January 11, 2019
Hello ,
My book launch Tuesday went great!
Your support was amazing! Thanks for the emails, sharing the book on social media, telling you friends and writing reviews. I'm so grateful to those of you who've reviewed the book on Goodreads or Amazon. It does make a difference.
When the book came out this week, it had a new cover. I guess that's not uncommon in publishing, but it was quite a surprise.
The new cover is on the right. I like the old one better, but probably just because I was used it and the new one was a surprise. This is the dust jacket.
The actual cover of the book is embossed in gold ink on the spine and on the cover is a gold silhouette of the Greek Goddess Athena.
The Women's Auxilary Army Corps adopted Pallas Athene, goddess of victory and womanly virtue - wise in peace and in the arts of war - as its symbol. Pallas Athene and the traditional "U.S." were worn as lapel insignia by women in the corps.
And now on to today's feature story, which has been published prior on Teen Librarian's Toolbox a blog on the School Library Journal website.
History (and Librarians)
Inspire Freedom of the Press
When I got my first real job as a broadcast journalist at age 21, I believed my work would contribute to the common good. I believed the stories I reported, first as a radio journalist and later in television news, would help people understand events in our
local community more clearly, feel more empathy and maybe open their minds or change their hearts. See me in 30-second newsbreak circa 1983
Was I too idealistic? Was believing that the news media played a crucial role, not just in preserving democracy, but also as a force for good in our lives nothing but a fanciful notion of a naïve do-gooder?
It certainly seems so today.
But in researching the stories of black women who risked their lives to serve their county in a segregated army during World War II, I discovered evidence of how a free press pushed our nation to progress toward equality, how newspaper stories
about injustice inspired people to empathy, and how the press rallied citizens to demand fairness.
In the spring of 1945, black members of the Women’s Army Corps stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, had withstood all they could stand. Day after day they donned blue work uniforms and reported to Lowell Army hospital to wash dishes and scrub floors. White WACs at the same hospital wore white uniforms for jobs as lab technicians, nurse’s aides and assisting wounded soldiers write letters home.
Throughout World War II, complaints arose, and inspections verified that black WACs were too often assigned to menial jobs not prescribed for WACs. One inspection at Fort Breckinridge, Kentucky, found thirty black WACs working in the laundry, fifteen assigned to service jobs, including dishwashing at the base club, and five “well-educated negro women…administration school graduates…employed sweeping warehouse floors.” At Fort Knox, Kentucky, black WACs
worked in the kitchen, a white officer saying, “Most of these girls are much better off now than they were in civilian life.”
At Fort Devens, the black women tried to work through the system, sending their complaints of discrimination up the chain of command to no avail. Alice E. Young, 23, had finished one year of nursing school while working as a student nurse in a
Washington, D.C. hospital. She’d joined the army due to promises she’d be trained as a nurses’ aide and worked at Lovell awaiting a space in the training program.
But one day the commander of the hospital Colonel Walter M. Crandall toured her ward and saw Alice taking a white soldier’s temperature. “No colored WACs,” he announced, would take temperatures in his hospital. “They are here to scrub and wash floors, wash dishes and do all the dirty work.”
Alice was demoted to hospital orderly, her hopes of going to med tech school dashed. She cleaned the hospital hallways and kitchen, washed dishes, cooked and served food and took out the garbage. Sixty percent of the black WACs at Lovell had similar duties.
They decided to strike. According to the New York Times, 96 black WACs initially refused orders to go to work due to discriminatory assignments. After several days, most eventually went back to work under threat of court martial for
insubordination, a death penalty offense in wartime.
But Alice and three others who walked away from their posts at the hospital did not return and were court martialed. “These women made this gesture of protest in hope that someday their descendants might enjoy fully the rights and liberties promised to Americans,”** their attorney said.
Major news sources like the New York Times and Time Magazine covered the strike and the women’s trial, as well as small town
newspapers like the Daily Sun in Lewiston, Maine, and African American newspapers across the country. When the army court convicted the four women and sentenced them to one year of hard labor with no pay and dishonorable discharge, the story received wide coverage.
Many Americans both white and black read about the unfairness the striking women had faced. They protested the harsh penalty by writing letters to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Secretary of War, Congress and editors of newspapers. Many called for punishment of Colonial Crandall, rather than the women.
The news stories and subsequent uproar by citizens made a difference. The War Department found a way to reverse the verdict on a technicality and reinstate Alice and the others to active duty.
The Army did not investigate Colonel Crandall’s behavior, but he was relieved of his hospital command and pressured to retire. In addition, the army changed policies at Lovell Hospital prohibiting black WACs from being assigned to menial jobs not done by white WACs.
The pervasiveness of our news media today allows us to be even better informed than Americans during WWII, but it requires diligence and critical thinking due to the massive amounts of information at our fingertips, and the phenomenon of “fake
news.”
Reporters Without Borders, an organization that tracks freedom of information, ranks the United States 45th out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index. We fall below a host of European countries and others around the
world including Ghana, South Korea, Uruguay and South Africa.
With the news media’s ever-increasing focus on the sensational and the obvious partisanship of news outlets, I’ve become more jaded and I don’t regret I’ve left the business. But librarians inspire me to keep faith with my ideals. They’re on the front lines championing freedom of information and teaching students critical skills to assess the news they see. They inspire us all to work within our own spheres of influence to defend our freedom of the press which is critical to democracy and a
powerful force for truth and justice.
Indebted to Amanda MacGregor at Teen Librarian Toolbox for inviting me to share my opinion. If you have two minutes, I'd love you forever if you'd jump over there and post a comment thanking her for running it.
Teen Librarian Toolbox also gave my book a favorable review saying, "Well-written and incredibly engaging,
with ample quotes from women involved in the 6888th and so many pictures, this book is highly recommended."
That kind of review makes it easy to get up in the morning. But good reviews don't build character. They don't foster compassion. And the next one I get might not prove so pleasant.
It's very hard to believe, when we're in the depths of a difficult place, that things will get better, that we'll get better. But I too, have seen this happen in the lives of people I know. Sharing our stories of resilience with each other helps give us perseverance and hope.
Until next week...
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To find out more about my books, how I help students, teachers, librarians and writers visit my website at www.MaryCronkFarrell.com.
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