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The Trouble with Bathrooms

Part of: Take Three: The Color Line

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2021

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Abstract

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Keywords

Segregation and Jim CrowWorld War IIWorking Class and Labor
Type
Take Three
Information
Modern American History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , July 2021 , pp. 201 - 207
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 “Army-Navy ‘E’ To be Awarded to Point Breeze, Western Electric Company,” Baltimore Sun, Aug. 23, 1942, 20. For more on the award, see David D Jackson, “The American Automobile Industry in World War II,” https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/Army-Navy%20E%20Awards.htm (accessed Jan. 4, 2020); “Army-Navy ‘E’ Award,” Wikipedia.com, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army-Navy_%22E%22_Award (accessed Jan. 4, 2021).

2 Nelson, Bruce, “Organized Labor and the Struggle for Black Equality in Mobile During World War II,” Journal of American History, 80, no. 3 (Dec. 1993), 952–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winkler, Allan M., “The Philadelphia Transit Strike of 1944,” Journal of American History 59, no. 1 (June 1972), 73–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Wilkerson, Isabel, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (New York, 2020)Google Scholar.

4 “Progress Of Work on Great Western Electric Plant at Point Breeze,” Baltimore Sun, July 16, 1929, 29; “Western Electric to Erect New Unit,” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 16, 1930, 7.

5 Leon R. Harris (President of the Tri-City Branch of the NAACP, Moline, IL) to Roy Wilkins, Jan. 1, 1944, microfilm, Part 13: The NAACP and Labor, Series A: Subject Files on Labor Conditions and Employment Discrimination, 1940–1955, Papers of the NAACP, Library of Congress, Washington DC.

6 Boris, Eileen, “’You Wouldn't Want One of ‘Em Dancing with Your Wife’: Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II,” American Quarterly 50, no. 1 (Mar. 1998), 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Jones, William P., The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights (New York, 2014), 41–78Google Scholar.

8 NRLB Report, “Decisions and Orders, Sept 22, 1943,” folder Western Electric, box 34, RG 228, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

9 Will Maslow, Director of Field Operations for the FEPC, Executive Office of the President, to Sylvester Garrett, Nov. 16, 1943, Case Number, 111-979-D, National War Labor Board-Region III-Series PH-6520-Dispute Case Files, 1942–1945, NAID 563817-Box 2013, RG 202, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

10 On the tensions in the plant, see Charles Dorn to the National War Labor Board, Apr. 16, 1943; Non-Partisan Committee of Western Electric Employees to War Labor Board, Dec. 2, 1943; Alice Kahn to Will Maslow, Dec. 15, 1943, Case Number, 111-979-D, National War Labor Board-Region III-Series PH-6520-Dispute Case Files, 1942–1945, NAID 563817-Box 2013, RG 202, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA. For overviews of the tensions at Western Electric and the eventual strike, see Kenneth D. Durr, Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940–1980 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003), 28–30, 58; and David Taft Terry, The Struggle and the Urban South: Confronting Jim Crow in Baltimore Before the Movement (Athens, GA, 2019), 99, 103–4. See also Frank, Dana, “White Working-Class Women and the Race Question,” International Labor and Working-Class History 54 (Fall 1998), 80–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Boris, “’You Wouldn't Want One of ‘Em Dancing with Your Wife’,” 93–6.

11 “WLB Orders Hate Strikers Back to Work,” Baltimore Afro-American, Dec.18, 1943, 1. See also “500 Negroes Oppose Strike,” Baltimore Sun, Oct. 18, 1943, 5.

12 On moral panics see the classic statement on this problem Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London, 2011). See also Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (London, 2009); and Neil Miller, Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heartland of the 1950s (Los Angeles, 2009).

13 I. S. Long to FDR, Dec. 20, 1943, Mar. 14, 1944, folder Western Electric, box 34, RG 228, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

14 Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 2005).

15 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo (New York, 2002).

16 Phoebe Godfrey, “Bayonets, Brainwashing, and Bathrooms: The Discourse of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Desegregation of Little Rock's Central High,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 62, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 42–67.

17 “WLB Chairman Rebukes Union for Intolerance,” Baltimore Afro-American, Dec. 11, 1943, 15.

18 Handwritten Note, Header, Western Electric: Point Breeze, Dec. 21, 1943, folder Western Electric, box 34, RG 228, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

19 Quote from “Strike Arguments at Western Electric Bunk,” Baltimore Afro-American, Dec. 25, 1943, 11.

20 “WLB Orders Hate Strikers Back to Work,” Baltimore Afro-American, Dec. 18, 1943, 1; guinea pig quote and estimate of women picketer line, “Strike Called At Three War Plants Here,” Baltimore Sun, n.d.; “Visit to the Western Electric Plant, Baltimore, MD,” Dec. 14, 1943, Handwritten Note, Header, Western Electric: Point Breeze, Dec. 21, 1943, folder Western Electric, box 34, RG 228, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

21 “Broadcast Over Radio Station WFBR, Baltimore, MD, Sunday Dec. 19, 1943,” folder Western Electric, box 34, RG 228, National Archive, Philadelphia, PA; “Army Issues ‘Request’ for End of Strike,” Baltimore Sun, Dec. 21, 1943, 24.

22 For instance, see “Opinion: The Latrine Case,” Baltimore Afro-American, Dec. 18, 1943, 4.

23 Lamont, Michèle and Molnár, Virág, “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28, no. 1,(2002), 167–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 For some additional thinking about bathrooms, see “Facility: A Manifesto,” Facility: A Magazine about Bathrooms 1, no. 1 (2020), 4–5; Alexander K. Davis, Bathroom Battlegrounds: How Public Bathrooms Shape the Gender Order (Berkley, CA, 2020); Lezlie Lowe, No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs (Toronto, 2018); Harvey Molotch and Laura Noren, eds., Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing (New York, 2010); Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, eds., Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia, 2009).

25 “Near Normalcy at Western Electric,” Baltimore Afro-American, Jan. 8, 1944, 7.

26 “Western Electric Sets Up Separate Wash Rooms,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 10, 1944, 9; “Army, Western Electric Won't Comment on Report,” Baltimore Afro-American, Mar. 18, 1944, 8; Mr. Alexander Allen, Baltimore Urban League to J.F Geany, Western Electric, March 14, 1944, folder Western Electric, box 34, RG 228, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

27 Memo, Clarence Davis to Joseph H. B. Evans, Apr. 29, 1944, folder Western Electric, box 34, RG 228, National Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

28 Frank, “White Working-Class Women and the Race Question,” 97. On the longer Civil Rights Struggle, see Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (Mar. 2005), 1233–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Godfrey, “Bayonets, Brainwashing, and Bathrooms.” See also Abel, Elizabeth, “Bathroom Doors and Drinking Fountains: Jim Crow's Racial Symbolic,” Critical Inquiry 25, no. 3 (Spring 1999), 435–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Forman, James, Sammy Younge, Jr: The First College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Lewis, John, Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York, 1997), 137–8Google Scholar; and Lee, Chana Kai, For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Urbana, IL, 2001)Google Scholar.

31 Kruse, Kevin, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservativism (Princeton, NJ, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Kohn, Margaret, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (New York, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 On women and public, see Baldwin, Peter C., “Public Privacy: Restrooms in American Cities, 1869–1932,” Journal of Social History 48, no. 2 (Winter 2014), 264–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 For instance, see “Plans Now Complete for Public Comfort Station,” Visalia Times-Delta, May 23, 1913. 6.

34 “A Problem of Public Comfort.” New York Times, Nov. 23, 1986, E24; Nick Ravo, “Perplexing Problem: When Streets Become Public Urinals,” New York Times, Dec. 29, 1986, B1; Thomas J. Lueck, “Two Adventurers, One Subway System, And a Challenge to Break a Riding Record,” New York Times, Aug. 23, 2006, B4.

35 Harvey Molotch, “All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go: America's Public Bathroom Crisis,” Washington Post, Apr. 30, 2018. For more on Starbucks becoming the nation's default public bathroom, see Lydia Polgreen, “Commerce Fills a New York Need: Toilets,” New York Times, Sep. 7, 2002, A1; Anne Barnard, “Baristas Lock Restrooms, Their Revolt Doesn't Last,” New York Times, Nov. 23, 2011, A24; Simon, Bryant, Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America From Starbucks (Berkeley, CA, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.