“All other sources of labor having been exhausted, the migrants were the last resource.” This is how artist Jacob Lawrence captions his fourth panel in the Migration Series, a collection of 60 paintings telling the story of the Great Migration. He is referring to war-time work in this country, a time when factories were churning out weapons of war and were so desperate for labor that they even let Black people – and women — work for them. (Inject sarcastic tone).
See, one reason these jobs became open was that some immigrants were going home to fight in their own country’s army. At the same time, scores of American men were going off to war. So with this ensuing labor shortage, African Americans and women in general finally were enjoying access to some well-paying factory jobs.
A 1941 Works Projects Administration (WPA) report noted that, prior to 1917, approximately 75% of African Americans in the country were “gainfully employed, mostly in domestic and ‘personal service’ jobs.” (Not sure I would have used the term gainfully). At any rate, as would happen again post-World War II, after World War I white soldiers were returning home and to work, such that suddenly the recently hired were deemed no longer competent or capable enough to remain in their positions. Last-hired, first-fired was in full force.
Krueger-Scott narrator Katheryn Bethea, who ultimately retired as an English literature professor at Rutgers University-Newark explained:
When I got out of high school in 1940 there were really no jobs for young Black women except takin’ care of babies.
Eventually Bethea landed a job in a war plant making “inflatable mechanisms” for life rafts. She added:
When the war was over of course that job ceased.
Those who were able to hold on to their positions had a chance to create wealth. And when historians say wealth, it’s not as in wealthy, necessarily. But it’s about actually having money left over at the end of the month, an ability to save up, to ultimately pass something down to children, family, whomever. The fact that African Americans have had so much less access to well-paying, secure employment is in large part why we have the wealth gap we do today. In 2022, white families had an average wealth of $1.4 million, while Black families had an average wealth of $211,596.
Louise Epperson, one of the Krueger-Scott interviewees, landed one of these relatively lucrative jobs at the Western Electric factory and was ultimately able to purchase her own home a few years later. She made it clear in her interview that this was an accomplishment and point of pride.
Willie Bradwell started working as a domestic worker around eighteen years of age. But she was excited when she found factory work, which she liked much better. She started out at a paper-cup factory in North Newark at 55 cents an hour, minimum wage at the time. After a few months she secured an even better factory job, with H.A. Wilson at 97 Chestnut Street, sometime around 1946. Bradwell noted:
…they didn’t even hire Black people ‘til after the War. So when we went in there after the War, it wasn’t too much of a problem.
So apparently this factory was not even hiring African Americans during WWII, which implies that there may well have been other businesses willing to suffer through drastic labor shortages simply in order to retain the racial status quo.
Pearl Beatty told her interviewer how she was looking for work to support her family:
Well, my first job was in a factory two blocks from here. From the beginning we lived on Baldwin and Washington Streets. And one day I was walking down the street and I saw this sign, “employment needed.” And I went in and applied. I was sixteen. And they hired me. And I was thrilled because my job was just two blocks from home. We’re talking about, let’s see now, we’re talking about ’52.
Beatty worked at that factory job for eight years. During her interview, Beatty — who is biracial — shared a story about race in the workplace:
In fact, when I walked in [to the factory job], the white girls thought I was, uh, white. And this one white woman said to me, “I want you to know that the Black girls that work here are very clean.” And at my lunchtime I went over to the Black girls and introduced myself. And when I came back to my bench to work – the white lady said to me, “Now, just because I said that the Blacks were clean here, that didn’t mean that you have to go over there and eat with them.” And I politely let her know that I was Black… Now the Black women, they knew I was Black.
In my book, Alien Soil: Oral Histories of Great Migration Newark most of the factory stories come from the women. (Get the book and you’ll be able to read about so many fabulous women who few too many people know about). This predominance of women in factory work may be because Black men were still able to secure higher paying jobs than the women — and even a better education at times. These jobs may also have been fresher in the minds of the women, because for many it was their first and last job before getting married and staying home to raise children.
Notably, not everybody was satisfied with a factory job. This is one of the many benefits of oral histories, the reminder that not all members of a particular group do things the same way or want the same things. When it came to these sorts of jobs, people knew there was only so far one could go. Elma Bateman tells a story about how she asked her high school counselor for permission to register for a “commercial” course that taught typing and stenography, instead of one of the “basic” courses to which Black students were typically steered.
The counselor wanted to know why, when Black people aren’t hired as secretaries… [But] all you could do when you came out [of the basic courses] was work in a factory.
Bateman signed up for the commercial course without permission, and retired as an administrator for AT&T. The theme of persistence is rampant in these oral histories. As usual, these African Americans had to push their way into work, even as some employers were desperate for workers. Once employed, they contended quite often with racism and sexism, and certainly job insecurity. This is not a grossly different tale than that told today around the Black American work experience. I recently published an article laying out how oral histories show us that the narratives of 1950 can be eerily similar to those of 2024. This, I’m afraid is American history and America’s present. So let’s keep on learning our history, in part so we can understand just how we are perpetuating it today.
Katie Singer 