[00:00:04.08] - This is Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt's regular Sunday evening broadcast at 6:45 Eastern War Time.
[00:00:10.93] - Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:00:13.35] At the present time, it is of paramount importance that the women and girls of our country be given training so that they may do their share in the war emergency.
[00:00:25.03] Hundreds of girls are gaining experience and training in sheetmetal work.
[00:00:29.93] This training is essential for many jobs and aircrafts and other war industries.
[00:00:35.31] (MUSIC PLAYING) - This picture was taken outside of Gussack's Machine Products in Long Island City.
[00:00:53.89] And I'm dressed in my work clothes.
[00:00:56.53] The first department I was sent into, I stood at a kick press.
[00:01:02.23] There were machines here, you felt like you could do something.
[00:01:11.05] The drill presses and the lathes and the spool machines and the milling machine all had big belts, pulleys on the ceiling, flapping.
[00:01:22.84] Noise!
[00:01:28.48] My then-husband went into the service six months after Pearl Harbor, and many of the young women were in the same position.
[00:01:40.21] I was living with my sister at the time.
[00:01:42.49] I'd come home from work and she said "Number one, you stink.
[00:01:45.61] Get out, go take a shower." We worked in a spray of turpentine or something.
[00:01:59.42] You cleaned yourself with motor oil at the end.
[00:02:04.12] But you felt you were doing it for the war, you know?
[00:02:09.41] - ...Brooklyn Navy Yard.
[00:02:11.42] Do your part!
[00:02:11.96] We could use all the hands we can get.
[00:02:13.61] There's a war going on!
[00:02:15.01] Put down that apron and pick up a rivet gun!
[00:02:20.77] - I was seeking employment because I really wanted to be a nurse or a teacher.
[00:02:25.60] I had seen enough young mothers who had a house full of babies.
[00:02:29.75] So two other girls and I went to what we called the Defense Training School, and that landed us in the old Chevrolet plant, riveting.
[00:02:41.77] That's how Rosie the Riveter came into my life.
[00:02:44.38] At that time, it wasn't important except that we were riveters and we were doing something and making more money than anybody in our family.
[00:02:58.05] Well, I repeated to myself, when I get enough money, I'll have more than two pairs of shoes.
[00:03:02.91] Because when I was young, we had a pair of shoes to wear to school and a pair to wear to church.
[00:03:09.21] So my dream was to have more than two pairs of shoes.
[00:03:12.93] So when I got my first money after I bought the war bond, gave Mother some, I would buy a piece of clothes for my wardrobe.
[00:03:23.67] People of color could not try on clothes downtown.
[00:03:27.91] If you bought it and didn't fit it even, you couldn't take it back.
[00:03:32.00] And some stores we couldn't even go into downtown.
[00:03:37.49] So that's one part of Baltimore that people don't want to dwell on.
[00:03:51.60] (MUSIC PLAYING) (TRAIN WHISTLING) - Well, it was really hard because we had to wear pants to work in.
[00:04:08.60] Nice girls didn't wear pants.
[00:04:10.94] And I'd never worn pants in my life.
[00:04:13.58] So first thing when I get there, they said, "Put pants on." And that was hard to do.
[00:04:34.56] I worked at Woodall Industry in Detroit.
[00:04:37.53] I made the Curtiss-Wright Helldiver, which was a dive bomber that traveled on ships and then bombed from the ships.
[00:04:50.41] Pilots didn't really like to fly them, but when they went out they knew they were coming back because they were serviceable.
[00:04:58.18] They'd get shot up every which way and then almost always get back to the ship with them.
[00:05:03.92] But when they got back to the ship-- and here's my tear-jerker-- they'd push them off in the ocean.
[00:05:11.41] Because I couldn't stand it when they'd say they pushed my Helldiver off in the ocean, but they weren't fit to fly again.
[00:05:17.63] But it really did hurt to think my Helldiver was going in the ocean.
[00:05:27.94] (WATER BUBBLING) - Your supervisor was always over your head because he said, "You cannot dent this aluminum!" A small crack in the aluminum would cause the planes to come down.
[00:05:45.25] So I was the riveter, my girlfriend was on the back, called the "bucking," so we would have breaks every so often during the day so we wouldn't get tired or nervous.
[00:06:14.41] - Tricks were played on newcomers like me.
[00:06:17.83] I'd be sent to the tool room-- that was like a big cage with all kinds of tools-- to get a left-handed hammer.
[00:06:26.98] Or ask for a "bastard file" just to make me blush, you know?
[00:06:34.72] So I grew with it.
[00:06:39.13] The bosses were MIT profs who managed to get some kind of cockamamie contract.
[00:06:49.52] We never knew what we were working on, it was always part of something that was going to be sent somewhere else.
[00:06:57.31] - I had a wonderful person working with me who was called the bucker.
[00:07:02.08] It was different from what I was expecting because we'd always thought, you know, this Civil War thing, that Yankees were just not nice people.
[00:07:12.35] And so I go to work with this young girl and it's a very close relationship because she's down in the speed ring that I was working on, and I'm outside.
[00:07:21.71] And I have to depend on her, how she hits that rivet, as to how hard I'm going to shoot it.
[00:07:27.43] And I have to have confidence in her.
[00:07:29.68] But she was a very nice person.
[00:07:31.69] The North-South thing soon disappeared with her.
[00:07:37.48] - The work was boring.
[00:07:40.48] Factory work is always boring.
[00:07:42.58] It's the most boring thing you can imagine.
[00:07:45.23] So you get to talk to people.
[00:07:47.34] (WOMEN CHATTING) I met some terrific people there, from every walk of life, every level of education.
[00:08:00.25] Lunch hour, for the longest time we would sit around, sit on crates with our long work aprons.
[00:08:11.93] And one of the bosses, Moe Hammer, would read a scene from "Othello," and we would discuss it.
[00:08:23.57] I saw all around me, people, some of whom had never finished eighth grade, just entranced.
[00:08:35.70] We all went to see "Othello" and we saw Paul Robeson and Uta Hagen, and Jose Ferrer as Iago.
[00:08:44.15] (AUDIENCE CLAPPING) From a factory.
[00:08:50.97] - Roosevelt, his wife mostly, said, "If you don't hire black women, we're going to take your contract." So it didn't take long for them to hire black women.
[00:09:02.92] And so when they came in, the white women, some of them, went down to the offices and protested.
[00:09:10.77] They wanted me to go.
[00:09:11.64] And I said, "No, I won't go with that." There was a black man working on the next jig.
[00:09:22.62] Well, that was a little bit hard for me to take right at first, but I began to like him and, you know, they had the race riots there while I was there.
[00:09:33.39] And that poor man, I felt so sorry for him.
[00:09:35.93] He had eight children, and he couldn't leave-- He was afraid to leave his wife and family at home.
[00:09:43.08] And yet he needed to work, because he couldn't feed them without it.
[00:09:47.70] So it really made me feel differently about black folks than I had before.
[00:10:00.86] - When I walked up and said, "I'm Susan King," looked over my shoulders and she said, "Mrs. King?" And I said "Yes." "Oh, I didn't know." I said, "Sure, you did not know that they had black Rosies at Eastern Aircraft, did you?" And she just turned red, kept on going.
[00:10:17.99] But I'm sure she expected Susan King, coming from Zone 15, to be anything other than black.
[00:10:32.84] - I had started working at 40 cents an hour.
[00:10:38.28] After two years, I made it up to 45 cents an hour, and I was working side by side with men who were getting 75 or 85 cents.
[00:10:51.29] So I went to the shop steward first and I said, "We have to do something about equalizing the pay, it is not fair. " - "What do you want me to do about it?" - And he said, "This is not an issue now.
[00:11:04.93] The war is on." So I went to the boss.
[00:11:13.94] "This can't be.
[00:11:16.84] "I know I can get a job tomorrow starting at 75 cents an hour." So he said, "I won't stop you." - If I were to compare the Rosies of yesterday, it was just as far-fetched for us to do what we were doing as the first woman to go up in space.
[00:11:59.17] What are they looking back?
[00:12:00.68] You look back and you say, "I've done this." Now, the woman up in space, it'll be years before she understands why she went in space.
[00:12:11.24] And I guess we're somewhere up there.
[00:12:12.91] Rosies actually did not know what they were doing and why they were doing it.
[00:12:17.17] If I could compare us, I guess we were out there in space, but we did it.
[00:12:23.73] - When you think about it, the world was on its knees.
[00:12:27.13] Europe was down, you know?
[00:12:29.88] England was gone.
[00:12:32.28] France was gone.
[00:12:34.82] And here we were.
[00:12:36.86] Most of our Navy was gone, except the carriers.
[00:12:41.96] And the plane I built flew from a carrier.
[00:12:46.85] Now that's a wonderful story, that my little plane could help bring us out of that.
[00:12:54.66] It was a little plane, but it was noisy.
[00:12:57.74] And it was-- it blasted 'em.
[00:13:02.14] (PLANE ENGINE WHIRRING) (MUSIC - The Four Vagabonds "Rosie The Riveter") (SINGING) All the day long, whether rain or shine, she's a part of the assembly line.
[00:13:23.24] She's making history working for victory, Rosie the Riveter.
[00:13:28.67] Keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage, sitting up there on the fuselage.
[00:13:34.04] That little friend can do more than a man can do.
[00:13:36.80] Rosie the Riveter.
[00:13:39.48] Rosie's got a boyfriend Charlie.
[00:13:42.14] Charlie, he's a Marine.
[00:13:44.87] Rosie is protecting Charlie, working overtime on the riveting machine.
[00:13:50.45] When they gave her a production lead, she was as proud as a girl could be.
[00:13:55.76] There's something true about, red, white, and blue about Rosie the Riveter.
[00:14:30.67] Rosie the Riveter.
[00:14:33.28] Rosie, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie, working on assembly line.
[00:14:44.01] Rosie, Rosie, Rosie the Riveter, on the assembly line.