Story Of Local 'Riveter,' Her Group Of WWII Pioneers Told In Documentary
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Twenty million American women closed the gender gap during World War II. But a class of "Rosie the Riveters" also broke racial barriers.
"Rosie the Riveter" was the image the government used to get women to come to work during World War II. But the image of Rosie doesn't encompass all of the women who helped at home with the effort.
At 93 years young, Ruth Wilson was in her 20s when she quit her job as a domestic to work on the USS Valley Forge at the Philadelphia Navy Yard during the early 1940s. The mother of two did sheet metal work increasing her earnings from $5 a day to $10 an hour.
"Black people back then couldn't get those good jobs," she says, "teaching and domestic is mostly what we did then."
Wilson's husband at the time was away fighting the war, so the money she earned took care of their two daughters. She says the work was not without resistance. The Navy Yard was man's work and Black women were not immediately welcome. When the war was over in 1945, Wilson says she was sent home, but the experience changed her life.
"We open doors for generations behind us that would have never opened without World War II," she says.
Wilson never went back to work as a domestic. When she left the Navy Yard, she worked at a doctor's office and then at children's coat factory. She raised her daughters and is now a great-grandmother.
"Black women were the last ones hired and the first ones fired," says Gregory Cooke, creator of the budding documentary, "Invisible Warriors: African American Women in World War II," that tells the story of the 600,000 Black women who helped build planes, tanks and guns while the men went to the battlefield during WWII.
"It brings these black women to the forefront in a way that they've never been brought forward before," says Cooke, noting that his mother was also a "Black Rosie."
"Had it not been for the 20 million women and the 600,000 who were African American, we would not have won World War II," he says.
Cook interviewed more than a dozen of these "Black Rosie the Riveters" and Wilson, who will turn 94 next month, is one of the women who is sharing the story of how doing man's work impacted her life and that of her family.
(Cherri) How do you feel when you think about that time?
(Wilson) "Special...it changed my life."
For more on Invisible Warriors or to donate to its final production, CLICK HERE.
