Women in the American Labor Movement folio, front cover
From Chapter 4
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Drawing on feminist and material rhetorics, the authors of Women Making History demonstrate that, by creating postcards, Helaine Victoria Press aimed to do more than provide a convenient writing surface or even affect collective memory; instead, they argue, the press generated feminist memory. The cards, each with the picture of a woman or group of women from history, were multimodal. Pictures were framed in colors and borders appropriate to the era and subject. Lengthy captions offered details about the lives of the women pictured. Unlike other memorials, the cards were mobile; they traveled through the postal system, viewed along the way by the purchasers, mail sorters, mail carriers, and recipients. Upon arriving at their destinations, cards were often posted on office bulletin boards or refrigerators at home, where surroundings shaped their meanings.
Women Making History shows that Helaine Victoria Press’s cards, like the movement from which they emanated, were dynamic and participatory. They were, in short, a multidirectional, open ended, rhetorically evolving process of transforming feminist consciousness. The print edition includes many images from the press’s records, and the digital edition offers additional images plus audio and video clips from press participants.
This is the first book to demonstrate the relationships between the feminist art movement, the women in print movement, and the scholars studying women’s history. Readers will be drawn to both the large quantity of illustrative materials and the theoretical framework of the book, as it provides an expanded understanding of rhetorical multimodality. Scholars of gender and women’s studies, art history, media studies, and the history of rhetoric, as well as members of the public with interests in feminism, Lesbian feminist culture, postcards, fine letterpress printing, and papermaking will be inspired by this richly produced history.
About the authors
Julia M. Allen is professor emerita of English at Sonoma State University.
Jocelyn H. Cohen is an artist, arborist and co-founder of Helaine Victoria Press, Inc.
The complete manuscript of this work was subjected to a fully closed (“double-blind”) review process. For more information, please see our Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines.
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From Chapter 4
Front cover for nine postcards in a folio set. Women in American Labor Movement: Organized Struggle in the Workplace 1886-1986, in recognition of the Centennial of the Haymarket Tragedy and the First International Celebration of May Day.
From Chapter 4
Page 313 →Back cover for nine postcards in a folio set. Women in American Labor Movement: Organized Struggle in the Workplace 1886–1986, in recognition of the Centennial of the Haymarket Tragedy and the First International Celebration of May Day.
From Chapter 4
Page 314 →Sit-down strikes dominated the headlines in 1937 and were a reaction to the strikebreaking tactics used at the time. Sit-downs were effective weapons: workers had less fear that their jobs would be taken by scabs, and employers were reluctant to use violence or prolong negotiations for fear of damage to their property. Some sit-downs were small, while others such as the General Motors strike in Flint, Michigan involved 140,000 workers sitting in for 44 days until the UAW achieved victory. Patterned after the Flint strike, Woolworth’s in Detroit was the first 5 and 10 cent store to sit-down and win a contract The strike spread to New York where sit-downs proved effective at other 5 and 10s. The mostly women strikers at Woolworth’s were led by Local 1250 Department Store Workers’ Union, with Clarina Michelson the strike leader. The settlement was based on a 48-hour week, a minimum weekly wage of $15.60 (a dollar increase) and paid vacations. In 1939, the Supreme Court declared sit-downs illegal, but they had already proved to be a valuable weapon and anticipated the sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement and the 1960s student strikes and Vietnam War protests.
From Chapter 4
Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912). American anarchist, freethinker, and feminist. Born in rural Michigan and educated in a Catholic convent, she converted to anarchism after the hanging of the Haymarket Martyrs in 1887. Most of her adult life was spent in Philadelphia, where she was a founder of the Ladies’ Liberal League and a teacher among the Jewish immigrant poor. An inspired speaker and writer, she published hundreds of poems, essays, and stories, mainly on themes of social rebellion, in Mother Page 315 →Earth and other journals of the day. Wounded by an assassin in 1902, she refused to press charges, returning good for evil in the spirit of Tolstoy. During her last years, she was arrested after a free-speech demonstration in Philadelphia, supported the Mexican Revolution, and taught at an anarchist school in Chicago, where she died in 1912. She was buried in the Waldheim Cemetery, beside the graves of the Haymarket anarchists whose martyrdom had inspired her life. Emma Goldman called her “the poet-rebel, the liberty loving artist, the greatest woman anarchist of America.”
From Chapter 4
Dolores Huerta (b. 1930). Chicana labor leader and first vice president of the United Farm Workers of America. Growing up in Stockton, California, she learned organizing skills through the Community Service Organization and the AFL-CIO sponsored Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to help migrant Mexican and Chicano farm laborers. A co-founder of the UFW (1962), Huerta has dedicated her life to the struggle for justice, dignity, and a decent standard of living for agricultural workers. She has served as UFW picket captain, organizer, chief contract negotiator, New York boycott director, field office director, and Executive Board member. Her activism has resulted in numerous arrests. Her lobbying and testimony before Congress and the California state legislature has brought the migrant workers’ struggle to the attention of lawmakers. She continues to carry the union’s nonviolent message to the American public and inspires many other women who have chosen to serve La Causa.
From Chapter 4
Blue Collar Asian Women (BCAW) was formed in San Francisco in 1982 as a support group and social network for Asian women working in the skilled trades and for those wishing to do so. BCAW works to improve conditions for Asian women in non-traditional work and to make certain that Asian women’s issues are addressed. Individual members also work with such organizations as Chinese for Affirmative Action and Tradeswomen, Inc. Activities include participating in job fairs, community events, demonstrations and political rallies. Breaking into male dominated occupations such as the skilled crafts trades, women must often confront sexism, sexual harassment, and racism. The success and pioneering achievements of these women in non-traditional occupations present positive role models which counteract the traditional stereotypes of women.
From Chapter 4
Rose Pesotta (1896-1965). Russian-Jewish labor organizer and anarchist. Born in the Ukraine, she was involved there in radical underground circles. After coming to the U.S. in 1913, she became a dressmaker. She was active in Local 25 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and soon became a paid organizer. In 1934, her organizing abilities were recognized when she was elected vice president of the union, the third woman to ever be a vice president of ILGWU. In 1936, she was a CIO organizer for the Akron and Flint rubber workers’ strikes. Pesotta was a flamboyant and articulate speaker Page 317 →as well as a tireless activist, none of which spared her from harassment, beatings, and arrests. She worked for the Sacco and Vanzetti defense committee and tried to gain entry to the U.S. for her friend Emma Goldman. After a long and colorful career as a labor organizer, she returned to the sewing machine. She also wrote two autobiographies, Bread Upon the Waters (1945) and Days of Our Lives (1958). Combining her labor organization with factory work reflects her belief that all officers “should stay closely connected to the conditions under which the rank and file were working.”
From Chapter 4
Maida Springer-Kemp (b. 1910). Labor leader, international representative. Born in Panama, Kemp is a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to New York with her mother at seven. Her first union activity began during the 1933 General Strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union as a member of the Dressmakers’ Union. Thousands of workers responded to the call, mostly women, and for the first time many Black women. They struck gladly to protest the sweatshop conditions. Kemp’s commitment to the union movement has been a source of “great excitement and great challenge.” Her lifelong work includes local union board member (1940s); an AFL delegate to England (1945); education director of a local union; business agent for the Dressmakers’ union (1946-1959); international representative for AFL-CIO assigned to Africa (1959-1965); general organizer for the ILGWU and Mid-West Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute; throughout the 70s, consultant to the AFL-CIO sponsored African and Asian Institutes. About her work, she says: “You were doing it not for yourself, surely you benefited, but Page 318 →on behalf of a larger citizenship, for whom dignity, respect, and the workers’ role was emphasized. For me this has always been a privilege.”
From Chapter 4
The Haymarket affair of 1886 climaxed the bitter industrial battle between capital and working class. Believers in the “Chicago idea” which combined revolutionary trade unionism, direct action, and equality of race and sex supported the eight-hour workday. By 1886, this movement had become the focus of labor struggles. May 3, during a clash between pickets and scabs at McCormick Reaper Works, Chicago police killed two strikers and wounded others. As the speeches ended at the Haymarket rally held in protest on May 4, police marched in to disperse the 300 people remaining at the peaceful assembly. A bomb was thrown, and police opened fire, killing and wounding both civilians and police. The anti-labor hysteria that followed contributed to the unjust trial and conviction of eight anarchists who championed the “Chicago idea.” Four of the men were hanged, one committed suicide, the others received prison sentences. In 1893, the three survivors were pardoned. Haymarket was a source of inspiration to many and for such women as Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre, it was a catalyst for lifelong commitments to labor activism, feminism and idealism.
From Chapter 4
May Day was proclaimed in 1886 to demand an 8-hour workday, to show international working-class solidarity, and to demonstrate defiance of the capitalist class and the inequitable wage system. By the 1900s, May Day was declared a day of strike and celebrated with parades, meetings, festivals, rallies and cultural programs. The 1909 May Day Parade in New York City saw thousands brave a rainstorm to show their solidarity. Women and children marched in their own trade sections and in special women’s and children’s divisions. The children drew cheers as they marched, wearing ribbons with slogans in English, Russian, or Yiddish, saying “Down with slavery” and “Abolish child labor.” This was followed the next day by a large gathering at Cooper Union for festivities, including music recitations, a May Day Queen, Goddess of Peace, and a play. May Day and other displays of protest influenced legislation to regulate the workplace and child labor. Despite opposition by industrialists and religious and patriotic organizations, in 1938, a child labor law passed. Although a triumph, the law was not comprehensive, and the struggle to abolish child labor, especially in agriculture, continues.
From Chapter 4
Page 320 →Lucy Gonzales Parsons (1852-1942). American free speech and labor leader. Born in Texas, her mixed origins of Black, Mexican, and Native American attuned her to struggles of racial minorities and foreigners in the U.S. She was a leading figure in the national working class movement and in the campaign to release her husband, Albert, and seven other Haymarket martyrs, following the Haymarket “Riots” in Chicago, 1886. Although four were hanged, including Albert, she continued working for the defense of other political prisoners through the International Labor Defense (ILD). She linked other political trials to Haymarket, which was seen as the first precedent for political conspiracy trials. Parsons was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World and one of the original women members of the Knights of Labor. For 70 years, she was a familiar sight in the labor movement, writing, pamphleteering, demonstrating, and organizing. When she died, the FBI confiscated her large literary and political library and never released it. She is most remembered as a champion of the hungry, jobless, foreign-born, women, and ethnic and racial minorities.
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Las soldaderas desempeñaron un papel fundamental en la Revolución Mexicana (1910-1920). Atendían a los heridos, cocinaban y procuraban provisiones, además estaban a cargo de la medicina, las municiones y el correo. Recogían información en los frentes de batalla y entraban en la zona de combate cuando los hombres caían heridos. Había soldaderas en los ejércitos federales y revolucionarios ya menudo intercambiaban víveres entre sí. Los corridos las alababan, por ejemplo, “La Adelita.” “Adelita” llegó a ser un nombre genérico de las soldaderas aunque la mayoría permanceció anónima. Algunas salieron de la revolución con sus nombres recordados por sus actos heróicos—las hermanas Narvez (Guadalupe, Rosa y María), Carmen Serdán, Dolores Jiménez y Muró (quien llegó a ser coronel) y otras. Para 1910 los movimientos feministas y sufragistas mexicanos ya se habían desarrollado fuertemente. La revolución contribuyó mucho en romper los papeles sexuales tradicionales yen hacer a la sociedad mexicana más igualitaria. El período posrevolucionario dio comienzo a la actualización de muchos objetivos feministas en el campo jurídico, social y político.
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Emma Tenayuca (n. 1916 en San Antonio, Texas). Valiente líder obrera chicana, su compromiso con la justicia la llevó a una actitud militante en contra del hambre, la miseria y el desempleo durante la Gran Depresión. De 1934 a 1948 apoyó casi todas las huelgas de la ciudad escribiendo panfletos, visitando hogares de huelguistas, y uniéndose al cordón de piquete. Se enteró del apuro de los obreros en la Plaza del Zacate (especie de Plaza de Trafalgar de San Antonio), donde los socialistas y los anarquistas solían pronunciar sus discursos. Su contacto con los obreros despedidos la llevó a unirse al Partido Comunista en 1937 y en 1936 a la Alianza Obrera, una organización fundada por los comunistas y socialistas para desempleados, el 90% de los cuales eran limpiadores de nuez y obreros agrarios. La Alianza organizó manifestaciones en demanda de empleos, no de limosnas, exigió que' el obrero chicano tuviera el derecho de huelga sin el temor de ser deportado, así coma el derecho a una jornada y salario mínimos. Cuando 12,000 limpiadores de nuez abandonaron las fábricas en 1938, Tenayuca fue elegida unanimente líder huelguista. Al respecto Tenayuca opina, “Lo que empezó coma un movimiento para organizarse en demanda de una igualdad de salarios se convirtió en un movimiento de masas contra el hambre, a favor de los derechos civiles, y por una ley de salario mínima y todo eso transformó el carácter del lado oeste de San Antonio.”
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The package for The History and Culture of US Latinas and Latin American Women set of 7 jumbo 5 ½” x 7¼” postcards with captions in Spanish.
From Resources only
The package for The History and Culture of US Latinas and Latin American Women set of 7 jumbo 5 ½” x 7¼” postcards with captions in Spanish.
From Resources only
Dora María Téllez (n. 1956), oficial militar, poeta, feminista, estadista. Mientras era estudiante de medicina llegó a comprender que la desnutrición y la inanición causaban muchas de las enfermedades sufridas por los nicaragüenses y que era necesario eliminar las condiciones sociales subyacentes. Téllez se hizo miembro del Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional (FSLN) y por consiguiente tomó parte en la liberación de Nicaragua de la dictadura de Somoza. En 1976 Téllez dejó el estudio de medicina y se unió a la resistencia para estudiar la teoría y estrategia política. Dos años después, a la edad de 22 años, emergió al público como una de los comandos que tomaron posesión del Palacio Nacional de Somoza. Más tarde encabezó a las tropas sandinistas que libertaron la ciudad de León. Después de la revolución (1979) Téllez permaneció como comandante del ejército y luego dirigió la tercera región del FSLN que incluía a la capital, Managua. Al mismo tiempo fue elegida vicepresidente del primer Consejo de Estado, el cuerpo legislativo nicaragüense. A su posición actual, la de Ministro de Salud, trae consigo su conocimiento militar, su dedicación a las luchas feministas y su experiencia como organizadora política.
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Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974)—poeta, novelista, ensayista, periodista y diplomática—fue la primera mexicana en cuestionar el papel cultural y social de la mujer. Su tesis de maestria, Sobre cultura femenina (1950), indagó sobre la manera en que los pensadores modernos han usado conceptos tales como mujer y cultura. El título de una de sus antologías de ensayos feministas, Mujer que sabe latin, alude al refrán popular que reza mujer que sabe latín, ni tiene marido ni tiene buen fin. Castellanos dictó clases en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México por muchos años. Allí pronto se le reconoció por su brillantez intelectual. Castellanos no sólo ayudó a abrir puertas a la mujer en la academia sino también en el campo periodístico por medio de su renombre en el Excélsior. En 1971 se le nombró embajadora de México al Israel. Hoy una nueva generación de feministas mexicanas redescubre el trabajo de Castellanos. Grupos dramatizan sus poesías en teatros y cafés tanto en la Ciudad de México como en provincia.
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Jovita ldar (1885-1946), periodista, educadora, feminista, humanitaria. Nacida en Laredo, Texas, Idar escribió para La Crónica, periódico hispánico perteneciente a su padre. Allí trató los problemas sociopolíticos de los Mexico-Americanos—la discriminación, el despojo de la tierra por los anglos, las disputas laborales, los linchamientos y la Revolución Mexicana. La familia Idar organizó el Primer Congreso Mexicanista en Laredo en 1911. Esta reunión, la primera de esta categoría para los mexicanos de Texas, consistió en representaciones y seminarios sobre la historia, cultura y lengua mexicana; abarcó también los temas de discriminación, derecho jurídico y otros asuntos referentes a la mujer. ldar y varias otras mujeres formaron la Liga Femenil Mexicanista, una organizaci6n que se enfocaba principalmente en la educación. Cuando las tropas revolucionarias mexicanas atacaron Nuevo Laredo, México, en 1913, Idar se unió con Leonor Villegas de Magnon para proveer auxilio médico a los heridos. Más tarde llegó a ser enfermera de guerra para La Cruz Blanca, una organización fundada por Villegas de Magnon. Hasta el fin de su vida, ldar siguió activa en las luchas sociales de los Mexico-Americanos como educadora, interprete y periodista.
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Lolita Lebrón (n. 1919), empleada de fábrica de máquinas de coser, y activa en el movimiento independentista puertorriqueño, pasó más de 25 años en la prisión por haber encabezado un ataque armado contra el Congreso de los Estados Unidos en 1954. El objetivo fue llamar Ia atención internacional a la creciente dominación estadounidense de su tierra. (Hoy en día las empresas norteamericanos controlan el 80 % de la ganancia de la labor puertorriqueña, y la política de los EEUU ha hecho que casi el 45% de las mujeres puertorriqueñas de edad reproductiva hayan sido esterilizadas.) Lebrón y los tres hombres que encabezó contra el Congreso formaron un comando del ejército del Partido Nacional Puertorriqueño. Desde la galería, Lebrón abrió fuego en Ia asamblea de los representantes, desplegó la bandera puertorriqueña y echó un grito pidiendo Ia independencia de Puerto Rico. Liberada de la prisión en 1979, Lebrón escribió su encarcelamineto en Sandala en la celda. Aún activa en el movimiento independentista, Lebrón continúa una larga tradición de las mujeres puertorriqueñas en oposición al colonialismo.
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Josefina Villafañe de Martínez-Alvarez, Dra. Med. (n. 1890), médico, sufragista, feminista puertorriqueña. La doctora Villafañe salió de Puerto Rico con la intención de estudiar música en el conservatorio Peabody de Baltimore, Maryland. Sin embargo, pronto se interesó en la medicina. “Quería ser,” dice, “una de las mujeres pioneras en el campo médico al volver a Puerto Rico para mejorar Ia salud de los pobres, y en particular la de los jíbaros.” En 1911 se graduó con honores del Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania y volvió a su país donde comenzó a practicar pediatria, obstetricia y ginecologia. Se enteró de que el 33% de los puertorriqueños sufrían de tuberculosis y, por consiguiente, desarrolló un metodo para detectar este mal. La doctora Villafañe, junto con otras personas, fundó la Liga Social Sufragista de Puerto Rico, que luchó para obtener el derecho de votación para la puertorriqueña. El sufragio de la mujer puertorriqueña llegó a ser una realidad en 1932. A los 95 años la doctora afirmó, “He sido y sigo siendo feminista y apoyo todos los movimientos feministas de Puerto Rico.”