Blackness but not talk about what the responsibilities are. Nobody wants the burden, the loathing. But the lure is a billion dollar global industry. Walters pushed back against that. I think in a lot of ways, thats going to be his legacy. He is one of the most important black political figures of the postwar period as an intellectual, policy advocates, someone willing to speak truth to power and not just to white conservatives and white people, but really to black leadership and black people. Thats it. Thank you. Thats it for this week. We will meet again next week. Were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. We spinniwing through the south emory university. A professor discusses efforts in the early 1960s to register africanamerican voters in mississippi. American history tv tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan3. American history tv products are available at the cspan online store. Go to cspanstore. Org to see whats new for American History tv. And check out all of the cspan products. We continue with lectures in history with Texas Womens University professor katherine londec teaching about how women contributes to the war effort during world war ii. Its good to see everybody today. I appreciate you coming to our space here. Today were going to talk about american women and world war ii. This is obviously a huge topic. We could spend a semester just on this topic alone. Were going to try to break it into three spaces. We will look at a lot of images to fit in with other things we have talked about. Were going to talk about american women. Were going to talk about women at home. Women at work. And women at war. Were going to organize our ideas this way. Were going to look at a lot of the propaganda. We have been talking about propaganda throughout the semester and watching videos and things like that. We will get a chance to talk bsh everybo everybody found the video okay . Its a good one on women at work during world war ii. We will talk about these different parts of women during american women during world war ii. Were just hitting the survey of this. Theres so much that we could talk about throughout the semester. And we do all of u. S. And world war ii, except we cant do all of it. We do our bits and pieces. We have talked about some of these things. Some of it will be familiar. Especially when we get to the women as work part. Then we will go from there. Be sure to stop me if you have any questions. Well do our thing. Women at home. When we think about this, one of the biggest things i want you to do today is think about this reality for the home front, mainly what we are talking about. The reality of what life meant for women in the war. One of the first things that we often think about is all of the men going away to war. The men are going off. Who is left behind . The women. Right . So a lot of the women are married. We talked about there are all sorts of quickie weddings going on. People who have been married for a while as well. This idea of, how do you get by . If you are a household with a husband and a wife in this time period, its a partnership. Each has their role. They are more defined roles in world war ii than they are, say, today. This idea of how are you going to do both your job as the wife and often the mother and the job of the husband . How do you do this . This is a very popular book. This came out in 1942. So your husbands gone to war. This idea of what do do you . How do you get through it . You can see from the cover, tackling male chores. Chores were defined by male and female. Who is going to which job . Any single woman, any widow, any woman like that does everything. Right . If you live on your own, you do your own thing. Put your ownight bulbs in. This giuidebook to help women know how to do maintenance jobs. This is my favorite part. The wolves in the friends clothing. We have wolves. That was the phrase of the day about you know what that means . They pretend to be helpful. I will come change your light bulb for you. Right . Let me help. Let me help. Really, they are not quite as nice as they seem. How do you distinguish between the wolf and the real friend . Then this part in the upper right corner is something thats really important. Women had a lot of responsibility, not just to do their work and things like this, but this is the lost art of letter writing. This idea that women were responsible for keeping up the morale of men. This is going to be a theme were going to have through this section. The idea that women are responsible for making men remember what they are fighting for, making men feel confident, making men feel that its okay for them to be away but they are missed and they need to come home. This lost art of letter writing. This whole chapter about how to write your letters to your men. Theres articles in womens magazines. Theres articles in mainstream newspapers. All these editorials about how women should write their letters. What do you think you want to put in a letter if you are writing to johnny who is away in europe fighting against the german s germans . What do you want to put in your letter as you are writing from home . What would you put in there . Dont worry about how things are going there. Focus on getting the job done. Right. Dont worry about how things are. Focus on getting the job done. Go do your thing. We are are good here. You have to realize that they want you to write multiple letters a week. If you can write daily, thats best. Imagine your soldiers going to get mail every day and if theres nothing there, how depressing that s. I have to go fight my war and nobody at home cares about me. You write that once. Then what do you write . What else do you do . We miss you. Please come home. Right . You cant do too much of that. It will make him too sad. Right . Focus on the war. Right. A fun story. A piece of advice that gorman puts in her book is make yourself interesting so your letters are interesting. Do interesting things so your letters are interesting. Dont be too interesting, because he will think you are having fun while he is at war. You have to find that balance. What if they dont have a sweetheart at home. Are there women getting together to write letters to strangers to help out . Yeah. Exactly. Theres this series of this campaign through the red cross or different organizations where soldiers would give their names and women would write letters to strangers. You have romances that grow out of that. This idea of writing letters, talking about whats going on at home. What if your roof gets a leak . Should you write johnny about that . I dont know, right . Its this balance between maybe you wait until the leak is fixed. Then you tell, johnny, the roof had a loeak but we got it fixed. You dont want to seem too efficient. If the roof leaks and plumbing breaks and all these things you and you take care of it, why does johnny need to come home . Its a lot of pressure on these women to write letters and these very specific ways, high volume, positive. You can say you miss him. You cant be too blue. You have to find this balance of being responsible and him not needing to worry but still needing him to come home because its just you are not good at it. Right . You can get by. But hurry home. Its this balance and this pressure on women that gets put, again you have books about it. You have got in different forms of media about womens responsibilities to write these letters. The men i read a lot of these letters coming back. We dont have as many letters of the women going overseas. These letters the women wrote, we dont see as many because the men didnt keep them. The women kept the letters that the men wrote from overseas. We have more of those. We can figure out what the women were talking about by how the men respond to those letters. Thats one of the ways that we can determine what went into those letters. You see a lot of anxiety from the men, especially about the wolves. Theres a lot ideas about the men who dont serve, who arent able to serve or have these different positions domestically and that theyre going to try to steal the women. Thats actually a campaign that the germans and japanese use in leaflet campaigns is the men back home are stealing your girl. Dont you wish the war was over . You can go home. Come on in. This idea of the letter writing and things like this. The fact that this is an incredibly popular book in 1942. It says a lot, i think, that women are working on this and going forward. Other responsibilities that the women had. We talked a little bit about the rationing. We will talk about it more in another week. This idea of weve got all this rationing. Who is the United States responsible for feeding during the war . Pretty much everybody. Lets narrow that down a little. Who are we responsible for feeding . Our allies. The allies. Were going to give food to the russians, british and all that entails. Who else do we need to feed . Our people. Our soldiers. The men and women who have gone abroad. Were responsible for feeding them. British arent going to pull out fish and chips for our soldiers. We have to supply. Who is the third group were responsible for feeding . People rescuing. The home front. The people back home. We have got rationing so they can get that manufacturing that we talked about. Then that reality of food and who is going to eat and who were responsible for feeding. Theres a lot of emphasis on women growing those victory gardens. Ive got a slide of that. Grow the victory gardens. Grow vitamins at your kitchen door. Theres a growth in the study of nutrition in this time period. You want to get as much nutrition in as little food as possible. Then this idea of, what are women going to do . You have to can that. Its one thing to grow a victory garden. If its done by the end of the summer, thats no good. This idea of canning. Am i proud . Im fighting famine by canning at home. Right . Look, this shard but iis hard bg it. The little girl, well have lots to eat this winter, wont we, mother . Very cute. As we go through these, we will see a lot of these posters and images. I want you to be sure to note things like the race of these women that are being portrayed. The appearance of them. These are pretty Perfect Little that little girl is so cute. You could pinch her cheek. This idea of who is being represented, which audience are these governmentsponsored posters trying to reach. Another thing women get used in a number of different ways. We have this pressure to try to get women to take action. Weve also got the effort to use women as propaganda pieces to achieve other goals. What do you see in this image . What do you think of this . Sacrifice. Right. Sacrifice. Is she a perky, cleancut gal . Well, she might have used to have been. What is she now . Shes scared. Does she look happy . No. No, right . The baby is laughing. The little girl is clinging to her, not quite knowing whats going on. The woman looks kind of sad and scared. I gave a man we talked about the soviets and how the americans are like, you have to do more. They are like, we gave blood. You give money. Right . Shes saying, i gave a man. My children dont have a father. Im alone and scared. Can you at least give 10 of your pay to buy a war bond . Look at the sacrifice my family made. This is the least you can do. Women being used to for guilt to make you feel this pressure to buy war bonds. Why do we need war bonds . What are the war bonds for . Do you remember . We can pay for our equipment and the supplies going out. We need it because we talked about how expensive the war is. War bonds are one way that we pay for it. Its basically loaning money to the government so you can the government can afford the war. This is another way women are portrayed in these things. Information is important. Right . Theres all sorts of campaigns out there. Dont talk about whats in johnnys letters. Right . Anybody can be listening. Right . This idea of wanted for murder. What does she look like . If she was in a movie, who would she be . Which character . The villain. The neighbor gossipmonge . Women cant help themselves. Thats the impression given. I have about 20 of these that we could look at. This idea that women just cant help themselves gossiping. Her gossip cost lives, maybe his life. Right . This idea that she looks perfect but her careless talk, her thoughtlessness cost lives. This idea of women need to control themselves. To resist their natural urge to gossip. Right . Women are used for sex. This idea of images of women as sexual. This is a famous series of prints that im sure you have seen before. Shes in the military. Not in this moment shes not. This is mainstream. This is a picture that came out of life magazine. This is an image of the idea of women as these sexualized beings because you have to think about why were fighting. Were fighting so we can get home to the girl. Were fighting so we can get home, because this is what all girls look like apparently. This reality, right . They cant be women are supposed to be sexual. Theyre supposed to be pretty. Theyre supposed to be sexual so men will know what they are fighting for. They cant be too sexual. Right . Give you a minute to take a look at these. You like these . What do you think . What do you see in these images . How are women portrayed . Spreading disease. They are spreading disease. Right . This one is one of my favorites. She may look clean but theres a series of these images, these posters that are given to men at the different bases and overseas. Classes on vdisease. These good time girls and pickups, these are a problem. We want to give you posters like this to hang up, but dont touch. Right . They are probably diseased. This idea of women as all these Different Things. Women are mothers, women are raising the gardens and saving and feeding everyone and women are sacrificing, women are they are writing letters and they are also diseased. All these things at the same time. I just think this is right . Again, theres a whole series of these that are out there. They are promoted among all these men. Right . Thats our women at home. You guys have questions about that . Okay. Lets switch to our next topic, this idea of women at work. Women at work. We think of this a lot. When we think of women in world war ii, we often think of these working women. Right . Right . This is the point of class, the section of the course my favorite thing is to be a myth buster. Right . Thats what we do. Thats what historians do. Thats our job. This section were going to bust some myths, im sorry. But we are. Okay . So when we think of women working in world war ii, one of the biggest things that is often talked about is the idea that women go to work. Right . Okay. All the women go to work. Right . Do you guys remember your u. S. History class, your survey . Right . What did you learn about women working . Did women work before world war ii . No . What about in the factories . At the turn of the century, what about the immigrant women . Some. But it wasnt as widespread. It wasnt mothers. Okay. All those factories that came out through the Industrial Revolution and all those children, that child labor, did women not work in those factories . It was young, single women. Lots of young, single women. Lots of immigrant women. Right . What about women of color . Did they work . Do you think so . Yeah. Women of color didnt get a lot of teaching jobs. Coming up to here they do. Coming out of the progressive era, we get more women of color taking middle class jobs. Women have always worked. You have always had working class women. Working class women, immigrant women, women of color, unmarried women that have always worked. Right . Which women are we talking about when we say women began to work during world war ii . Middle class white women. Middle class white women. Right . We are talking about middle class white women. This expansion into this area that people didnt work before. Right . Then a second group tied in there is mothers. Right . More mothers are going to work in world war ii than worked before. Right . So its a shift from working class women, immigrant women, women of color working, right, to that expansion of middle class white women, right . So thats what we see portrayed in these posters. Right . Look at these women. Right . First of all, their teeth are perfect, right, which did not happen in the 1940s. They have their eyebrows just right, hair just right. Right . They are beautiful. Right . This is not what most people ever look like let alone in the 40s. Right . Right . This idea of who the target is. Right . Who is the target for the working . Because this is the group that we have in excess, that we can target to get to work. Right . So thats an important distinction i want to make sure we understand, which women were talking about when we say the work force expanded to women. Its a specific group of women that are going to be expanded. Right . Now one area that often doesnt get talked about in women working in world war ii is women in agriculture. This idea of women in agriculture. So its important to realize that we have over 6 million agricultural laborers and farmers that leave the land during world war ii. Right . Over 6 Million People who had been working the land leave it during world war ii. These are often men who are going to work in the factories, because they are better paid. These are men who are being drafted or enlisting. Right . The shortage of laborers agricultural laborers gets so bad that by the middle and late 1942 it becomes a draftdeferred position. You dont have to go to the war. Your job is critical. You cannot be drafted. You cannot be drafted. If you leave that job, you may be eligible for the draft. But if you are in that position, you are draft deferred. Agricultural laborers, farmers, they become draft deferred. We need people so badly. That doesnt mean you cant enlist. That doesnt mean you cant go work in a factory. By late in the war, there are limits. You have to get permission to do that. Right . At the same moment that were expanding the agricultural needs because were feeding people at home, feeding americans abroad and then were feeding all of our allies, right, helping feed our allies. At the same time, the laborers are shrinking. Theres a huge push to get american women involved in this. Right . We had seen this before. We had seen this in world war i. There was a volunteer Organization Called the Womens Land Army of america that was around. We expand that in world war ii. There was a Womens Land Army in great britain. We model a lot of what goes on in the United States after that. Theres this huge push to get american women as part of this. There were other organizations. Have you read about that . What was the burserra program . An agreement between the u. S. And mexico to allow workers to come and work in the fields. This agreement between the United States and mexico to allow laborers to come to the United Stat