I welcome you to the Historical Society and center this eechk. If you do not know about us, its time you did. We are the first such center within the walls of a major museum in the United States. And its about time. Im not going to take too much time, too much time away from the panel, but i do want to do a special shoutout to our moderator, post doctoral fellow in womens history and public history here at new york his r historical. Nick is a fantastic scholar and human being and colleague and i am so absolutely thrilled that hes been with us at a very important moment in the development of the center. I also want to do a special shoutout to the Melon Foundation itself, which about four years ago, gave us a giant vote of confidence and very lovely grant to get the center up and running because at the Melon Foundation, we are here and we are here to stay. And really, really happy about that. In any case, nick went to columbia university, got his phd there just a couple of years ago, as did i, more than a couple of years ago. But starting in september 2018, the the substantiate professor in boston. We will be desolate when he leaves, but he is, we were fortunate to have him. Kudos to you. Nicks first book, the work of education, education many schools, the Labor Movement, is under krot with the university of illinois press. He is the cure rater of ladys garments, womens work, womens activism, which is the exhibition right outside this room, which inspired this coub y ver sags this evening so without further adieu, nick. Good evening. Thank you so much for being with us here on this final friday. Its been a remarkable month and i wanted to take a moment to say a bit about what we do and to thank folks who made it possible. Just this month alone, we have held our Fourth Annual conference on womens history. Weve also had a dozen other across our museum and weve brought in well other 1,000 people, which makes me very excited and before i go further, i want to acknowledge two people who made this happen, starting with ali surgery, who worked tirelessly for us. She has actually all the deta s details. To really for this work, this history and exhibition programs. So please give her a hand. Our exhibitions are here, we also work closely with the Education Division and just this month, we launched women and the american story. An online womens history curriculum guide for middle and High School Classes and in building that curriculum, we relied on work we did for another project. The first ever open massive course on womens history, titled women have always worked. Take a brochure, sign up for our email list and get more involved with the center by joining our womens history council. Youll be first to hear about events like these. So please check out that literature. Were very grateful for the members of the council. The support of womens history corporate council. Wed also like to acknowledge grace, diana, our trustee, jane reed, and the Melon Foundation for the programs. Its because of their generous involvement and that of many in the room that we are able to do what we do. I should add that the exhibition well be discussing tonight was inspired by the generosity and memory of jean appleton, who helped launch our center and continue to sustain it. This brings me to tonights program. This is, in a way, our opening event. Ladys garment, womens work, womens activism. This is a show that tells the story of womens work, organizers and the international in 20th century. It explores how their work shaped the Movement Across the years. Alex is the chair the scholarly Advisory Board here. She is professor of American History at columbia as well as professor america at the institute on women and gender and sexuality. Awarded the bancroft prize in 0 2002. And for the purposes of tonights conversation, i know she has a copy. Her very First Published a articles analyzed the women workers. Jeanette gayle. Shes assistant professor of history at Hobart Williams smith. Her work lies a at intersection of africanamerican and labor history. The interconnected histories of the black struggle for freedom and workers rights, focused specifically on the role of black female migrant dressmakers as they transitioned from home based production to the Garment Industry in the early 20th century in new york city. Her forthcoming book titled fashion aing freedom, black dressmakers in new york, 19151945. Charts the migration of black dressmakers to new york city and examines their role in three important developments. The fashioning of new negro identity, the integration, you think thats right . Integration of a black industrial working class of organized labor. Thats my fault. And the struggle for civil rights. And final, associate professor of sociology. She was born and raised in new york city and herself, a child of chinese immigrant parents. She earned her phd from columbia and is author of sewing garments. Based on extensive field work and shes finishing up a book on Asian Americans in the bamboo ceiling. Examining how Asian Americans move up past mid management in the workplace. Asian americans make up 20 to 25 of college students, but do less well in the working world. Shes also working on a project. Shes faculty associate of roosevelt house Public Policy institu institute. So please join me in welcoming our speakers. You may have noticed the cameras in back. Cspan is filming this event. For those in the audience, it will be over your head, so no need for a waiver and our conversation might last just about an hour. Were not going to have a formal q a, but join us for refreshments and conversation afterwards. Also, silence your cell phones. This was inspired by jean, who was very involved, and her father, who was a long time leader into the 60s. Its also on monday, we honor ed the 108th anniversary. Occupational health and a requirements in the United States. Talking about this in a larger sense because after years of bad news, and these were workers often led by women, teachers, nurses, flight attendants and weve seen some of those workers as well, particularly in the hotel industry, embrace these larger movement, speaking out about me too and others. So the questions were kind of asked in the show, how workers organize, connect for struggles, broader social movements and how they shape Womens Movements more broadly. Shed some light on that tonight, hopefully. Now, the last thing ill say with an introduction like this, you might expect a massive show in the gallery. You might expect the same. I think there are about 1500 words of text and about 1500 linear feet at the Cornell Center alone. For a small show, we have a big topic and thats why we have this tonight. So id like to start asking our speakers to sort of give us a sense from their own work, first, really sort of who these women workers and organizers were in the periods they studied. How their own ethnic and racial backgrounds, the world they came from, migrated from, shaped their work and organizing, sometimes constrained it, but also how it shape d the inequalities they faced on the job and beyond and. We value as always the Wonderful Program you and ali do. Thanks. Let me start by telling you a story. Heres the story. Its 1968. Yes, i am that old. Just completed my doctoral dissertation at Rutgers University on the Jewish Labor Movement in new york in the 1890s. And put down my pen and i got my first job helined up and sudden, i realized theres a Womans Movement out there. Just beginning. And i dont have a single woman in my dissertation. How could that be . Well, its the 1890s. Of course labor in the 1890s, labor in the 1950s and 60s that didnt have anything to do with women. It had to do with women and male workers. At least in my consciousness at that point. But when the Womens Movement exploded and i became immediately active in it, i realized that there was no way, so i went back to work and start today look for the labor organizers in union. I was working on the 1890s and women joined the ilg and agitated to join the ilg in large numbers not until the early 1900s. So, i escaped my own blame game. As i started looking for them, i realized that here was an industry, the Garment Industry in new york, which already in the early days, it was probably about 70 of the workers in the industry, about 70 jewish, about 30 italian and astring l ling of other people. But the industry was dominated by immigrants and Something Like 85 of the workers in the industry of the operators, the sewing machine operators, were female. So could it have been that i missed all the women and that they were unimportant in the formation of the union . The ilg was founded, the international ladys Garment Workers Union was founded in 1901 and joined the american federati federation, first of the trades and then the American Federation of labor shortly there after. The founders were skilled male operators. They were the cutters in the industry. The fur workers in the industry. Those that were said to have brought to the industry the skill to design and cut and make the garments which they had been given. But the labor in the industry, almost all of it, was done by females. Sometimes at home, in workshops, but much of the time, in what well call small contractors shops. And then in early burgeoning factories, which began in the early 1900s with the expansion of the shirt waist industry and we can talk about what shirt waists are later, if youd like. But the women who worked and were the majority of employees in the industry were not members of International Garment workers and beyond. By 1903, 1904, 1905, they were agitating to become union members. They were the garments they were sewing on and badly sewing. Supply their own machine. They have to go and and get the machines and bring them to the workplace and on and on and on. Usually endless hours. As a man in the industry resisted it. They want women because women were said to be skilled. Well, you and i would ask questions about what did they mean by skill because they define skill many terms of the work that men did. It was work that women did, it was by definition unskilled. Even though it could take weeks and sometimes months to train a good operator. The women, never dlsz the dlsz less, pushed in a special moment thats gone down in history as the uprising of the 30,000. Some people say 30,000, but ill stick with the 30,000 number. In 1909, the women became particularly agitated by wage cuts in the industry. There were all doing piece work and there were cuts to the pieces. And angry, angry, angry. That they were being asked to work endless hours of seasonal work. And then suddenly, the work was done and they would have six weeks of no work at all. And in those six weeks. Generally, they lived with families. Generally, they were single women. Daughters of immigrant families. Immigrantwomen themselves. And when they lost their jobs, even if it was only six weeks, the whole, went on strike. They did it over the objection of the famous story. The famous meetings that the women had called and said ive had enough of your conversation. I say we should go out on strike. By the deals, that this hand i raised shrivelled. Paraphrasing there. And thousands of women went out on strike. The strike lasted several months. It was not entirely a success. Perhaps a third of the industry. Decided to accept unionization and those shops because union shops and twothirds did not and yet, it was that stripe that convinced men that women were organizable. That they could organize and it was that strike that raised to the forefront the name of the women who we now recognize as the strike organizers. Pauline newman, rose snyderman. Not year rose pisata. One of my favorite people. She didnt immigrate to the United States until a few years later, but those names of those women had gone down in history as confronting. To create what was one of the most enduring unions trading. Two minutes then ill also say why was this important . Why did it matter that these women joined the union . First of all, the International Union without women in it would have you know, maybe 10 of the membership that it had with women in it. When the huge Large Membership and whole union had clout and the Union Movement in general became something that not only the employers in the particular Garment Industry had to risk, but that employers everywhere had to notice that far from being unorganizable, women were organizable and could create good, strong unions. That was the first time importance. And so the ilg inspired unionization among female textile workers, among female shoe workers, among the garment workers in male clothing in chicago, for example, followed shortly thereafter and so on. But there was a second issue that makes it important. The men had organized the june to get better working conditions and better wages. Women wanted that too, but in a very famous phrase that rose is said to have utter, we want bread, but we want roses too. We want not only that we have better wages and shorter hours and so on, but we want you to provide us with the goodies that come from being part of a community. And those goodies included night classes, english classes for immigrant women, sports teams, vacation places that working women could go and have a vacation, dances, musical performances and so on. This idea that the union was a social institution, we sometimes call it social unionism, was a concept that women brought into the Union Movement and that then spread throughout the Union Movement and youll hear more about it in the 1930s. But it begins right in those early years of the strike. Theres a third and final thing which we need to remember and that is that the trade Union Movement which was led by men, even after this strike was over, most of the leadership still remained a male leadership. Nevertheless, needed to acknowledge that women were workers. And that as workers, they were as economically responsible as the men were for family support. Not for the support of wives and children necessarily, but for the support of parents, siblings, their own children, if they were Single Parents and so on. And that recognition was never lost after the ilg brought it into being. So im going to stop there and let you continue. Now you understand why im captivated by this whole thing. Thank you all so much for coming and organizing it. I tell the story of black women in the union. And since you started with a story, im going to tell you a little bit of a story too. They say that history is biographical. And in that case it is. Im an immigrant and so and i sort of went university and started doing history and very much interested in my in immigration and, you know, what were women doing. And the story is that you have these women coming from the south from the great migration and also from the british west indes. And there was one line in the book that said they were also garment workers and i was fascinated. This was a new narrative. I decided that i was going to trace this and lo and behold, you know, i discovered that certainly in the beginning years of the Garment Industry, there were a sprinkling of black women. In 1910 there might have been 200 at max, really a drop in the bucket. World war i made the difference as it did to most gave black folks an opportunity to break into industry because of the vacancies that were created, because you got people going to men going to war. But certainly in the case of the Garment Industry in new york, the sort of the sensation of transatlantic shipment, shipping, meant that you didnt have the sort of supply the traditional sue p traditional supply of workers from eastern and Southern Europe for the Garment Industry. Well, there were all of these black women and this was their opportunitile. And so in the closing years of world war i is when you get black women going into the industry en masse so by 1920 you have 2500 black women in the industry. And so it took me from, okay, now i know that these women are not just working as domestic servants, theyre working in the Garment Industry. Theyre skilled workers. Many of them from the british west indes brought sewing skills with them. These are skills they learned in school. Also from the south. Im about to give specific numbers from the south less clearly because of the lack of documentation because its an internal migration. But nevertheless, there is anecdotal evidence to indicate that my of these women brought dressmaking skills with them to new york city. So they go into the union into the Garment Industry. A few of them this is one of the things about the union which is different to other aflaffiliated unions, they were open to organizing black folks. Almost all of the other unions were not. And so there are a few black women who joined the union by t 1920. 1920s is a period where the ilgw goes through a lot of internal disarray. Theres a struggle for control between the socialists and co communists, there are 2,500 they start these campaigns but theyre interrupted by this disarray, i want to call it, in the union. And then they come out of that, the union comes out of that in 1928, 29 the union starts to reach out. They actually employ the first black woman organizer who has a really interesting history. She comes out of the brooklyn ywca, the segregated branch. Shes sent to brookwood Labor Institute to on a scholarship which is funded in part by the naacp who realize they really its important for black folks to become part of the industrial workforce and to join interracial unions. The Campaign Starts in september 1929. One month after, youre going youre into the depression era. Its very interesting and alice and i have an interesting take on that. Definitely the depression matters in that i think that and, alice, i think that conditions caused by the depression, those conditions itself, i dont think that that is what gets them to join the union. But the nra, its not the National Recovery act that does it either. But i think a response by the unions to the nira that says, look, we have to organize. This thing is not all that it is made out to be and it energizes the union and by then black women are ready. The foundations, i think, were laid in the early 1930s. The big moment, the watershed moment is august 16th, 1933, when the dress makers called a strike overnight. The black membership in the union goes from 400 to over 4,000. Thats the moment, thats the moment. And they become very, very active in the union from the beginning from the moment they go in. And i think this is also part of this is most of them are in the local 22 which is run by zimmerman and he has a particular take. Hes really committed to this idea of social unionism. Hes a protege, i think, and he takes it seriously. And black women sort of really embrace this, they are on the executive board of local 22. They are really just active in all aspects of the union. And my work sort of traces them from the union into the Civil Rights Movement. This is a sort of pathway. The skills that they develop, you know, in management, in sort of the what i call the democratic life of the union, really prepares them to play to be part of the vanguard of the black Civil Rights Movement in the 1940s. Theyre at the forefront of the struggle for the fair employment practice commission. Theres a massive rally at Madison Square garden that these women organize in 1946. Its we never get a permit fepc, but its an important step that takes us into 1964. And so all of these steps, you know, writing this history and you go, well, okay, that didnt work. But i think that i dont write i think it is really important that all of these steps that these women are integrally part of that sort of constant way of working for rights. In my case, particularly, workers rights and civil rights and they sort of come together. Theyre very active in the 1950s in raising funds for the civil rights struggle in the south and they are there front and center in the 1963 march on washington. So thats the story that i tell. Thank you. First i want to just say thank you to nick and thank you to ally. I will continue from world war ii, if you dont mind. World war ii is when you start beginning to see chinese immigrants go into the Garment Industry. It has to do chinese immigrants are here and the way they come into the u. S. Which is structured by the Immigration Laws will tell you exactly how many people were here. During world war ii, it was still right before world war ii was still the chinese exclusion. There were very few women here but there were americanborn men. And when they came back, they had access to the gi bill. And the very few who had access to the gi bill, they saw that, you know, we cant actually come in and do laundry again because before they left to go off to war, a lot of chinese were in hand laundry. When they came back, washing machines were invented. They looked to their neighbors in chinatown who were the Jewish Community who had garment shops. And they thought, maybe we could do this. And many of them who had access to the gi bill actually got money for that and the chinese world war ii vets, they were allowed to bring war brides to the u. S. This was the beginning of women in greater numbers coming to the u. S. And then when they came with their husbands, these exgis, they needed work. To facilitate their need for working, they opened some of the very earliest garment shops. There were very few. Documents show there were a dozen maybe at that point. And we dont see huge numbers of chineseowned contracting shops in chinatown until after 1965. 1965 was the next major Immigration Law that allowed chinese immigrants to come in. They came in in huge numbers after that. By the time we get to the late 1970s and 1980s, we begin to see 500 garment shops in chinatown. Thats the height. We see women coming in. Women needing work, women who couldnt speak english, women who lived in chinatown. In china town their refuge or work was in these garment shops and we see a proliferation of them. One of the reasons why they were allowed to open and why they were able to open was the massive exodus of blacks and italians and jewish women from the shops. You actually see the chinese actually, some of them, going into the exact same shops, the locations and taking over the sewing machines. But the workers changed. They didnt speak italian anymore, they spoke chinese instead. When they came into the area to work, how did they become unionized . So the ilg was very interesting. They did not know how to organize these Chinese Workers at all. So they actually organized them by organizing the contractors. So these women did not know that they were members of the union. Although they loved the union benefits. So when you speak to women, Chinese Women, and you ask them, well, what was your union benefit like or tell me about them . They actually called their Union Membership in chinese my blue cross card. So what did you think they valued of the union the most . Health insurance. Health insurance. So when they joined the union well, when they worked in the garment shops, they knew that they would become a member of the union and actually get health benefits. Health benefits. Thats how they became accustomed to the union. Not until way later until the 1980s there was a massive strike of 20,000 Chinese Workers in 1982 in the summer walked out of their shops and demanded to stay and remain in the union because by that time, by mid 1980s and 1990s, there was huge global competition. So they were union it was harder to maintain their wages, right . And a lot of the contractors said you know what, we dont need the union. We dont really need to be this middle person. We can keep these women working for us because theyre basically captured here. They dont really know english. They really cant find another job. Thats what the contractors thought. But the women did not want to put up with that. They wanted their union. And they wanted the union not only for the Health Insurance but also for the dental insurance, also for the pension they could get, the sick leave and also for the Immigration Project that actually taught them english so that they could become u. S. Citizens. They also wanted it for their pay stubs. Why would they want pay stubs . Because a lot of them were going to become u. S. Citizens and then what they would do is they would use those pay stubs to file income taxes to actually learn about getting credit to show their income taxes to the immigration authorities so that they could bring their family members over. That changed their power within their household. The women actually had much more power. They also had access to banking knowing the credit system, knowing how to get a mortgage. So many of these early garment workers ended up buying homes outside of chinatown in the boroughs, in queens or brooklyn. Thats the beginning of it. From 1980s on we actually see after the strike, we begin to see Chinese Women become hired or representatives in the union. The union actually hired them. Although i have to say, they didnt move that far up. But at least the Garment Union was beginning to recognize the value of having Chinese Workers in the union. And from then on, through the 1990s, we see the competition increase, globalization increase, the decrease of workers, we begin to see the increase of undocumented workers come in by the 1990s competing with the chinese unionized workers and so there was this friction, you know. But the union decides not only are they social, but they decide to also have a workers project where they would actually organize the undocumented to teach them that everybody is a worker, that we should actually have a workers wage that is responsible and that everybody should support each other. At least we can have that where they wouldnt be cut throat against the Union Workers and against the nonUnion Workers who were undocumented. Over time we actually begin to see a decline and the major decline in the Garment Industry was in 2001. Especially in chinatown. So what happened is, after in 2001 after september 11th, it ended after this, and september 11th at the World Trade Center was ten blocks away from chinatown. So ten blocks away from chinatown meant that when the World Trade Center buildings fell, chinatown was impacted tremendously. There were blockades on 14th street and down to canal street which meant that trucks that had fabric could not go into chinatown to deliver work. Trucks that trucks couldnt go in to take out the garments that were sewed and all of that was shut down for close to six months. There was no telephone service. No work could be done. By 2000s there was incredibly sophisticated Computer Technology where people could just send their designs overseas and a lot of these shops took over, took over. As of today, there are very few garment shops left in chinatown. Very few left in midtown and the majority devastation was after 9 11. I can talk more later. But well end there. Thank you, all, so much. [ applause ] why not, right . I realize im preaching to a choir since you all came to this event. But this has illustrated for me so very much, womens history is American History and this history is essential for understanding immigration, the world wars, the depression, Civil Rights Movement, immigrant rights movement. Were learning new things about this from these scholars. I wanted to open up a few different questions and i sort of thought i would pose a couple of them. One question i wanted to ask about is the question of tension and triumph. We tell these stories often. We want to tell stories about the Labor Movement of success and solidarity. We know there are tensions and they happen at many scales, family tensions, the fact that this is women work, how does it change gender dynamics in the home . We have tension in the union. How the Union Responds to black workers, to Chinese Workers, how it organizes them or doesnt. And then we have these challenges within the wider world, how the Labor Movement faces increasing sort of challenges in each other generation from efforts to move shops overseas, from efforts to break the union in a variety of ways. Im sure you could talk about all of these and that would bring over time. I thought i would pose that question at that sort of multiscaler way and allow anyone to pick up on it at any point in the scale. Maybe i should begin by saying that even in the early years there are multiple layers of tension and maybe if i sort of can outline some of them, you can see how they continue. Some diminish and some continue. The first level of tension i think comes from the way in which the industry is organized. The industry is and weve talked about contractors and contracting shops. So heres how the industry is organized. Some small, usually male person decides [ laughter ] sorry about that. [ laughter ] thats correct. [ laughter ] this male person decides that he wants to go to business himself. Hes tired of working for somebody else. Hes usually an immigrant who has been in the United States a matter of a few years. He goes and he purchases, basically, a bundle of cut garments. He goes to a cutting shop and he purchases a bundle of cut garments and then he brings them to either his home or to a small shop that hes set up and his job is to sew those garments in a particular amount of time. Now, how much he pays for the cut garments determines how much he can pay his workers. And generally in the early years, those workers are kin or people who come from the same general area that he comes from and sometimes their family members and he pays them as little as he possibly can or nothing, if theyre family members, which enables him to buy more cut garments and to exploit more workers. But the system is a selfdestructive system or a workerdestructive system, if you would like. The contractor cant afford to pay enough to purchase the garments to pay the workers more because somebody else will beat him to it if he pays more and somebody pays less but produces more garments for by paying his workers less, hell be out of business pretty soon. The system, that contracting system, remains in place even when the industry in the early 1900s moves into factories. So those things like the triangle shirt waist shop, although the shop is owned by paris and blank, by the two men who are later charged with being responsible for the fire, the contracting within the shop is done by individuals who have hired their own supplied their own machines and hired their own workers. Its in their interest to pay those workers as little as possible and to work them as hard as possible. And that contracting system, it remains throughout the history of the Garment Industry, including in the chinese period, which is what enables chinese entrepreneurs to create these shops but which also which means that women can get those jobs, but they can never really be paid enough. Now, the tension then when the union comes in, in those early years, theres a clear conflict. Contractors dont want to deal with the union. Why should they want to deal with the union which will ask them to pay more when the whole system is so structured that they cant make any money if they pay more and indeed theyll lose their jobs. So thats one set of tensions. When the union intervenes in those tensions, it intervenes hoping and this is the power of that great strike of the 1909, 1910 period, it hopes to organize enough contractors so they wont be cutting each others throats and therefore the throats of the workers. And its only when they can do that by establishing common, you know, interests among the contractors and the workers, that they are able to make any money. So the Garment Industry uniquely, uniquely among american unions and employers creates what are called the protocols of peace in 1911, 1912, 1913. By 1914 virtually all garment manufacturers in new york are signed onto the protocols of peace and the protocols of peace assign prices, basically, for the piece work that the workers do so theyre not longer competing with each other. Now the system breaks down. It doesnt last very long. But it is a wonderful example of how the union and the contractors can actually join with each other to benefit the workers in the system, so thats one kind of tension. Second kind of tension, the men dont want the women to organize. They dont think they can organize. Where do the women get help organizing, from other women, from middle class women, and those women organized in the womens trade union league in large measure supply the money and the resources and the organizational know how to help the immigrant women none of these knowledge bases, to organize. Thats great. But it, of course, produces even greater tension between the women and the union because the women are getting benefits from the middle class women who they dont particularly care about the union, they care about organizing these poor women. But it also produces tensions among the women, some of whom begin to resent and one of the most famous of them, pauline newman, there are interesting stories there. She happens to be gay. She lives a life with another woman. She cant tolerate the middle class women who have this sort of american ideal of Family Structure and so on which is antithetical to everything she wants. She wants to treat the workers as workers and to organize them. So theres a threelayer tension there that emerges when the women are outside the union, when theyre inside the union, who they go to for help, and so on. And then theres a third layer of tension and thats ethnic tension. We sort of dismisses that. The ilg is a jewish jewiunion. A lot of the meetings are held in yiddish. But there are lots of italians in the industry and theyre working in their own shops. Slowly as the factor system develops, they move into the factories. But the Italian Women feel completely excluded from the Union Movement because they dont understand whats going on. And until 1920, the ilg pretty much pays no attention to them and then it begins to publish an italian newspaper and try to involve them. Well, the result is, of course, that Italian Women become strikebreakers. Why should they supported a strike that they dont know what its about. It doesnt involve them. The organization doesnt happen around them. And that tension is reflected as the industry begins as early as 1912, 13 to move south and move into the coal mining country where glove factories and so on are started. Those women, the anglosaxon women are uncomfortable with this jewish union. You put all of those layers of tension together and you dont have anything that looks like a huge you know, a unified process. What you have is an International LadiesGarment Workers Union which is run, led and largely occupied in the early years by jewish immigrant people. Theres a fourth layer. But its so complicated, i dont want to and thats the socialist background of the members which actually emerges as an even greater tension in the 20s and 30s. But im going to leave that [ laughter ] you know, im not even going to go into that except to say as ive said before, the 20s becomes this period where theres so much internal sort of tension between socialists and the communists in the ilgw, who is going to control this union . But i want to take the tension and sort of tell the story that im trying to make into to write an article about. So in one of the women that goes at that, one of the black women that she goes into the union, really 1931. Shes one of the earlier black women who say, yes, were going to join the union. Her name is lillian and shes gung ho from the beginning. You see her in the harlem meetings and shes speaking out and shes a true believer. By 1934 she is chosen by zimmerman and dubinski to organize black workers in chicago. They do not want to organize. Shes lifted. She leaves her she leaves new york. She goes to chicago. She relocates. She spends months doing sort of real underground work to talk to these black women because theyre scared of losing their jobs and shes finally getting somewhere and im not quite sure how many months she spends, but its it seems to me a good six to nine months. And then all of a sudden shes just kind of plucked out of chicago and brought back to new york and jewish male is put in her place just as she says, im just about to bring all of this thing to some sort of productivity. Now the women are ready and she writes this letter to zimmerman and she says, i feel like i have been used as a cats paw. And its such an amazing phrase. And it really and, you know, what happens to her is that she she takes her name off of the election to run for sort of the exit and this is the woman who was on the executive committee, executive board of local 22 and she kind of disappears after that. I cant find her anywhere after that. But you get this idea she also says to zimmerman, be very careful to how you are treating black garment workers because you will soon fine you have a duel situation on your hands. Shes talking about the communists. Because the communists are constantly really trying to work from within and trying to get, you know, the workers, but particularly uninterested in black workers. She almost threatens zimmerman. Its an interesting antidote that when you start pulling back the layers, it shows the layers of race and gender. Thats a story that i have to contribute to show you sort of whats going on, right . Ill tell you a little bit about the women and the men and also at home, the tensions. And its tied to the union because of how much more the women get. So the men and the women who work in chinatown, the chinese immigrants, so the majority theres two basic industries in chinatown, from the 1960s through the 2000s. So its restaurant work and garment work. Thats where the majority of the chinese immigrants work. So the restaurant work for the men its mostly men in restaurant work. Mostly women in garment, are not unionized at all. They get cash payments. So the women the men are mostly just getting enough for wages. They dont get any benefits at all. But what it means is when the women work and get benefits, the women are actually bringing maybe not more in wages home, bringing more in terms of benefits. The men feel this tension. However, the men also appreciate what the women do. What the women do in terms of getting especially health care for their kids, its expensive to take your kids to the doctor. Its expensive to do everything. But the women, because theyre able to get all of this from the union, sometimes get push back from the men. There are cases where i spoke to some of the women. They remember early on and in the current times, in the late 1990s, where there would be domestic violence, where they demanded their wages and all of the rest of the stuff is good. But you have to remain in your place. There are cases where the women were able to get much more power in the household because of the union. The men and the women chose in their families which members would be the next to immigrate to the u. S. And once that happens their relatives, even if their the mens relatives, gave a lot of high regard is what the men would say, or the women, to their wives. So the wives were elevated in a certain way that the men werent looked at. So those tensions are there the whole time. Whole time. And its because the union, you know, was able to provide all these extra things for the women. This is just to elaborate on that a little bit. One of the big differences is that your Chinese Women are mostly married with families. Right. The women who tended its not universally true, but the women who worked in the Garment Industry in the early 1900s are young and unmarried for the most part. And the assumption was that you would quit work when you you would quit working for somebody else. You might continue to work for your spousal partner, but you wouldnt be working outside the home if you could avoid it. Now, there are lots of people who couldnt avoid it, they were widowed or died or so on. But the vast majority were unmarried women and their paychecks went to their mothers or their fathers. In other words, they didnt most of them keep anything, unlike male workers, sons who went out to work. The women turned their pay pa s packets to their families and were sometimes given a little spending money or transportation money or whatever it was. Thats so far from resentment, the women were they were essential to the running of the household, their income was an important piece of income. My question is the africanamerican women, were they married . Were they i cant remember the exact percentages, but its a mix. Several were married. But the as far as wages is concerned, the wages of black women have always been essential to the Household Economy because black men didnt have either were unemployed, underemployed or worked at such lowpaying jobs that that the wages of women were essential to the household becomes even more essential to the survival of the household during the depression, right . So they one of the things that i argue is that in the early years, female garment workers who are still employed in the Garment Industry, theyre afraid to join the june in the early years because they feel that if they join the union, theyre going to lose their jobs and thats the end of the household. I have cases where the woman loses her job, the man is not working because the unemployment among africanamerican men is so high. Its Something Like 10 or 15 points higher than white male unemployment and this is in manhattan. And families just break up. They just have to they just break up because the womens earnings is whats holding stuff together. So, yeah, its essential. And its a mix. And as far as the single women are concerned, im not sure to the extent in which these young single women are turning over their pay packets. I dont think its to the extent that you had in sort of jewish households or italian households. I think theres a slightly different sort of a dynamic there. But, yeah, the wages are essential of these women who are working in the Garment Industry. I have a dozen more questions. [ laughter ] but were, in fact, out of time. It went quickly. The museum closes at 8 00. I went to give you a chance to see the exhibition. Please join me in thanking our speakers. [ applause ] continue the conversation and enjoy your weekend. Weeknights this month on American History tv, were featuring the contenders, our series that looks at 14 president ial candidates who lost the election but had a lasting effect on u. S. Politics. 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