Rosie the Riveter: one of many finds in that LoC Flickr set
BB reader Hagrid says, "I just blogged this stunning 1943 colour photo, released by the Library of Congress on Flickr. It turns that WWII icon, 'Rosie the Riveter,' on her head, by presenting her as she really was: African-American. Love the nails and ring, incidentally."
(Editor's note: there were surely many shades of "Rosie," but that diversity is often overlooked.)
Previously: Library of Congress uses Flickr to crowdsource tagging and organizing its photo archive
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Sweet! The nail color looks like Raven Red. Revlon's been making it for decades.
It's a great picture but doesn't at all turn the 'Rosie the Riveter' on her head. It's still a woman doing what would have been considered a man's job at the time for the war effort.
No, Darth Shelby — I'm pretty sure turning the Aunt Jemima icon on its head results in delicious syrup on my pancakes. I see neither pancakes nor syrup in this photo.
Beautiful image, confusing idea...
What is turned on its head, exactly? I know that my grandmother is not African-American, but she worked in an Akron factory during the war. I also know that many African-American women did the same. This is not mutually exclusive. Nor is there any explanation for what the writer implies. To my knowledge, there has been no concerted effort to denigrate anyone's role in the war. All who served did so with distinction (Rosie, the Tuskegee Airmen, the 442nd, etc...) Recognizing that all strove equally for America, as Americans, was and remains, critical for the civil rights and feminist movements.
I could be entirely wrong, but if the post insinuates a blow against racism, it is tilting at windmills.
The library of congress photo archive is great. The other day, I found it had color photos of Tsarist Russia! (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/)
Nothing's turned on its head.
All that's being represented are what's been the facts of the matter for 50+ years.
Exposure of fact does not change fact.
Any pictures of Rose Monroe?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter#Popular_images
On maybe a related note - A well known Canadian image from their national archives : http://mikan3.archives.ca/pam/public_mikan/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=3191599&rec_nbr_list=3197321,3197324,3197320,3192779,3198130,3191599,3627469,3197327,3197323,3627465&tmplt_nbr=201&item_index=1&total_items=1&
There's a really awesome documentary about Rosie's where they interview a number of African American Rosie's as well as white ones and document some of the racism they experienced. It's pretty fascinating.
It's called the Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081053/
Here are the other pictures of "Rosie" from the LoC's archive (at least the ones that users have found so far):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/tags/rosie/
Should we start a search to find more??
Please understand, when I said "turn the icon on it's head," all I meant is that, for 60+ years, the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter has always been white.
This image shows it wasn't always so.
But then, I'm an iconoclast. I love seeing "symbols" turned upside down. And Rosie was/is a symbol.
Blah blah 'Woman'. Blah blah 'African American' Blah blah.
Shut your mouths & open your eyes.
The post title in my RSS feed, using the phrase 'Rosie the Riveter', put my head in a WW II expectation. As soon as the picture appeared and I saw the colour.
No.
Not the person of colour, but the COLOUR in the photo, I was thrown.
I think of the past as Black & White, because I have B&W family pictures from the mid 60s, early 70s that look more 'old fashioned' than this picture. I have colour photos from the same period that look more 'old fashioned' than this picture.
'Stunning' is the right word to describe this picture.
The image is older than me. It's around the same age as my now dead Parents would be.
This picture looks like it could've been taken yesterday.
Sorry I'm rambling.
That's what happens when you're stunned.
It's made the past 'now'. It's made 60 years ago more real. Because the picture doesn't look 'old'.
I wonder about the ring....
I worked a lot of years on assembly lines at GMC's AC Spark Plug in Flint, Michigan with a few thousand women. None would have been allowed to wear rings on ungloved hands when operating a hand drill or a 'rivet gun.'
It's a posed picture, fellows, although a delightful one.
I thought pretty well all war photography was posed, like the flag raising at Iwo Jima. Any of the real,candid stuff (like a man taking a rifle bullet through the head) is somehow not "popular".
Please understand, when I said "turn the icon on it's head," all I meant is that, for 60+ years, the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter has always been white.
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I can't believe how ignorant you are of history. There were massive, MASSIVE problems integrating factories because the southern white people in power specifically used Jim Crow laws to eliminate the African-American participation in skilled jobs.
please read history, this thread is bizarre. there were riots because there were almost no African-American Rosies.
'When asked how Hitler should be punished, a young
black girl replied.....
"Paint him black and send him here to America"
(From 'A People's History of the USA' by Howard Zinn, 1980)"