Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” playing over and over in my head this morning, I’ve been reminded that today is also Women’s Equality Day, the day commemorating when some women were finally allowed to vote. That painful some—most women of color had to wait until the 1965 Voting Rights Act to be allowed to vote—plus Parton’s somehow-cheerful song of oppression urging me on, I want to lift up—and commemorate—our nation’s first labor organizers: mill girls. (Who’d called themselves operatives.) Yes, my child, before there were suffragettes there were young women, first in Rhode Island and then in Massachusetts, who’d organized strikes to protest longer hours with less pay. (Can you blame them?) Although in those earliest days of labor versus management, those plucky and determined young woman called their collective action turn-outs, not strikes. An ingenious strategy, it turned out. Because if the women working in just one room of a mill turned out, i.e. turned away from their power looms and spinning jennies and marched outside, the whole mill became inoperable! Brilliant.
Why, you may wonder, am I writing this bit o-distaff history today? (Besides wanting to acknowledge Dolly Parton.) Because stories like these are what I, unconsciously imagining my granddaughters as my audience, perhaps, am led to write about these days.
*That first turn-out in RI was in 1824. The first in Lowell was in 1836. The 10 hour day in Massachusetts began in 1874! Women largely led this initiative, repeatedly signing petitions, giving speeches, sending letters to the editor, begging the Massachusetts state legislature to intervene, etc., but since only men could vote, men were called upon to help, too.
Ityso important to remember and honor their courage and sacrifice.