Fair Chance

 “I buy stamps and war bonds as far as I am able to help my country win this war.  I should be given a fair chance to do my part of work in the [Kingsbury] defense plant.” Pernellia Hull to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Feb. 16, 1942

Nicole Anslover assigned her World War II class to review a journal article. Students were to make use of E-Journal Finder, which IU subscribes to - hence, making the stacks of journals on the library’s second floor obsolete; indeed, most have disappeared within the past year.  I’d never made use of E-Journal Finder but gave it a try since I wanted to recommend Katherine Turk’s September 2012 Indiana Magazine of History (IMH)contribution “A Fair Chance To Do My Part: Black Woman, War Work, and Rights Claims at the Kingsbury Ordinance Plant.”  It took me quite a while since I couldn’t find an author or subject index, but I finally located a PDF of it after accessing the magazine and knowing what volume it was in.  Librarian Scott Sandberg later showed me how to use E-Journal Finder more efficiently.

 transportation for Kingsbury employees

Constructed near LaPorte in 1941 on 13,000 acres of farmland, the Kingsbury facility employed over 20,000 workers at good-paying jobs.  Black women from Gary were recruited and bussed 40 miles to the site but encountered segregation from white co-workers and frequent mistreatment from superiors.  First welcomed when their labor was desperately needed, latecomers found it harder to get hired once there appeared to be an adequate supply of Caucasian applicants.  Mamie Johnson visited Kingsbury’s employment office eight times, only to be given the runaround.  In a letter to President Roosevelt she said: “They just don’t want to hire colored people at Kingsbury.  They will tell them anything to get rid of them.”  Many complained to the Federal Employment Practices Commission, to the White House (some writing directly to the President or First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt), and to AFL union leaders.  None was much help.

 Rev. Adam Clayton Powell during Harlem Bus Boycott, 1941

I also hoped to say more about Reverend L.K. Jackson of Gary’s St. Paul Baptist Church, who arrived in 1943 and in his first sermon branded himself the “Hell-Raiser from the East.”  A former protégé of Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, he had helped organize a Harlem bus boycott until the New York City Transit Authority agreed to hire several hundred African-American drivers.  Jackson used similar threats to get blacks hired in Gary, not only as drivers but as downtown clerks, bank tellers, and newspaper reporters.  All blacks wanted was a fair chance, Jackson told executives. He shamed YMCA officials into desegregating their facilities with similar arguments.  Bus boycotts had taken place in the South in the early 1900s, and it was the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott that signaled the beginning of the activist phase of the modern civil rights movement.

Membership in civil rights groups, such as the NAACP and the Urban League increased exponentially during the war. James Farmer’s Congress of Racial Equality came into existence and organized sit-ins against restaurants in Washington, DC, that refused to serve black patrons. In one notorious incident a restaurant manager apologized to an African diplomat initially denied service with the lame explanation that he had thought the man to be an American.

 Meade "Lux" Lewis

In “Cat’s Cradle” Kurt Vonnegut mentions boogie woogie pianist Meade “Lux” Lewis (1905-1964) in a scene where Angela Hoenikker plays clarinet along with “Honky Tonk Blues,” which he first recorded in 1927.  According to Vonnegut, Lewis’s father was a Pullman porter whose family lived near train tracks, and the sound of locomotives inspired the rhythmic pattern in his composition.  Record Producer John H. Hammond featured Lewis in a 1938 Carnegie Hall concert titled “From Spiritual to Swing,” and Lewis subsequently played with big bands and even in movies as a piano man, such a “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Crystal Palace and Bertie 

The final season episode of the PBS series “Victoria” dealt with Prince Albert and Henry Cole planning the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations.  Opponents, fearful that it would be a financial bust and a magnet for revolutionaries, panned it as a White Elephant.  The glass structure, designed by landscape architect Joseph Paxton and nicknamed the Crystal Palace, attracted over 6 million visitors and became an enduring symbol of the Victorian Era.  The way the episode concluded, I feared we had seen the last of the overworked Prince Albert, but he lived another ten years. Victoria and Albert’s nine-year-old son Bertie (Albert Edward) is portrayed as impish and rebellious and would soon become enamored with the niece of James Buchanan (my great-great-great uncle) the American Minister to the Court of St. James, Harriet Lane, whom he later connected with as an 18 year-old during an 1860 White House visit. Although ten years his senior the First Lady, who had been a favorite of Queen Victoria, went to great pains to organize a banquet in his honor and a trip down the Potomac in a coast guard cutter named for her.  The Prince of Wales, gossips reported, flirted with her and frequently stole looks at the amply endowed Harriet’s décolletage.  Four decades later Bertie invited Harriet to his coronation when he was crowned King Edward VII.

Rolling Stonehad a great article on Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, my favorite early 2020 Presidential candidate. Former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg would make a good running mate for her. Klobuchar posed in front of First Avenue, a Minneapolis rock venue.  In the background of the photograph are the names of hometown performers Prince and Bob Mould, as well as groups that performed there, including three favorites of mine, INXS, Flaming Lips, and The Rock Steady.

A salacious documentary about Scotty Bowers, the author of “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars” (2012) details his adventures as a “gentleman hustler” during the postwar Hollywood years.  , Operating initially out of a gas station Bowers purchased after getting out of the marines, he had access to a mobile home behind his establishment and a mutually profitable arrangement with a nearby motel owner.  His stable of studs serviced many closeted leading men such as Walter Pigeon, Charles Laughton, Spencer Tracy, and Cary Grant but also women companions for lesbians, including (if he is to believed) Katherine Hepburn.  The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, frequent visitors to Los Angeles, made use of his services for three-ways and four-ways.  Ninety years-old when interviewed for the documentary, Bowers claimed he earned money as a boy by giving priests blow jobs and that sexologist Alfred Kinsey interviewed him multiple times and attended orgies with him as an observer. Seemingly his only regret was watching so many friends die of AIDS.

I also started watching “Leaving Neverland,” a heartrending (for Michael Jackson fans like myself) four-hour documentary about Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who had years-long relationships with Michael Jackson beginning when they were kids. What is so disturbing is that Michael, deprived of a childhood of his own, clearly befriended these boys and enjoyed their companionship but then gradually introduced them to sexual practices after ingratiating himself to their parents and convincing them (and perhaps himself) that he loved and cherished them.  Unlike Scotty Bowers, who denied that adults had abused him when he was a kid, claiming instead that they introduced him to pleasurable experiences, Robson and Safechuck seem only now to be recovering from the abuse stemming from Jackson’s taking advantage of their youth and innocence. Even as tolerance grows for those identifying themselves as LGBTQ or I, incest and man/boy love remain taboos, as well they should, in my opinion, even though Professor Kinsey might disagree.

Daughter-in-law Angie’s grandmother Vera, who recently celebrated her 92nd birthday, attended nursing school free of charge by joining the cadet nursing corps during World War II.  Two Gary hospitals, Methodist and St. Mary Mercy, participated in that program.  One of my first students, Doris Kennedy, wrote about her mother, Mary Alice enrolling at Mercy, which was run like a convent, with students living on site and expected to attend chapel, do their own housekeeping, be in uniform at all times, and eschew nail polish, eye make-up or jewelry.  Doris Kennedy wrote:

  Sometimes the discipline made the students do things they might otherwise not have done. One trick was to steal the flowers from in front of the statue of St. Ann in the obstetrics department. The department was run by Sister Natalia, whom my mother referred to as “Batty Natty.”  She was always praying for more babies and putting flowers in front of the statue, even though the nursery was overflowing and new mothers were in the hallways.  She often told mothers as they left, “See you next year.”

  Students occasionally went to the USO on Wabash Street in Chicago, one of several USOs where Cadets were considered military personal.  This is where she celebrated V-E Day.  When they had a chance, girls went to various taverns on Washington Street for a forbidden drink or two.  Some of the girls could not have survived the three years without an occasional trip to Washington Street.  They never had to worry about being bothered since they were watched over by understanding bartenders.

Mary Alice Kennedy; below, 1946 Mercy grads with Sister Vitalis

At Hobart Lanes  Mikey Wardell offered me a piece of delicious fudge he made.  The week before, he brought in caramel treats.  His secret, Mikey confided, was using only a half-portion of sugar.  Engineers took all seven points from Hot Shots, as I rolled a 489, 54 pins over my average, and Joe Piunti, carrying a 124 average, a 484.  The Hot Shots had to spot us 74 pins, and in the final game we had squandered them and trailed by 20 after just four frames.  From then on, we out-bowled them , as J.P. amazingly had 5 strikes in a row.  Everyone had more splits than normal, hurting our opponents more than us.  I converted both a 5-10 and a 5-7, the latter with my 40 year-old spare ball.  Rose Fox was friendly and excited for me when I picked up the splits.  Husband Jim said it was her first year bowling after recovering from a triple bi-pass.