Second grader LaVaun Smith heard a great uproar outside her school in southeast Kansas. She and the other students rushed to the door of their country school house to see the commotion.
A rowdy parade of women filled the road beating on dish pans, wash pans and metal buckets with sticks and kitchen utensils.
Kansas Governor Henry Allen dispatched four companies of the Kansas National Guard, including a machine gun division to get the women back to their kitchens. You'll be amazed at what happened.
Gertrude Tompkins, a shy, awkward girl who stuttered, grew up to be one of a handful of U.S. women test pilots during WWII. Then she disappeared.
Remember the dial painters? In the roaring twenties and 1930s they painted faces on wrist watches, a job to envy. Some young women earned more than three times the average factory worker; some even earned more than their fathers.
"The first thing we asked was, 'Does this stuff hurt you?” And they said, 'No.' The company said that it wasn’t dangerous, that we didn’t need to be afraid."
Catherine Donohue and co-workers died of that "stuff."
