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SPEAKER_03: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanaka. We're celebrating Pride Month with icons, supreme queens of queer culture. Some are household names, others a little more behind the scenes. All have defied social norms and influenced generations of people to be unapologetically themselves. Today we're visiting Brooklyn's waterfront during the Second World War. There aren't many accounts of Brooklyn's queer history in the early 20th century, but one unique story has survived. Let's talk about Anne Moses. World War II was underway, as men were being shipped off to fight the war abroad. A quieter, but no less important change was happening on the home front. At the time, women were generally limited to their domestic relationships. Women were limited to their domestic lives and excluded from the workforce. But as men were sent overseas, an industrial city like Brooklyn, New York, couldn't afford to lose workers. Suddenly, it was not only acceptable, but a smart business decision to hire women to remedy the labor shortage. In the summer of 1941, all government agencies were encouraged to hire women to fill vacancies. Shortly after, the Brooklyn Navy Yard had a plan for women to apply, and 20,000 women did. On October 6, 1942, the Todd Shipyard, a commercial shipyard in the coastal Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, put its first 12 women to work. Among them was Anne Moses. Anne was 34 years old at the time and had lived in Brooklyn her whole life. She came from a large family with seven sisters and eight brothers. Anne immigrated from Romania and worked as a tinsmith. Anne was the only child who showed any interest in her father's work and skills. He taught her how to solder, and she read his books and taught herself other metalworking techniques. As the story goes, when Anne was applying for the job at the Navy Yard, the women in the room were asked if anyone knew how to weld. Anne's hand shot up. Now, she didn't actually know how to weld, but she figured she would learn. She was hired on the spot. Anne worked for the next 100 days without a day off. During that time, she did learn how to weld and even made repairs to huge aircraft carriers. She worked long hours, not minding the sweat or dirt of the job. Working on the waterfront was far from utopic, but it offered working-class women sudden and surprising freedoms, especially for women like Anne, who was queer and unmarried. It created a space outside of the home to be with other women without the pressure to conform to typical feminine standards of the time. Most of what we know about Anne's life comes from a scrapbook she left behind. In almost all of the photos of Anne, she's looking directly at the camera with a huge, bright smile. She seems sporty and playful. There are photos of her fishing, playing basketball, and doing archery. In one, she's standing on top of a giant pile of chopped wood in a summer outfit, axe in hand. Some are posed. Others capture people in the act of reading, fighting, or swinging on a swing. Seen altogether, the photos leave the impression that she enjoyed keeping a record of joy and community throughout her life, especially during the years Anne worked at the Todd Shipyard. There are newspaper clippings announcing the cohort of women who first worked there, and later, the anniversary of their first year. There are even creative jingles pasted on the pages, like work songs that describe the days of these women. We make it on the dot, we rush out to the lot. It's dark as pitch, we don't know which. It's day or night we've got. Anne, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to work outdoors on a winter's day. There are also many photos of other butch women from a summer vacation in Spring Valley, New York. In one, Anne is by the river and kneeling over the lap of a woman who's apparently about to playfully spank her. In another, Anne is kneeling, seemingly proposing to the other woman. The book, When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan, places Anne's story and the photos of her life in context as another example in a long history of how the waterfront nurtured female relationships and the queer community. Anne worked at the Todd Shipyard until the end of the war. She lived at home with her mother until she was 54 years old as was typical for unmarried women to do. She later moved to Florida with a girlfriend. We don't know anything else beyond that. Her scrapbook, which was donated to the Center for Brooklyn History by Anne's nephew, Michael Levine, is one of the only traces left of this rich cultural pocket of Brooklyn history. All month, we're celebrating Pride with Icons. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow.
SPEAKER_05: Bye. Listen to Ear Witness on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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