[email protected] 2-6183syllabus.colorado.edu/archive/HIST-4626-20141-001.pdf · 2015-02-11 · Prof. Lee Chambers 4 Hellems 222 [email protected] 2-6183 April 7 & 14: US

Prof. Lee Chambers Hellems 222 [email protected] 2-6183

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History 4626 Women in the United States since 1890 Course Objectives The purposes of this class are threefold: 1) to understand how American culture defined femininity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; to explore the ways in which American society has structured women’s work, familial and sexual lives in accordance with that gender ideology; and to explore how women’s social and political activism has embodied and challenged both. 2) to explore the class, racial/ethnic, and regional similarities and differences in American women’s lives over time. 3) to develop skills in critical thinking (reading and viewing images), and writing. We will analyze primary source material (produced in the past) and consider the strengths and weaknesses of those sources (images, a novel, an autobiography, and a journalists account) for understanding that past. We will discuss the techniques utilized by historians to analyze these diverse sources and mine them for data about the past. And we will practice the ways historians organize that evidence to analyze and tell their stories. It is my hope that you will leave class with a sense of the richness and diversity of women's historical experience and a yearning to learn more about the women who shaped the culture and society in which we live today.

Book List Textbook: Ellen Carol DuBois & Lynn Dumenil, Through Women’s Eyes (3rd edition), Vol. 2 Additional Required Books Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (novel) Constance Bowman & Clara Marie Allen, Slacks and Callouses (autobiography) Barbara Kingsolver, Holding the Line (journalism) Syllabus: Reading and Writing Assignments Read the assigned material by Friday of each week and be prepared to discuss it in class. Written work based on the readings will be due at that time. Please bring

mailto:[email protected]


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your textbook to class on Fridays so that you will have the images available for reference during the discussion. Topics for short response papers (image analyses of about 1 page) based on DuBois & Dumenil are provided below for the week they are due. Topics and study questions for the analytical papers (5-7 pages) begin on page 7 of the syllabus. Week of January 13: Introduction to Women’s History Reconstructing Women’s Lives North and South

Jan 20: Reconstructing Women’s Lives North & South Read DuBois & Dumenil, Through Women’s Eyes, Chapter 6

Jan 24: No written assignment. Discussion of three questions posed on p. 373 relating to the images of women’s higher education in the late nineteenth century found on pp. 365-373 of the textbook. Consider as well, how women’s education at that moment in time compares and contrasts with your own. Jan 27: Women in an Expanding Nation

Read DuBois & Dumenil, Through Women’s Eyes, Chapter 7

Jan 31: Short Response Assignment on images pp.440-449.

Question 2, p 449: “To what extent do these images convey women’s role in the building of American and European empires that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?”

Feb 3 & 10: Immigration & Women Read Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers Feb 14: Paper due on Yezierska.

Feb 17: Progressive Politics

Read: DuBois & Dumenil, Chapter 8

Feb 24: Short Response Assignment on images and text, pp. 493-500: a) Either question 1, p. 500: “Compare the photographs illustrating the

strikers (Figures 8.1 and 8.2), the suffragists (Figures 8.3 to 8.5), and the



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protesters (Figure 8.6). How did these groups take to the streets, and what commonalities and differences do their uses of public space reveal? Or

b) Question 2, p. 500: “A major motivation behind picketing and parading was to capture publicity. What other purposes could these activities serve? What possibilities and dangers did the courting of publicity pose for strikers? For suffragists? For African American women?

Feb 24: Prosperity, Depression and War Read DuBois & Dumenil, Chapter 9 Feb 28: Short Response Assignment Question 2, p. 588: “In what ways do these photographs of diverse women support the FSA project of creating empathy with the ‘down-and-out’ in the Great Depression?” What did you feel in viewing these? March 3 & 10: Read: Bowman & Allen, Slacks & Calluses March 14: Paper due on Bowman & Allen March 17: Beyond the Feminine Mystique Read: DuBois & Dumenil, Chapter 10 March 14: Short Response Assignment: Question 2, p. 650: “Why did advertisers think these ads would sell consumer goods and network programing?” March 24: Spring Break March 31: Modern Feminism Read: DuBois & Dumenil, Chapter 11 April 5: Short Response Assignment: Combined questions 1 & 2, p. 720: How do these images convey the changing nature of women’s work in the 1970s? And to what extend do they reflect the impact of feminism?



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April 7 & 14: US Women in a Global Age Read: Holding the Line April 18: Paper on Holding the Line April 21: US Women in a Global Age Read: DuBois & Dumenil, Chapter 12 April 28: Review April 30: Class discussion of document pp. 779-88 May 6: Final Exam, 1:30-4:00 pm Course Requirements and Grading Three Papers (5-7 pages): 20 points each = 60% of total grade Five single page response assignments: 5 points each = 25% of grade

Final Exam: 10 points = 10%

Attendance & discussion: 5 points = 5%

Please provide 2 copies of papers: one attached to an email to the above address and a hard copy in class. Contact me as soon as possible with any problems you have with attendance or assignments. Except in excused absences or verified emergencies, grades will be reduced on late assignments. Explanation of Course Grading Scale An “A” is the highest grade a student can achieve on a paper or exam. Students who achieve an “A” demonstrate exceptional insight and mastery of course material. These students demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the theoretical issues and historical content presented in the course. Their arguments show intellectual originality and creativity, and are sensitive to historical context. These students articulate their ideas with clarity and grace. An “A-“ paper or exam demonstrates an excellent command of course material. Students who achieve this grade have displayed independent thought,



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superior analytical skills, considerable insight, and the ability to articulate their ideas clearly. A “B+” paper or exam manifests a strong comprehension of course material. Students who achieve this grade have shown competent analytical skills, good insight, and the ability to articulate their ideas with reasonable success. They offer evidence of independent thought, although their arguments are not presented as clearly or convincingly as those who earn higher grades. A “B” or “B-“ paper or exam exhibits solid comprehension of course material. Students in this grade range display some insight but generally provide a less-than-thorough defense of their independent theses due to a weakness in writing, argument, organization, or use of evidence. A “C+”, “C” or “C-“ paper or exam shows an acceptable understanding of the course material but little evidence of insight into the conceptual issues raised by the readings. Students who earn this grade largely forego independent thinking in favor of little more than a summary of ideas and information covered in the course. These papers and exams reflect an insensitivity to historical context, and suffer from some combination of factual errors, unclear writing, and/or poor organization of material. A “D” paper or exam displays serious deficiencies or severe flaws in a student’s understanding of course material. An “F” paper or exam demonstrates no competence in utilizing course materials. It usually indicates the student’s neglect or lack of effort in the course. Additionally, the University takes seriously issues of plagiarism. Any evidence of student plagiarism—whether utilizing another’s ideas without attribution, offering a “cut and past” of material from many sources as one’s own work, or passing along another’s paper as one’s own--will result in an F. See the University’s Honor Code and the policy on Academic Integrity. Course and University Policies Honor Code: All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution. Violations of this policy may include: cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior. All incidents of academic misconduct shall be reported to the Honor Code Council [email protected]; 303-725-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions from the



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faculty member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university probation, suspension, or expulsion). Additional information on the Honor Code can be found at: http://www.colorado.edu/policies/honor.html Disability Services If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit a letter to me from Disability Services in a timely manner [before the first written assignment] so that your needs maybe addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities. Contact: 303-492-8671, Willard 322, or see: www.Colorado.EDU/disabilityservices Academic Integrity. Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Violations such as cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, bribery, or threatening behavior shall be reported to the Honor Council. The Council is managed by students for students with the intent of promoting a campus culture that consciously upholds the tenets of academic honesty, and moral and ethical conduct. Violations of the Honor Code are punishable by failure in the class and dismissal from the university. Information about CU’s honor code, the Honor Council, and reporting academic dishonesty can be found at: http://www.honorcode.colorado.edu Classroom Decorum: Students and faculty each have responsibility for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Students have a responsibility to treat faculty and each other with respect and dignity. This means that they will ask and answer questions and address subjects in a manner and with language that is attentive to common courtesy. They will turn off cell phones upon entry and leave them off for the duration of the class. They will not use their laptops in a manner other than to take notes on lectures and assignments. Students who fail to adhere to behavioral standards may be subject to discipline, including the removal of cell hones and laptops for the duration of class. Faculty have the professional responsibility to treat students with understanding, dignity and respect, to guide classroom discussion and to set reasonable limits on the manner in which students express opinions. Additional information may be found at: http://www.colorado.edu/policies/classbehavior.html Religious Observance: Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that faculty make every effort to reasonably and fairly deal with all students who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments or required attendance. If you have a potential class conflict because of religious observance, you must inform me of that conflict by the third week of class. See policy details at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/fac_relig.html



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Sexual Harassment: The University of Colorado Policy on Sexual Harassment applies to all students, staff and faculty. Sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual attention. It can involve intimidation, threats, coercion, or promises or create an environment that is hostile or offensive. Harassment may occur between members of the same or opposite gender and between any combination of members in the campus community: students, faculty, staff, and administrators. Harassment can occur anywhere on campus, including the classroom, the workplace, or a residence hall. Any student, staff or faculty member who believes s/he has been sexually harassed should contact the Office of Sexual Harassment (OSH) at 303-492-2127 or the Office of Judicial Affairs at 303-492-5550. Information about the OSH and the campus resources available to assist individuals who believe they have been sexually harassed can be obtained at: http://www.colorado.edu/odh/



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Response Papers

How to Work with Visual Sources

Visual evidence is an important source for historians. However, as Jules Benjamin notes in A Student’s Guide to History, gathering information from old paintings, drawings, and photographs can be more difficult than it may seem. You need to do more than look at them. First, you need to identify the actual information that they present—what Columbus’s ships looked like, how Hiroshima appeared after the explosion of the atomic bomb. Then you need to interpret or analyze them. This involves an effort to understand what the artist or photographer is “saying” in the work. (This advice applies also to film and to any visual medium.) When an artist draws something or a photographer takes a picture, he or she is not simply recording a visual image but is sending a message to anyone who looks at the work. In this way, artists and photographers are like writers whose written work needs to be interpreted. In order to best evaluate visual evidence, there are basic question that you want to ask (and we hope answer).

1. Who created this image—when and where?

First, note the identity and any biographical details about the artist or artists who created the image. Also record the date of its creation. Where it was created may also give you clues as to its purpose and meaning—for example, a propaganda poster from World War I may have a particular depiction of the “enemy.” How the “enemy” is portrayed may vary depending on whether the poster was produced in the United States, Great Britain, or France, even though the three nations were allies during the war.

2. What type of image is this?

The type of image—whether paint, pencil, woodcut, or photograph—can help reveal aspects of the message of the image: is the image realistic (a photograph, for example)? Is it fanciful (a work of impressionist art, for example)? Is it expressive like a cartoon or caricature? Perhaps it is a piece of propaganda or an advertisement used for selling a product. The type of image helps determine its message and its intended audience.

3. Who was the intended audience of the image?

Where and by whom would the image have been seen? Was it made for private consumption, as in a family portrait, or for public commentary, as in a



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political cartoon? Sometimes the intended audience or viewer will be suggested by the content of the image; other times, the image’s purpose will reveal itself first. Where and how it was disseminated may very well provide important clues to the image’s meaning.

4. What is the image “saying”?

Carefully examine the entire image, and determine the main subject of the image. Then, notice any details that may be part of the main message or perhaps may provide a “subtext” for the central theme. For example, you may be examining a photograph of an urban street scene (see, for example, Alice Austen’s photograph of Hester Street, New York—Figure 6.11 on page 384 of Through Women’s Eyes, Second Edition) what senses besides sight does this photograph evoke? Consider the overall setting of the photograph. What is the time of day, the season, or the ambiance of the scene?

5. Why was this image created?

This questions is closely related to what the image is “saying.” Ask yourself, What was the artist’s purpose or point of view? The message of an image can be literal (a picture of a government building) or symbolic (the architectural style of the building alludes to the democracy of ancient Greece), but you should always pay attention to both levels. How might the artist's needs and the restrictions on the medium have affected the choice of setting? More recently, with the availability of candid photographs, you might detect the impact that a photographer had the images he or she “captured” on film. Consider the photograph’s lighting, how the image was cropped, and whether the photographer posed the figures in the image. Also analyze the image for the issues it does not raise and the objects and people that are not included. Does the image raise questions that are left unanswered about the scene? Does the exclusion of particular people or objects change the iamge's meaning?

6. What does this image reveal about the particular society and time period in which it was created?

It is important to understand the historical context in which the image was created but also to analyze the image for what it tells us about the society in which is was produced. Images are historical productions often made in conversation with or in reaction to the very subject the picture depicts. Ask what broad historical trends might intersect with this subject (e.g immigration, the rise of great cities, or the changing nature of warfare.) Was the image made in a moment of rapid change or dislocation? Or was it made in a moment of relative



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calm and social and political consensus? If the image itself is at odds with your understanding of its historical context, ask yourself why.



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Essays Paper on Bread Givers Introduction: In the 19th century, one half of the world’s Jewish population lived within the Russian Empire. Most were confined to the Pale of Jewish Settlement, an area of 25 northern and western provinces (of a total number of 87 provinces in the Empire). In 1881-82, under the regime of Czar Alexander II, pogroms expelled Jews from shtetls, the small rural villages where they had long lived and worked. They were prohibited under Russian law from owning or renting land. Even the Jewish elite, the professionals, bankers, merchants, students, and master craftsmen whose skills had enabled them to live outside the Pale, lost their special status in 1891. Dislocated Jews leaving the shtetls as well as those of the elite poured into urban ghettos where most suffered economic hardship. It was around 1900, in this political and social context, the largest influx of Jews from Eastern Europe came to America. Many German Jews had migrated previously to the U.S. and were establishing themselves when those from Eastern Europe arrived. While Russian Jews began emigrating to America in 1881. From 1881-1885, some 54,5000 had arrived. These numbers rose such that from 1885-1889, 411,650 more had come, and by 1914 the numbers were 1,382,500. The balance of men and women changed over time. By 1910, women outnumbered men in this exodus. While Jewish immigrant aid organizations tried to disperse this flood, perhaps 70% of those who arrived in New York City stayed there. Other American cities also developed Jewish ghettos, including Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago. For those Jews who fled Russia from the east rather than across Europe, many settled in Portland or Seattle. Method: In evaluating a work of fiction, it is helpful to define and consider these components of narrative:

1. Genre—a classification system for organizing literature. While categories are subject to debate, it clusters literature with common elements together. Recently, genre is seen as social action used to accomplish particular purposes.

2. Theme is the message of the story—an idea or comment about life. Theme illuminates the emotional content of the human condition.



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3. Characters are actors in the story whose actions, intentions, and motivations interact with what others do, say, think, and feel. Characters can be people, objects, or creatures.

4. Setting includes the place, time, and situation of the story. The setting can be simple or affect the characters, plot, and mode either directly or symbolically.

5. Plot is a series of events that occur in a specific order. Not necessarily linear, the sequence represents the author’s decisions for moving the story along.

6. Point of view is the view of the action the reader follows. It is often signaled by insights into the thoughts and feelings of particular characters.

7. Style is the use of language that reflects the spirit and personality of the writer through specific literary devices. Authors make purposeful stylistic choices to create images, set mood, and reveal character.

8. Tone is the manner of expression conveying the author’s attitude toward his or her subject as well as toward particular characters and/or events.

Works of fiction offer emotional and sometimes historical truths wrapped in a story about made-up characters. Yezierska describes a set of social and emotional challenges characterizing the traumatic experience of leaving one homeland, Russian Poland, and moving to a new country, the United States of America, in the early twentieth century. The author, because she is writing fiction, not history or autobiography, need not confine herself to the specifics facts of her own or her family’s life. She may distill the experiences of those she knew in the old and/or new country; and/or utilize certain events, both historical and personal, witnessed or heard to form a well-knit plot with a few well-drawn characters. A novelist may draw a moral from her tale, one more focused and explicit than might be drawn from the messier and more complex life of a non-fictional woman. Nevertheless, through the manipulation of character, plot, and reader emotion, she may accurately portray key values or conflicts of a particular population, time, place, or event (such as migration/immigration). This story, for example, addresses one of the most powerful and familiar stories in American history. This country has been a land of immigrants from the 17th century. Groups have come at different times and for different purposes, although most sought religious or political freedom, economic advancement or physical survival. The assimilation of these various groups has been uneven and usually accompanied by generations of prejudice. Some groups have acculturated and thrived, others have not. European Jews, early in the 20th



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century, like Asians and unlike Mexicans today, have been largely viewed as “good” immigrants and ideal “new citizens”. As a group they thrived economically and largely acculturated. Did they assimilate? When and how? What characteristics of this particular ethnic/religious group contributed to its acceptance in the US? Immigrants bring with them a set of values, including gender ideals for men and women. These ideals sustained the sex roles that had structured the behavior of women and men in the old country. Immigrant assimilation in the new society depends upon many things, including the culture and experience of life in the old country and the opportunities and demands of the new. It depends upon how well the values they bring with them mesh with those of their new society. To understand the experience of immigrants, then, requires us to look at their lives in the old country (family organization, sex roles, work patterns), 2) the structure of economic opportunity in the new country, 3) the ways in which tradition supported and retarded acculturation, and 4) the nature of institutions and circumstances in which change took place. Study Questions: 1. Yesierska’s story is full of conflict: between men and women, between old and young, between the mores of the new world and those of the old. How do these tensions drive this particular story? 2. What vision of America did Eastern European Jews hold prior to their arrival in the US? How did those expectations compare with their new reality? How did these characters cope with that disjunction? 3. Sarah and her father Rabbi Smolenshky disagreed over learning—who should have access to formal education? What is the nature of learning? What are the uses of learning? Do women have use for learning? Do all men have use for education? What is the nature of the father/daughter disagreement and how is it significant to the plot? How does Sarah resolve the conflict? 4. What rights did a father have over his children in Eastern European society? How were these rights challenged in America? By whom and why? 5. What did it mean to be a “bread-giver” in Jewish society? A “burden-bearer”? Which characters in the novel exemplify these roles? What other traditional or accepted roles for women existed in the old country?



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6. What was a “bread-and-butter” marriage among the Russian immigrant population?? 7. How did Sarah envision marriage? 8. Where, what, or who was the source for Sarah’s nontraditional point of view? Suggested Paper Topics 1. This is a story about a young woman’s pursuit of autonomy. How did Sarah acquire her sense of independence? Why was it important and what did it mean to her? Had she any support for her view or course of action? 2. Although the novel revolves around the conflict between the Rabbi and his daughter, the two have much in common. In what ways was Sarah like her father? Did these behaviors and values retard or contribute to her successful acculturation

Paper on Slacks and Calluses.

Introduction: World War II generated considerable demand for new workers. During the Depression of 1929, many women, particularly the married, had been fired or urged to give up their jobs in order to insure more employment of men among the 13,000,000 out of work. Section 213 of the National Economic Act prohibited married copuls from both working for the government, for example. Since women made less money than men in most families, they were the ones to resign. This act was not repealed until 1937 when the economy began to expand again. But despite the war-time demand for workers, employers were reluctant to hire them. During the first few months of war there were enough men to enable businesses to avoid hiring women. The attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that. The government declared that the only answer to the manpower crisis was to hire women on “a scale hitherto unknown.” A survey of 200 war jobs by the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor indicated that women could fill 80% with minimal training and the government began a massive propaganda effort to convince women to enter the labor market and businesses to hire them. The speed with which women responded to the emergency, and the ease with which they filled new roles shocked America. The face of American industry changed as the percent of women working in industry jumped nationwide from 1% to 39% between 1941 and 1943, Over 2 million new women workers went to the office. By the end of the war, 38% of all federal



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employees were women (more than twice the number of pre-war years). Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute enrolled its first woman student. Curtiss-Wright Co. sent women engineers to college. Standard Oil, Du Pont and Montsanto Chemical hired women chemists for the first time. The federal government hired female lawyers and Wall Street hired female analysts and statisticians for the first time.

Method: Autobiographies and memoirs provide historians with information as to the lives of specific individuals, offering us information about particular people, places, times, and events. We bring the same critical faculties to the reading of these works as we do to less personal historical documents, reading for: 1) information, 2) the imposition of order (intellectual, personal or emotional) on experience or events, and 3) self-revelation. This memoir was intended for publication and we can assume that it was carefully crafted to make a statement. After all, not everyone chooses to write an autobiography or publish a memoir. What was the purpose of writing and publishing the work and whom did the authors understand to be their audience? How did their view of their audience shape their authorial efforts? In thinking about the structure of the work, its compositional elements (as distinct from and in addition to its content) ask yourself what light does the structure of this piece and its purpose shed upon our evaluation of its content?

It has been said, To read an autobiography one must know the fictions it engages. No more nor less than men, probably, women have fashioned the stories of their lives from the fictions at their disposal. Successful autobiographies have also broken with the very fictions they employed to reveal the important and different realities of their lives. Interpreters of these life stories do well to consider ready-made images & life-patterns available to autobiographers both in non-fiction and fiction. The genres autobiography and novel may be more closely allied than we like to admit.

Think about the kind of stories available to Reid (a high-school English teacher) and Allen (a high school art teacher) as they constructed their narrative of summer vacation on the assembly line during wartime. What kinds of young women’s fiction was available to them and how does the tone of their words and illustrations reveal their perspective, influence the crafting of their narrative and shape their understanding of the events it portrayed? You might want to consider such fiction as the Nancy Drew girl detective stories, the Brenda Star female reporter newspaper comic series, the female



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heroines in comic books of the 1940s and 50s, and romance stories were common reading at the time. You may also want to consider, however, the picaresque novels that Reid would have studied in college. The picaresque novel, taught in high school and college, is usually narrated by or features a somewhat roguish hero—charming, daring, and something of a rebel. This engaging protagonist provides the authorial voice of the novel, telling humorous tales about his adventures and depicting in realistic detail the lives of those with whom he interacts—those often referred to as “common people”, “salt of the earth” men and women of the laboring classes. I say “he” because almost all such novels had a male protagonist until the 1970s woman’s movement. Does this memoir reflect the picaresque genre? How does it define a female picaresque hero? Study Questions 1. It has been said that ‘wartime as exceptional time.’ In what ways do you see this narrative as reflecting or undermining such an idea?

2. How did war shape this narrative? 3. What was the impact of introducing women—and particularly college- educated women—into the bomber factory? 4. What is gender solidarity? Gender consciousness? In what incidents do you see these qualities developing or failing in this workplace? 5. Did this experience change Bowman’s and Allen’s political consciousness? Suggested Paper Topics 1. Discuss one of the following aspects of how these women affected the work of airplane assembly and workplace relations: a) the meaning and import of this change being defined as a war-time “emergency” effort; b) class relations on and off the job; c) job skills and workplace hierarchies; d) attitudes toward women workers rooted in gender expectations and assumptions. 2. Discuss this wartime experience as a journey of discovery for the authors. What did Allen and Bowman discover regarding their personal identities?

3. Analyze the relationship of the artwork to the words in this text? What does the artwork contribute? Do these drawings illustrate and/or shape reader perceptions of the authors, their colleagues, the workplace, the work, and/or the war?



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4. What is the meaning of clothes and adornment in this memoir? How do these shape reader understanding of these women, their time and place? What is the meaning of these for Reid’s and Allen’s understanding (and/or the readers) of a) class relations, b) personal identity, c) gender identity, 4) gender and sexual relations. [In writing on this topic be sure to go beyond and more deeply into the topic than does Gilbert in the introduction.] 5. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of memoir for understanding a particular place, time, and set of circumstances. Reflect upon Reid’s and Allen’s statement that theirs is “a true story.” Paper on Holding the Line Introduction: The background against which the strike of 1983 occurred includes both immigration from Mexico into the southwestern United States and the labor wars of twentieth-century mining. Mexican immigration into the United States since 1900 is one of the great migratory movements in the history of the Americas. Between 1900 and 1990, two-and-a-half-million legal settlers arrived in the U.S. from Mexico, along with a much larger number of undocumented ones. This was, for the most part, a migration not of one culture to another but within a common culture that had emerged on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. Mexican immigrants into the American Southwest have come in waves over the course of the twentieth century. The first wave crested between 1910-20 as a result of the Mexican revolution. The 1910 revolution was exceedingly violent: about one million Mexicans lost their lives during the decade of the 1910s and large numbers were displaced from their homes and communities. Thousands traveled northward as approximately one million crossed into the United States. Many of these were peasants uprooted by the fighting, but some were government officials, businessmen, high-ranking army officers, intellectuals, lawyers and journalists forced to flee as a result of their politics or fearful of the chaos spreading across their country. A significant percentage of these migrants were women and children. Displaced people increased the population in Mexican-American border towns and barrios. Many who ultimately settled in the U.S. had plans to return to Mexico when things settled down. Those with capital and professions had, by 1920, created a small Spanish-speaking middle class along the U.S.-Mexico border.



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At approximately the same time, demand for agricultural and industrial workers was increasing in the U.S. (even as Asian immigration was dropping due to the Exclusion Acts and war reduced European immigration). American railroads began recruiting across the Mexican border, bringing laborers in numbers of more than 1000 a month just prior to the outbreak of W.W. I. War resulted in rapid economic expansion as the United States became the chief supplier of arms and armaments for the war. Mexican workers were recruited to work in the beet fields of Colorado and the copper mines of New Mexico and Arizona. Congress waived new immigration requirements for agricultural, railroad, mine, and construction workers. Some 50,000 Mexicans (bracero sojourners) legally crossed the border on a temporary basis by June of 1920; some 100,000 more came illegally. They had no guarantees of employment and experienced widespread economic distress. Many pushed further north to mid-western and northeastern cities to fill the industrial labor vacuum left by wartime enlistment and the draft. It is at this point that St Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Chicago, Gary, and Detroit developed notable Mexican American populations. Most of the migrants worked in unskilled, hazardous, arduous and dirty jobs. Some Americans expressed growing concern about this population movement. Nativism and ethnocentricity rose on the political stage producing an overhaul of immigration policies in 1924 that included efforts to revise Mexican quotas. Congress made illegal immigration a criminal offence in 1920, and in 1924 appropriated one million dollars to establish the Border Patrol (which attempted to cover a 2,000 mile border with 450 men). The rise in nativism fostered an effort to further limit Mexican immigration in 1926. Representative John C. Box of Texas introduced such a bill in the United States Congress but the country’s need for labor quashed it. Senate hearings in 1928 brought new support for restrictive legislation from social service agencies, public health agencies and labor unions, as well as some patriotic and racist groups. American consuls in Mexico were instructed to reduce immigration by the strict application of such existing legislation as the Alien Contract Labor Law. The Depression did what nativists could not. It halted Mexican migration into and encouraged a return flow out of the United States. Thousands returned voluntarily, and thousands more were forced to repatriate. The Governor of Colorado, Edwin C. Johnson, called out the National Guard on 18 April 1936 to set up a road block between New Mexico and Colorado with orders to “protect Colorado from improper invasion by cheap and destructively competitive labor,” to search vehicles and trains, and to inspect passengers in order to weed out “undesirables.” Hispanics were refused entry. Helen Fischer of Boulder denounced the blockade as “un-American, conducive to race hatred, and unconstitutional.” She and others, including many clergy, led a fight to rescind the Governor’s order and forced him to withdraw the troops and end the blockade after ten days. But by the mid-1930s, white Dust Bowl migrants



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comprised about 50 percent of all migratory workers in western agriculture and 90 percent in California. The third wave of Mexican immigration was the Bracero program, organized by the United States government in three periods: during World War II from August 1942-December 1947; again from February 1948 to 1951; and lastly from 1951-December 1964. The program resulted from increased needs for labor in the U.S. and brought temporary workers from Mexico to the U.S. for seasonal employment. Braceros usually returned to Mexico at the end of their

contracts, but some 350,000 shifted their status from bracero to legal immigrant.1 Extensive labor organizing paralleled business development in the American Southwest, especially in New Mexican copper mining, Colorado and Texas coal mining, and California agriculture. Three organizations led unionization efforts in the West: the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The IWW was the most sympathetic to Hispanics and Mexicans yet were unsuccessful in organizing agricultural workers. The IWW was the most radical of the three labor organizations, but it disappeared by 1920 after violent harassment by corporations and government. The AFL was primarily concerned with skilled workers, excluding those whom they identified as unskilled Mexican laborers. The organization opposed immigration from Mexico, assuming that foreign workers would displace American ones and undercut American wages. The Western Federation of Miners began organizing Mexican immigrants in the 1890s. Their early success stemmed from their ability to develop union leadership among those skilled Mexican miners who had been specifically recruited to teach American workers the craft of open-pit mining. These labor leaders had acquired experience from local mutual-aid societies (mutualistas) and used these community voluntary associations to present their labor demands. Labor activism among Mexican Americans involved them in one of the first strikes of the new century as members of the militant WFM in Telluride, Colorado and Clifton-Morenci, Arizona. A large strike in the Colorado coal fields was broken when Mexican nationals were imported as strikebreakers. Most of these strikes were broken by vigilante action and limited concessions to labor. Mexican nationals among the strikers were deported. Few strikes occurred during the relatively prosperous 1920s. With the depression, mining companies reduced wages and layed off workers. The eruption of strikes that followed

1 For more information, see Matt S. Meier and Feliciano Ribera, Mexican Americans/American Mexicans. From Conquistadors to Chicanos ((New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); and Karen Anderson, Changing Woman, A History of Racial Ethnic Women in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapters 5 & 6.



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involved Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in work stopages, but these did not result in increased organization or union building. For example, in an important coal mining strike in 1933 in Gallup, New Mexico, most miners were Mexicanos. They organized into a national Miners Union, a radical adjunct to the Communist Trade Union Unity League. In August of 1933, they struck for union recognition, higher wages and an end to excessive prices at the company store. The strike lasted for three months but once settled, few Hispanics were rehired. Organizing of Hispanic labor increased in 1934 when Jesus Pallares, a Mexican coal miner, founded the Liga Obrera de Habla Espaniola. This organization had an active membership of 8000 miners in New Mexico and Colorado. The organization played an important role in the strike of 1935, when strikers were ousted from company houses and evictions led to rioting and murder. Jesus was deported and the Liga died. Hispanic workers provided the basis for American southwestern mining operations yet Mexicans and Mexican American workers have long been set apart as cheap labor, divided from Anglo workers by union policies and job and wage discrimination, social and economic segregation and limited educational opportunities. Hispanic laborers were obliged to buy necessities from company stores; they earned $19 for a six day week before hospital and store deductions in 1916. Employees with English surnames were listed on the work rolls as “miners” rather than “laborers” and paid $33 for the same week’s work. “Laborers” did not rise through the ranks like “miners”. As late as the 1960’s, segregation was virtually complete in Arizona mining towns in which Hispanics and Euro-Americans lived, worked and recreated in separate housing, schools, and movie theatres. Anglo workers lived on the hill above town, while Mexicans lived in “Tortilla flats” and Indians resided across the river in Indian Town. Mexican Americans in Ajo, Arizona were allowed to swim in the public pool only once a week, for example, just before the water was changed. Inter-ethnic marriage was not only socially discouraged but also illegal. The first inter-racial couple in Morenci, a white woman who married a Mexican man, could not rent a house for decades. There had been strikes before 1983 at Phelps Dodge. In 1917, sheriff’s deputies and vigilantes rode into Bisbee, Arizona and arrested 2000 striking miners and their supporters. They were forced into a waiting boxcar of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad (a Phelps Dodge subsidiary) and hauled over 173 miles to a detention camp in central New Mexico. Few returned to Bisbee. In 1946, the CIO called a strike that lasted for 107 days and ended with the first contract which included equal pay for Anglos, Hispanics and Indians. Although this contract was supposed to end wage discrimination in mining, much other discrimination remained. In the 1960s, worker changing-rooms were still



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separated by race and Mexican locker rooms were inferior, sometimes providing only cold showers. In 1967 unions tackled discrimination in worker housing, and in an eight-month strike scored victory over such discrimination in Phelps Dodge towns. There is a long history of women’s auxiliaries “holding the line” in strike after strike through American history after the union was ordered back to work or strikebreakers were brought in to keep the enterprise going and striking workers left town to find work that would support their families. Such activity raises questions about how women develop political consciousness, and why and under what circumstances they become politically active. In thinking about these questions, consider the following definitions: 1. feminist consciousness: a critique of male supremacy, formed and offered in the light of a will to change it, which in turn assumes a conviction that it is changeable. Women with feminist consciousness act politically to challenge male supremacy and to change the patriarchal social system under which they live. They generally work with other feminists on women’s issues and in predominantly or all female groups. 2. gender or female consciousness: This is a collective consciousness that usually emerges from women's community networks. It assumes that an individual identifies herself with her sex. She has a sense of her womanhood and chooses to work in female groups because that is a comfortable or positive environment in which to emerge into the public arena. Female consciousness usually accepts male supremacy and women’s separate sphere. It does not, for example, reject the traditional sexual division of labor but rather accepts that men and women do different work because they are different. Women who have a gender consciousness might, for example, draw for the legitimation of their political work upon their traditional arena of operation--the home--and upon a gender ideology that ascribes to women an obligation to provide nourishment and ensure the survival of their families. This is what Progressive women did when they adopted the ideology of Civic Domesticity in order to clean up the city and urban politics so as to improve the standard of living. Such activism required that women engage in distinctly non-domestic activity such as lobbying, petitioning, crafting legislation, undertaking investigations, instigating civil service reform, etc. Some historians have argued that a sense of female consciousness or gender consciousness is a pre-condition for feminist consciousness. That is, one must identify as a woman with other women



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and with women’s needs before one can critique woman’s place and challenge patriarchy. 3. communal consciousness: This is a consciousness that women share with others in their community. It is based on solidarity with men and women of the same group. The group in question might be defined in terms of class, ethnicity, race, geography, religion, or nationality. Communal consciousness has a gender dimension because activism on behalf of a group contributes to the assertiveness of women. But women who engage in political or social activism on the basis of a communal consciousness--as opposed to a feminist or female consciousness--have a different relation to power than their male colleagues. In working with men they are often working under male leadership or in concert with goals defined by men or male needs even if they work as women within female organizations (such as women’s auxiliaries). Community consciousness often arises from a different tradition and has a different orientation than that of white, middle class feminism which has its roots in individualism. It can be either radical or conservative in its goals and methods. Where did the women of Clifton-Morenci fall in terms of their consciousness? Did it change over the course of the strike? Did all the women share a similar consciousness and politicization? Was the process of politicization similar for all the women?

Method: utilizing journalism The book has gone through a complex process of development. It draws not only upon the observations, field notes, and reportage of Barbara Kingsolver’s columns but also later interviews and library research. Her text went through successive drafts before being published. Throughout this process, the journalist revised and reworked her material constructing a dramatic narrative about the women of Clifton-Morenci from the unbiased reporting of a significant—and male—labor strike. She positioned events within a broader social, economic, and political context for an audience beyond the local readers of a daily newspaper. She developed a point of view by interacting with her informants who were rooted in their post-strike experience. How did the author’s reassessment, re-investigation, reflection and re-working inform the story? While the story of a dramatic strike, this book says much about female empowerment and generational change. A group of miner’s wives, sisters, and daughters drew upon a family-based, union heritage to develop a sense of class,



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gender, and even feminist consciousness. Their politicization, and the peer culture they developed on the picket line, provided the strength 1) to overcome extreme hardship and to battle economic and natural disaster, family and community disapproval, male derision, state and corporate power; 2) to envision new aspirations; and 3) to adopt new identities. Study Questions: 1. Do women work in the mine? At what jobs? When do they begin? 2. What are the working relationships between the men and women miners? 3. How does the union view women miners? 4. What is the relationship between the union and the community? 5. What is the role of the women’s auxiliary? In the union? In the community? Does it change over the course of the strike? 6. What does this book tell us about the gender ideology of Hispanic culture? Do gender ideals and/or sex roles change over the course of the strike? 7. What does this story tell us about the possibilities of a working-class female culture? 8. What were the strike tactics adopted by the women? Were they gendered? Effective? Did they attract or deflect violence? Garner community support? 9. How did the company respond to the strike? To the issues of worker concern? 10. What was the role of the state, and in particular the governor and the national guard, in this strike? 11. What kinds of consciousness do these women exhibit? Class? Union? Female? Ethnic? Community? Feminist? Did this change over the course of the strike and/or afterward? 12. How did the strike affect the personal relationships of the strikers--their spousal, kinship and community relations?



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13. Was Kingsolver changed by her experience in Clifton and Morenci? How? Written Assignment--Possible Paper Topics: 1. Women’s historians have argued that gender consciousness is a necessary precondition for feminist consciousness. Do the events in the Phelps Dodge strike support this idea? 2.The strike undermined traditional Hispanic gender roles in Clifton and Morenci. What changes do you see in these working-class families and communities? 3.How were the women of Clifton and Morenci changed by their participation in the strike? Focus either on their growing feminism or independence, or the changes in their family relations and structures of power in those relations.

4. What is the moral of the story?


Documents

[email protected] 2-6183syllabus.colorado.edu/archive/HIST-4626-20141-001.pdf · 2015-02-11 · Prof. Lee Chambers 4 Hellems 222 [email protected] 2-6183 April 7 & 14: US