned off the men. Norman Rockwell’s famous “Rosie the Riveter” cover on the Saturday Evening Post led a national campaign aimed at recruiting women into defense work. Said one recruiting slogan: “Women, you could hasten victory by working to save your man.”

In Hagerstown, leaflets were dropped over the city urging women to apply for a job. At the Fairchild Aircraft plant, which employed 10,000 workers, women making 55 cents an hour increased from 20 per cent of the force to almost 70 per cent by war’s end.

Statewide, four of every five defense jobs was held by a woman. One report claimed so many women nationwide went into defense work that 600 laundries—whose primary workforce had been women—shut down.

Learn more:

The Second Great Migration
General info: http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/landing.cfm?migration=9
Lesson Plans: http://www.inmotionaame.org/education/detail.cfm?migration=11

Women in the Workforce
Women on the homefront: www.teacheroz.com/WWIIHomefront.htm
Rosie the Riveter: www.loc.gov/rr/program/journey/rosie.html

 

Changes in the Workforce | Liberty Ships | MD Military Successes