Japanese mother and daughter, agricultural workers near Guadalupe, California.
Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1937.
Carolyn Hawkins Edison, wife of the Acting Navy Secretary views prize winning needlework of girl scouts in Washington, D.C. Fifteen year old Katherine Raymond and Mrs. Edison are looking at the sampler which won the intermediate Girl Scout prize for Betty Taylor, Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville, Ill.
November 4, 1939
A birthday letter to Alice Frank from her granddaughter Anne, age 9.
The letter above is part of a collection of Frank family memorabilia which was recently donated to Frankfurt’s Jewish Museum by Bernhard “Buddy” Elias, Anne’s closest living relative.
You can read the interview with Buddy Elias and see more images from the collection at Spiegel Online (in English, in German).
40 days to 1940 Census
no. 6
Labor unions gained strength among Mexican workers during the Great Depression. In 1933 and 1934, the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) was involved in a large strike among the needle trade workers of Los Angeles. They had focused on organizing, not only European immigrant women, but Mexican and Mexican-American women. They published bilingual materials to attract the women and gain support in the Mexican community. The Federal government’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) became involved in trying to bring the workers and factory owners together for mediation.
This short evening jacket is completely covered with shiny black sequins, and dates to around 1931. What a glittery way to accessorize a svelte evening gown! It bears the label: “Hattie Carnegie, Inc. / Little Salon,” and was probably part of this American designer’s ready-to-wear line. The label may refer to Carnegie’s new store in Manhattan, opened in June 1931.
Hattie Carnegie (Henrietta Kanengeiser 1889-1956) immigrated from Vienna, Austria in 1900 to New York City. She worked at various millinery establishments and at Macy’s. In 1909, with Rose Roth, she opened “Carnegie – Ladies’ Hatter.” She added dress design in a few years under the new name “Hattie Carnegie, Inc.” and then bought out Roth in 1919. Her expensive original designer clothes were out of reach for most Americans and Carnegie started her ready-to-wear line in 1928, making her wonderful designs available to average women all over America.
While she enjoyed huge success through her haute couture and her RTW, Hattie claimed that her proudest moment was when she designed the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) uniform in 1950. She received the Congressional Medal of Freedom for this design along with her other charitable and patriotic contributions.
This Hattie Carnegie evening jacket was probably worn by Septima Toomer Holmes Porcher (1898-1953) of Charleston (Mrs. Henry Francis Porcher) and was given to the Museum by her daughter, Frances Haskell Porcher, in 2009. It will be shown in the upcoming exhibition, Charleston Couture, March 10 – October 14, 2012.
Happy Birthday Marian Anderson!
Eleanor Roosevelt first met African American opera singer Marian Anderson in 1935 when the singer was invited to perform at the White House.
Four years later, in January of 1939, Howard University invited Marian Anderson to perform in Washington, DC for an Easter concert. Anticipating large crowds for the acclaimed singer, the University asked the Daughters of the American Revolution if they could use their auditorium, Constitution Hall in downtown Washington. The DAR refused the request. As part of the original funding arrangements for Constitution Hall, major donors had insisted that only whites could perform on stage.
On February 26, 1939, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt submitted her letter of resignation to the DAR president, declaring that the organization had “set an example which seems to me unfortunate” and that the DAR had “an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way” but had “failed to do so.”
Mrs. Roosevelt’s resignation thrust the Marian Anderson concert, the DAR, and the subject of racism to the center of national attention. As word of her resignation spread, Mrs. Roosevelt and others quietly worked behind the scenes promoting the idea for an outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial, just blocks away from Constitution Hall.
On April 9th, seventy-five thousand people, including dignitaries and average citizens, attended the outdoor concert. It was as diverse a crowd as anyone had seen—black, white, old, and young—dressed in their Sunday finest. Hundreds of thousands more heard the concert over the radio. Ms. Anderson opened her concert with America. The operatic first half of the program concluded with Ave Maria. After a short intermission, she then sang a selection of spirituals familiar to the African American members of her audience. And with tears in her eyes, Marian Anderson closed the concert with an encore, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.
Strange as it may seem, many persons misspell or change the spelling of their names, from time to time. To forestall the difficulties which would ensue when Baer subsequently spelled his name Bear, the Social Security Board Records Office has set up several varieties of indexes for reference and to insure accuracy. One of these is the alphabetic code index. This is printed on flexible strips, each just wide enough for one line of type. They are printed automatically from the employee master card. The strips are in partially perforated rolls when they first are printed, as shown in the above photograph taken in the Records Office. The perforations allow strips to be separated at any point so that, for example, Abraham Abel’s name may be inserted in proper alphabetic sequence between Aaron Abel and Adam Abel.
Baltimore, circa 1936
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