00:00:09 Mae Macfarlane
Hi, I'm Mae MacFarlane, here with The Professor Podcast, the podcast of your professors, their research, and their academic lives, here at Saint Thomas. This week, we are delighted to have with us Dr Aura Wharton-Beck, a professor in the Saint Thomas School of Education, Department of Educational Leadership and Learning.
Welcome Aura.
00:00:27 Aura Wharton-Beck
Thank you, Mae, for having me today.
00:00:29 Mae Macfarlane
Excited to have you.
00:00:30 Mae Macfarlane
So, Aura, can you please briefly explain who government girls are and what your research is about?
00:00:37 Aura Wharton-Beck
That's a great first question.
First of all, ‘government girls” ... It's maybe, like, a generic name for women who worked for the federal government during World War II. These women took a civil service exam, passed it, and were able to receive appointments in federal jobs during the war. So, they served in different departments: the Department of Treasury, the Pentagon, Agriculture, all different government agencies, the Navy, the Army, anywhere where they needed clerical help.
00:01:13 Aura Wharton-Beck
Clerical work means any kind of typing, stenography. I believe in the 21st century we would call it keyboarding. Sometimes women -- well federal workers -- would fill out long government forms on a typewriter or using a typewriter.
For women who worked in the Treasury Department, maybe they were looking at bonds or printing, you know, federal notes. So, any kind of clerical or office type work.
00:01:43 Mae Macfarlane
So, can you go into a little bit about how you found out about this topic or what drew you to being interested in it.
00:01:50 Aura Wharton-Beck
Mae, my journey in terms of my research actually started when I was a little girl. My mother, who was a government girl during World War Two had this yearbook, and it was called the Whirly Gig. And it was her prized possession.
This was the first time that I actually saw African American women who were not domestics. So, these were African American, young women who lived in a segregated dorm, and they were in professional role.
00:02:23 Aura Wharton-Beck
And so as a young child I started to wonder “why am I not seeing these images in textbooks?” and when I went to Graduate School and decided to pursue my doctoral degree, I wanted to create a different kind of narrative and maybe correct history, and that took me to a different level of research.
So, I finally decided or settled on a doctoral research topic that wanted to uncover the untold narratives of these women. Now, they were not only Black women who were government girls, they were also white women who were government girls but my area or focus was capturing those unspoken narratives.
What was their story? How did they survive? And in an environment that was sometimes not welcoming to them, but also, what was their legacy after they got into the federal government?
One of the things I discovered was that these women, once they were hired, they kept their jobs. Even when most women returned back to home, they kept their jobs and I wanted to know why.
00:03:30 Mae Macfarlane
Oh wow.
00:03:37 Aura Wharton-Beck
And so, standing tall on their shoulders, because they the door for changing the trajectory of, not only their lives, but generations to come.
00:03:47 Mae Macfarlane
No, that's very powerful.
That's really cool like, that was your mom.
00:03:50 Aura Wharton-Beck
That was my mother in in this yearbook, sitting in a segregated dorm.
So, I really want listeners to understand that during World War II, the whole idea of black women and white women living under the same roof was not an option, and so the federal government built segregated dorms.
Now, these were upscale dorms for white women, but also for black women or Negro women.
00:04:19 Aura Wharton-Beck
So let's talk about the power of friendships. It was Mary McLeod Bethune who convinced Eleanor Roosevelt that these dorms should be built for these women.
The thinking at the time was that Black people, that we would take care of our own. But these women, who came from all over the country to Washington, DC, they had no place to live.
And so, you can imagine leaving your home and going to a city. And they're not prepared for you.
00:04:50 Aura Wharton-Beck
So the federal government was kind of shamed into building these segregated dorms. And so when I would page through this yearbook see these women living in like 5-star hotels.
But these were dormitories, and in fact there's only one dormitory that's left. And that's in Washington, DC.
00:05:10 Mae Macfarlane
What department did your mom work in and what did she do?
00:05:14 Aura Wharton-Beck
Her first appointment was at the Pentagon and so and again.
00:05:16 Mae Macfarlane
Oh wow.
00:05:18 Aura Wharton-Beck
When you hear of women, especially African American women, working, no one ever thinks that they held white collar jobs and so…
Well, let's let me let me take you back a bit. My mother is from Puerto Rico, and so she applied to work for the federal government, passed the Civil Service exam in English, and came to the mainland to Washington, DC, lived in the segregated dorm.
And her first appointment was at the Pentagon. And she worked through different agencies, you know, throughout her career.
00:05:51 Aura Wharton-Beck
But yeah, these government girls were a force to be reckoned with.
00:05:56 Mae Macfarlane
You kind of mentioned that there aren’t pictures of these women in our textbooks. When I was listening to your pre interview and reading your article I was, like, why haven't I heard of these women?
My grandma, during World War II, she went and worked in a watch factory. You know, she did, you know, the blue collar side of it and I had never stopped to consider, “What about those government positions? Who would fill that role?”
And it's fascinating that there's a whole piece of history that's just not taught in my public school education.
00:06:24 Aura Wharton-Beck
Right. And I hope to change it. And so right now I am producing a film on this topic, on African American government girls. And if your listeners are interested in looking at this website, it is titled https://indeliblenarratives.com and I feature six women who came from various backgrounds to work as government girls.
I captured their stories. And it was really an interesting adventure for me because think about it -- World War II was in the 40s. The women who I interviewed were in their late 80’s/early 90s and so I wanted to make sure that I captured their stories.
00:07:10 Aura Wharton-Beck
And it was an emotional event for me to hear how they started from, you know, sometimes very humble beginnings. And once they became, you know, employees in different federal agencies, they took advantage of every promotion; they took advantage of other job opportunities.
Some of them went back to school. And, they may have started out in clerical positions. But they ended up achieving much more.
So, you talk about breaking the cycle of expectations. So, these are restorative narratives that I'm trying to tell.
Women who were being trained to be domestic workers and somewhere along the line the war came and war was good for them, because it opened up a whole different opportunity.
There's one woman that I interviewed. Her name is Annie Randall, Annie Mae Randall and her mother was actually training her to be a maid Just like she was a maid, her mother and her grandmother were domestic workers.
It was Annie's father who said “you're not going to be a maid, you're going to go to high school, you're going to go to college.” And to make a long story short, Annie Mae Randall ended up working for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. And she became a statistician.
00:08:22 Aura Wharton-Beck
Another woman, Mary Wiggins, worked for the Treasury Department. Carrie Chapman worked as a loan analyst for the Rural Electrification Agency. My mother ended up at her final job as a federal worker, was a paralegal for the Regional Attorney's office in Chicago.
00:08:39 Aura Wharton-Beck
And so, this is the power of giving people the opportunity to change the direction of their lives and to mentor other young women to dream big.
00:08:49 Mae Macfarlane
No, that's wonderful.
I'm excited to see your film about all these incredible women.
00:08:53 Aura Wharton-Beck
Well, it's a film in process and I'm in the process of, you know, raising funds in order to complete the film. Again, it's indeliblenarratives.com one word, and you will see each woman is profiled on the website and you see their beginning, how they started, and you see the arc of their employment history. It's quite fascinating.
00:09:17 Mae Macfarlane
Very exciting.
What is something that you found through your research that was surprising for you?
00:09:23 Aura Wharton-Beck
That's a great question.
There were many things that I found interesting, but the most compelling piece of information that I came across was the idea of how faith-based communities or faith-based organizations and the National Council of Negro Women. They did not take for granted.
They took these young women who came from all across the United States, provided them with the support system or the network to be successful.
So let me give you an example.
00:09:52 Aura Wharton-Beck
The National Council of Negro Women, they had an employment clinic, an employment clinic where they learn how to dress appropriately. They learned how to behave in the workplace.
They also … it was like early coaching and mentoring at its finest, And so organizations knew that in order for these young women to keep their employment, they needed the necessary skills in mentoring to do that.
00:10:23 Aura Wharton-Beck
So let's shift to faith-based organizations like churches. And so, when the women came to church, they were encouraged by the local minister or preacher that they had earned their right to be here and whatever spiritual guidance that they needed in order to return to work, and sometimes in a very hostile, you know, work environment that they needed the emotional and spiritual support.
And so I learned the power and the importance of really investing in this new young workforce that came to Washington, DC and how that was important in terms of sustaining them and in their work. So, that was those are two very important features of that I discovered.
00:11:07 Aura Wharton-Beck
For one particular person, Annie Mae. She was a young girl, very, very bright. Her very first day on the job, the construction workers came and built a wall around her so that no one would see her. Now,
she had passed the Civil Service exam. She had earned an appointment, yet and still, she was isolated from others.
And that was a common practice. You just isolated people; you just physically built a wall, And she sat there and said, “well, what did I do? You know, what did I do to deserve that?”
There's a good ending to her story. She found a mentor who realized that she was bright, very capable of doing mathematical calculations, and had an affinity for math and mentored her along the way. And that's how she became a statistician with the National Institutes of Health.
00:11:56 Aura Wharton-Beck
So when I say restorative narratives, we're talking about stories of how people survived, how resilient they became. And once they, once these African American government girls, found a place, they stayed. But they also made sure that their children went to college and became good citizens and carried on that dream.
So, I would hope that anyone who is interested in history, especially women's history, takes a few minutes to learn about these amazing women, right?
I just featured six women, but there were thousands of women just like that.
00:12:33 Mae Macfarlane
And so, a question I have is just kind of these jobs weren't in just Washington, DC, were they? Where else were they?
00:12:40 Aura Wharton-Beck
So, I'd like for listeners to understand that the federal government has agencies all over the United States. But during the war, most of the women, the majority of the women, came from the South, so they were part of that great migration.
So federal agencies were in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, anywhere they were supporting the war effort. So, Maryland, Virginia, you know any what we call it the DMV. So it's the District, Maryland, and Virginia.
00:13:13 Aura Wharton-Beck
So there were federal agencies, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department, the army, the Navy, anywhere where they needed clerical help.
Now remember, as men were called to war, they left vacancies there. And so, women, white women, but also Black women, they came to DC and filled those positions.
00:13:32 Mae Macfarlane
What would you say the rate of keeping those jobs after the war was? Did the men come back and almost get a guaranteed spot or?
00:13:42 Aura Wharton-Beck
That's an interesting question. Some of the women went, you know, returned home.
But for the African American women, most of them stayed. And of course, as the job market evolved, and yeah, the men came back and probably took some of those jobs.
But the job market continued to, you know, improve and expand.
Once they sat down, they did not get up!
I actually want listeners to understand. These women were employed in these jobs way before Rosa Parks sat on that bus, right. So, way before The Bus Boycott.
Way before you know the civil rights movement, these women were in the workforce doing serious work.
There's a power in seeing pictures. And so, I actually have archival pictures of women in the workplace doing the actual work. But if you go to indeliblenarratives.com, you will see them. You will see them as there are.
00:14:40 Aura Wharton-Beck
One thing that I think really, I went into my research thinking that did this just out of patriotism. And, I'm sure there was, that was part of it. But please understand that the war was going on and so there was a national effort for black Americans -- It's called the double. It's called the Double V victory.
So, victory abroad. But also victory at home. Where they were fighting for a war overseas. But they wanted to make sure that they were also fighting for their rights here in America.
And so, like I said, these women now -- there were some men also you know, doing clerical work -- but this was basically like a female workforce. One thing I think that going back to you know, being surprised at is that these women were working for a federal government at a time where they could not even vote.
So, you're getting the same salary as a white woman, which was $1440 a year. That was living wage back then. Equal salary. But they could not vote.
00:15:41 Mae Macfarlane
They had no say of who they were working for or…
00:15:43 Aura Wharton-Beck
Not at all. And so you can imagine when African Americans were allowed to vote that they were like some of the first people to vote.
00:15:43 Mae Macfarlane
Yeah.
00:15:51 Aura Wharton-Beck
Yeah, and encourage their children to vote.
00:15:54 Mae Macfarlane
Wow. Yeah, that's another aspect that you don't really think of in the grand scheme of things. Yeah.
00:15:58 Aura Wharton-Beck
We were not allowed to vote.
00:16:00 Mae Macfarlane
I can't imagine working for a government that doesn't include you fully, it's...
00:16:04 Aura Wharton-Beck
Exactly,
00:16:06 Mae Macfarlane.
it’s heartbreaking,
00:16:10 Aura Wharton-Beck
But think about these women as visionaries who knew there was hopefully one day a better life.
And so, if you have that in your head, if you have that dream that one day things are going to be better, you know you can't give up.
You know you have to have hope, and I think these women have had that hope.
00:16:23 Mae Macfarlane
Hope that's beautiful. I'm very moved, by…
00:16:25 Aura Wharton-Beck
Thank you.
00:16:26 Mae Macfarlane
…their courage and your research into it and your personal connection makes it even more special.
00:16:32 Aura Wharton-Beck
Absolutely, absolutely.
00:16:33 Aura Wharton-Beck
So I actually wrote a poem that is going to be hopefully featured in a peer reviewed journal.
00:16:40 Aura Wharton-Beck
May I read it to you?
The title of this poem is called
Labor by Another Name: Resistance.
We, African American Government Girls, interrupted the pre-determined destiny of becoming servants, maids, and cooks.
In High School we conjugated Latin roots, excelled in English, and learned math using second-hand books.
Government jobs and civil service exams advertised on post office walls
No one expected us to answer Uncle Sam’s calls.
Passing the exam made us eligible for a place at the table
Despite the word ‘Negro’ on the application label.
To the nation’s capital by bus, train, or car
A patriotic call to arms came from near and far
We came by choice, frustration, or obligation.
Union Station became the destination.
We took Washington, DC by storm,
Filling jobs at the Pentagon, Navy, Treasury Department, and other federal agencies, we resided in upscale segregated dorms.
Determined to make a difference despite the roadblocks
We arrived early to punch in on time clocks.
Our early days on the job were not always easy,
One could lose a position if accused of being lazy.
The National Council of Negro Women held Wartime Employment Clinic sessions
To teach us essential job survival lessons.
We signed the Negro Workers Pledge to be poised, dependable, and healthy.
Cooperative attitudes, excellent attendance, and buying savings bonds could make you wealthy.
Attending church became a way of life
Biblical passages taught us how to deal with racism and office strife
While ‘good government jobs’ elevated our social status and we dressed to the nines
We still sat in isolated seats behind White passengers on bus lines.
World War II ended, and we chose to stay.
Financial emancipation, monetary raises, and years of steady federal employment paved the way
We now pass the torch to the next generation
To tell this story to the entire nation.
00:19:56 Aura Wharton-Beck
And so hopefully this poem gives your listeners a sense of what government girls, their existence, their action, their bravery, yeah.
00:20:03 Mae Macfarlane
No, that was beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
You mentioned earlier that these women's restorative narratives and how they were kind of changing history as they were working. Can you describe the four levels of narratives?
00:20:17 Aura Wharton-Beck
I used Bell. Leanne Bell has a framework for looking at stories.
So, there are four types of stories that people tell about their lives.
The first type of story are stock stories. So these are the narratives or the stories of White America.
The next type of story are concealed stories. These are stories that are not told, so untold narratives. Stories of the lived experience of people that are not in textbooks.
The third type of story is called resistance stories. So, resistance stories are stories of people saying “I'm not taking what you're giving me. I'm going to fight back by any means necessary:” Resistance stories
And then finally, there’re transformational stories and so transformational stories are a combination of concealed stories and resistance stories and how people made it on the other side.
00:21:16 Aura Wharton-Beck
So, people who survive probably unspeakable things to make a new story. So, transformational stories are stories of hope resillence…
00:21:26 Mae Macfarlane
You know, looking at those four levels of narratives and how you know in your pre-session interview, you mentioned Rosie, the Riveter is very much like a stock story.
Yeah.
00:21:35 Aura Wharton-Beck
That's exactly that's the stock story that she's the poster woman of World War II.
00:21:41 Mae Macfarlane
Yeah, and.
00:21:42 Aura Wharton-Beck
That's the stock story.
00:21:44 Mae Macfarlane
And while the story is motivational and empowering. It's kind of it's very white centric.
00:21:49 Aura Wharton-Beck
Right.
00:21:50 Aura Wharton-Beck
And so these government girls, the purpose of my research is to not only amplify the voices, but also to allow people to realize that black women are multidimensional, that we're not just one, that's just not one narrative.
We are scientists and lawyers.
We are teachers, we are engineers.
We are homemakers, film makers.
00:22:18 Aura Wharton-Beck
I never thought I was going to be a filmmaker.
We are more than what people may pigeonhole us to be.
We are politicians, we are Vice Presidents. We are Senators, we are myriad of things. We're just not one thing.
00:22:34 Mae Macfarlane
Exactly right. And I hope that someday these will be the stories that we hear about and they’re mainstream and taught to our children and shown from an early age what women can do, especially Black women, in a country that's still not great we…
00:22:47 Aura Wharton-Beck
Right. in America.
Well, what I would like to do when my next project, hopefully, after completing the production of this film is to write a children's book, and so it…
00:22:58 Mae Macfarlane
I was just thinking about that.
00:23:00 Aura Wharton-Beck
It's almost finished. And if I can find a publisher, that would be great. So, if anyone is listening and has any connections in the publishing world…
But I am working on an ABC book so that the lives of these women, they need to come out of the margins of history.
They just can't be in the margins. They need to be on the page.
00:23:21 Mae Macfarlane
Can you talk a little bit about the impact of seeing your mother pictured in these roles and how that impacted you through your education and through your vision of yourself?
00:23:33 Aura Wharton-Beck
I think seeing these and on non-traditional roles really had an impact on me. And so, growing up there was, it was the expectation that we went to college that you were self-sufficient that you had a career that you had career choices.
Now I'm not going to reveal to your listeners how old I am. But when I was in high school and going into college, roles for women were pretty much, especially for Black women, pretty much centered on being a teacher, or a nurse, or social worker.
But, of course, we're now in the 21st century where the career choices are available to everyone, but seeing women in different roles, and again going back to the power of pictures, you know, if you can see yourself as an adult. So seeing these as a little girl when I saw these women, I'm saying, well, that's black girl magic!
00:24:32 Aura Wharton-Beck
“I want to be that when I grow up.” I didn't always have the vocabulary for what they did, but I knew they were doing important work.
But it's expectations, I think, surpassing people's expectations about what they think that you're capable of doing. And my mother was probably an early feminist. I didn't know that word growing up, but here she was, a young woman, far from home.
English was not her first language. She learned how to speak a conversational English in the dorm and in the workplace.
00:25:05 Aura Wharton-Beck
She earned her own money way before she married my father, so she had a life – wage-earning woman along with other women, Black women, also White women as well, living on your own, you’re living in Washington, DC and…
00:25:22 Mae Macfarlane
That's so cool.
00:25:24 Aura Wharton-Beck
…And so I've always had that image. A man does not need to manage my money. My mother always managed her money.
Those are important lessons for girls, you know, to learn at an early age that you have a choice, but it takes a village.
I know it sounds, yeah, you know, passe. But it takes people around children to encourage them to say “you can do this!”
00:25:49 Aura Wharton-Beck
I've not always been a professor. My first career was a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. I've mentored teachers. I've been a public school principal.
Now I'm here at the university, and so I don't know…I'd like to explore options, but if someone would have told me, Mae, that one day you were going to produce a film I would run out of…I would have run away! Like, “no way!”
00:26:12 Mae Macfarlane
Yeah. No, that's wonderful.
00:26:14 Aura Wharton-Beck
Thank you.
Let me talk about the power of research.
So, qualitative research holds a very special place in my heart and allows the researcher to capture stories and narratives, to investigate and it's a venture that does not happen in isolation.
Research is not just sitting in front of your computer or your laptop. You actually have to physically go and collect the information from somewhere.
When I physically went to Washington, DC, to interview three of the participants, I also took the opportunity to go to the Library of Congress, where I was able to, you know, look at documents, for example, the National Council of Negro Women. They had a wartime clinic.
I actually got to take pictures of actual applications of women who sought services through the National Council of Negro Women's Wartime Clinic. You don't get that kind of research sitting in the library. But it takes librarians who are skilled, but also interested in your research as well.
And they want you to ask questions because they can point you in the right direction. “You know, you can do this.”
00:27:31 Aura Wharton-Beck
It's almost as if … doing qualitative research…
It's almost like if you are a detective and so you don't do that in isolation. You have to really seek the expertise of your librarian there to help me to, to do this very important research.
00:27:48 Aura Wharton-Beck
And so this is my life’s work. I am proud of the work that I've done. I can go on and on, but I'd like your listeners to really, you know, the take away I believe from from our discussion today is that oral history is important and retrieving stories from the past informs the present and the future, and this is what my research is about.
It's about telling the truth, so thank you.
00:28:15 Mae Macfarlane
If you’d like to know more about Aura Wharton-Beck’s work, you can find her on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Saint Thomas.
00:28:20 Mae Macfarlane
Tthe professor Podcast is brought to you by the Saint Thomas libraries and made possible with funding from the College of Arts and Sciences.
I'm your host Macfarlane, a 2022 graduate. The producers and library staff are Merrie Davidson, Andrea Koeppe, and Trent Brager.
Thank you so much to our guests, and our listeners.
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