Here are Pete Seeger and the Weavers. The semester starts today and we will all be in our places. This one goes out to Slaves of Academe and Dissent, the Blog. My great-uncle Addison was a Wobbly, and he worked as a carpenter. My parents still have his hammer, and I am going to inherit it.
If you missed yesterday’s Sak Passé video, I recommend going back and watching it. You will not regret it. And in today’s video, notice how many white women are marching as workers. I keep on hearing that white women were not allowed to hold jobs back in the day, but the first woman member of my direct bloodline who could afford not to work after she had children was my mother. Earlier on, the luxury of not working was unavailable.
When I say this, people tell me that my family was unusual, and that the men must have been weak minded, effeminate, and/or just plain poor providers. Except for the case of one great-grandfather, who suffered from melancholia, I strongly disagree. I suspect that this idea that white women before NOW could not, or did not have to work, is a myth. I wonder whether there are any women’s historians out there who could weigh in on this.
Update: My father points out that another of my great-uncles, Claude, was a founding member of the Wobblies! During World War I, farmers were encouraged to grow wheat and take out mortgages to do so. In the postwar crash, Claude lost his farm. He then moved to Stockton, California, where he worked as an automobile repairman and had an auto paint shop for many years.
Claude was the eldest of his brothers and sisters, and he died before I was born. He was famous in the family for having maintained the farm solo throughout an entire, severe Montana winter when he was sixteen. This would have been in the mid-1890’s. Several scary things happened to him that winter, including fairly severe injury from a work accident, but he handled it all.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
this is an interesting topic for me — a white woman..and as i google women and working and history — i find that women were first used as slaves in the northern mills (kind-of like we do now in in east asia)
so what i think the word ‘work’ was all about with white women was to be able to get the education adn jobs like white men had…and this didn’t come into effect until just recent history…
thanks for making me think today!
Gracias!
I remember singing this at Cesar Chavez’s funeral in Delano…always makes me cry — and smile.
Thank you.
I was going to say before my fingers hit the keys – Thank you – I needed that today.
Watching this video reminds me why I am so glad that you changed your YouTube policy.
Thank you.
Policy change – it was Nezua who convinced me, saying “It’s a great resource – while it lasts!” So you can hear it? I can’t get sound on YouTube tonight. My speakers are working for other things. It is a mystery.
Factories have been full of women (and children) ever since there were factories to fill. There are photographs, for God’s sake. I don’t understand where this idea that women (even White women) didn’t “work” (outside the home) came from. Not to mention all the women (of all ethnicities–with homes and families of their own) who did “domestic” labor: housekeeping, laundry, sewing, etc., etc., etc. And don’t even think about leaving out the women that always existed in the sex trade. Were these women not “working”?
Came back today to watch the video again.
The old black and white photographs captivate me, and when the music swells to the chorus, goose bumps make the hair on arms stand on end.
I have this reaction too. Since I found this video, I watch it at least once a day. I get goose bumps every time! –Z