Part of a series of articles titled Home and Homelands Exhibition: Politics.
Article
Betty Hardison and the American Dream
Article written by Nicole Martin, PhD
National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front NHP, RORI 3623
Betty’s account is valuable for showing how women’s work on the WWII home front shaped her home life. Betty and her husband Don lived in Atchison Village, a housing complex close to the shipyards open to white upper-level and management workers. This experience played a pivotal role in allowing the Hardisons to achieve the mid-twentieth-century American Dream: owning a single-family, suburban home.2 Betty’s recollections hint at, but do not explicitly state, how her family’s success depended on government support that excluded non-white Americans.
WWII Migration & the Richmond Shipyards
Fueled by federal investment in shipbuilding, the demographic landscape of California’s East Bay changed dramatically during WWII. Thousands of workers took part in a westward exodus seeking defense jobs, including women and African Americans from the South. With 55 war industries, Richmond, California became a “boomtown.” Its population grew from under 24,000 to over 100,000 during the war, with the African American population growing from 270 to 10,000.3Six million American women entered the workforce during WWII. Many were known as “Rosie the Riveters” for working in non-traditional industrial jobs, although many worked in more traditional occupations, such as administrative support. At the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, women composed 27% of the workforce. They helped to build an unprecedented 747 ships during the war.4
Dorothea Lange, Shipyard Worker, ca. 1943 (A67.137.42073.8), gift of Paul S. Taylor. The Dorothea Lange Collection©, Oakland Museum of California.
Atchison Village & The Housing Crisis
After marrying, Betty and Don moved into 164 Collins Street, a one-bedroom unit of a four-plex in the new planned government worker housing, Atchison Village. The complex included winding streets, spacious yards, a community center, and a park. Betty describes a life restricted by war: living on tight rations, fixing bag lunches, piecing together inexpensive mismatched furniture, and weekends filled with laundry. However, her overall tone is positive, as she emphasizes the formation of a tight-knit community. When she and Don failed to make a productive victory garden, their neighbors shared their “super garden” with them. They joined a church and a group of young couples called “the Mariners” that, along with close neighbors, met regularly for dinner get-togethers of tuna and chicken casseroles.6
Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress
By 1943, the federal government had built 21,000 public housing units that housed 60% of Richmond’s population, making it the largest federal housing program in the nation. Barrack-type buildings and single-sex dormitories were the most common type of government housing. Betty noted that many “poor minorities” started coming to Richmond from the deep South in early 1944. What she did not mention was that the well-designed Atchison Village only permitted white workers. In housing projects that did allow African Americans, the Richmond Housing Authority assigned Black residents to separate buildings and forbade any integrated activities.9
The American Dream Realized
After struggling to have children, Betty and Don had their first child in late 1945. Betty concludes her account on a final triumphant note: “[W]e remained in our Atchison Village apartment until 1948, when we purchased our first home.”10 They bought a single-family, suburban home in Richmond, fulfilling the postwar American dream of homeownership. In the Cold War that followed, the home with a nuclear family at its center became the symbol of democratic abundance.11The dream Betty and her family achieved was supported by federal subsidies that excluded non-white families. By 1950, almost 80% of Richmond’s Black population lived in government funded war housing designated as temporary and slated for demolition. In contrast, all-white developments, such as Atchison, had been conceived of as permanent from the start. At the same time, the federal government approved bank loans for the creation of a new Richmond suburb, Rollingwood, stipulating that none of the 700 homes be sold to African Americans.12 Richmond suburbs reflected the segregation found in federally built, mass-produced white suburbs across the nation after WWII.13
Betty and other middle-class women like her certainly faced challenges as working women during the war. Her account reveals how she persevered, building community along the way. However, her family’s ability to buy a single-family, suburban home at the end of the war was greatly aided by the advantages she experienced because of her race. By contrast, during the war African Americans were faced with racial discrimination and struggled to find places to live or faced the hardship of temporary war housing. Significantly, African Americans continued to experience restrictive racial covenants, policies, and strategies following the war that limited their ability to achieve the American Dream and call Richmond home.
Read Betty Hardison's Full Account
Shipyard 3, Richmond, California
Don and I met while we were both working for the Navy at Mare Island in Vallejo, California. After our wedding on June 14, 1942, in Vallejo, we enjoyed a brief few days of honeymoon around Tahoe, made possible by the family sharing gas and tire rations with us. We arrived at our new apartment, located in Atchison Village, in Richmond. Our new address was 164 Collins Street, a south-end unit of a four-plex building. It was a one-bedroom, living room and kitchen unit at street level. We were among the first to move in, and the front yard was not landscaped yet. Soon a small lawn appeared, and it still looks the same today ... . We had to purchase a few pieces of inexpensive furniture, mainly a sofa-bed and chair, and small table and chairs. Otherwise, our family helped provide odd pieces.
To welcome us at the other end of the building were Bob and Bobbie Trouton. Bob was a Standard Oil employee, and immediately next door to us (on the north) was a Richmond fireman, and his wife. It was serendipity that the Troutons should be our neighbors, because they were married a week before, and Don had known them when he boarded at the home of Bobbie Trouton's mother in Berkeley, and none of us had a clue where the other was going to be living.
Don, a Naval Architect, had worked for Kaiser since March of the same year, being at Yard I, and then transferring to the new Shipyard 3. I started work at Shipyard 3, assigned to the drafting room, located in the mold loft, above the Plate Shop. Don was head of the Production Drafting Department, and while I was in the same department as Don's, I was assigned as secretary to Stan Smith, an engineer. We were classified as exempt employees, which meant that we were cleared through the gate, with only our identification (no time card). After working there for about six months, I was advised that I would have to change positions because husband and wife were not allowed to work in the same department. We certainly didn't conceal this, and it was disappointing because we were all a great team. Even years later, Stan Smith was still upset because he lost a good secretary.
So, about the beginning of 1943, I was transferred to the Housing Office, located in a small building, inside the gate, shared with the First Aid Department. Our entrance was on the north side of the building. There were four people in the office: my boss was Karl Brackett, and his assistant was Don Sebastian. Both gentlemen had very small, separate glassed-in offices, as I recall. I took dictation from both, as well as clerical work pertaining to applications for housing of workers at Yard 3. Correspondence was often necessary for different situations, and inquiries. Another person working in the same department doing clerical work was Katharine Johnston. Applicants entered into a small entryway, waited turn, and were serviced at a raised counter, separating the entry and our workspace. I can't recall, but vaguely a sliding window through which we assisted the applicants. Our hours were 8:00 a.m. to 5;00 p.m. generally, and I usually just ate my bag lunch at my desk.
Those in need of housing would come in and apply, filling out the forms that stated their needs-number and ages in the family, etc. It was our job to accept the applications, assist in filling them out if necessary, and after processing we would forward the requests to the main federal housing office in uptown Richmond, where applications were considered along with Shipyards I, 2 and 4. Subsequently, workers would check back in from time to time to see when or if they had yet been assigned an apartment. In many cases it would take weeks before there could be assignments. Generally, people tried to be understanding of the waiting process, but it wasn't easy, as the need was so great. Many workers wanted to bring their families, many of whom had already arrived, and initially many were from rural farm communities in the mid-west, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas. Then in early ' 44, as I recall, families from Kentucky, Tennessee, and the deep South started coming, the majority of whom were poor minorities. In the earliest days, before the thousands of apartments being constructed by Kaiser and the Maritime Commission were available, people were having to double up with accommodations. In several cases, spare rooms in private homes were offered. We were told that different shifts took turns with the accommodations, and many even slept in movie theaters, so we knew the urgency. On a few occasions I needed to go outside the gate to deliver documents to the Administrator's Office. As an added note, many years after the end of the war, we became close friends of Dair and Lillian Tandy. I then discovered that the secretary I dealt with in Clay Bedford's Office was Lillian Tandy. (We continued to test our skills of shorthand with each other for years,)
Our weekdays included fixing bag lunches, (I can't remember what our sandwiches were-possibly spam) and driving to work together in our neat little Studebaker Champion. I wore regular clothes-usually a blouse, sweater and skirt, and was not required to wear a hard hat. My husband, Don, would come by my office and we'd walk out the gate to the parking lot and drive home. I did not drive then. We'd have a quick supper, and he would often return to the "swing shift" in the drafting room. Our meals were simple because of rationing of certain foods, mainly meats, and I was a bride learning the art of cooking.
Our weekends were catching up with laundry-we had found an ad in the newspaper for a washing machine, which turned out to be a real antique, but did the job, which was a relief from the old-fashioned washboard, which I actually used for a while. Clothes lines were stretched out in the unfinished back yards .... We tried a Victory Garden, but soon found that we couldn't give it much care, and our southerly neighbor, Emil Reiswig, a Shipfitter, had a super garden that was producing more than his family could handle, so we benefited greatly from his sharing .... Another neighbor in back of us was Jim McCloud, who ultimately became Superintendent of Outfitting, tried a small garden, but I think Emil supplied Jim and his wife as well ... Don often worked on Saturdays, so I usually walked up Chanslor, and cut over to MacDonald Avenue around 8th Street to do the grocery shopping. My favorite grocer, as I recall, was a delightful Greek fellow who made shopping there easy and enjoyable.
We joined the First Presbyterian Church, on 12th Street, for Sunday morning services. Through our church affiliation, we joined an interesting group, The Mariners, made up of young couples throughout the Richmond Area. We met regularly, like once a month, but became particularly close to a few couples, as well as near neighbors, with whom we exchanged dinner get-togethers. In addition to the Troutons, we were also close to the Corbins and LeTourneaus, who lived across our street. We remained good friends throughout our lives, with lots of good memories, and watched children being added. Our dinner get-togethers were usually casseroles, like tuna or chicken. And we exchanged lots of recipes. Other couples from throughout the city were the Richard Plates, the Meredith Morgans, Ed Lehmans, and others.
On rare occasions my parents, Lillian and Harry Decker, who lived in Vallejo, and my younger brother, Bud, who was in the Navy Reserve, visited us. We would sometimes use our gas rations to visit mom and dad. Other family members visited as well, but people didn't do much traveling or extended visits. It was largely work, and our church connections with friends-not many movies. Actually, the movies were also a place for many to sleep until they received apartments.
One very memorable night, or early morning hour, a tremendous explosion awakened us. We didn't know whether we were being invaded, or what, but learned the next day of the tragic explosion at Port Chicago that had sadly killed so many.
Our near neighbor, the Troutons, had their first child, John, while living there, and moved to larger quarters immediately after the war. During that period, Don and I experienced a couple of miscarriages, which saddened us, and we became acquainted with the prominent local doctor, Dr. Fraser. Then toward the end of the war I became pregnant, staying with my job almost until the end, around July 1945. Our first child, Stephen, was born in November, and we remained in our Atchison Village apartment until 1948, when we purchased our first home at 605 - 34th St., Richmond.
End of that chapter
Sent to Jan on April 10, 2009
Don and I met while we were both working for the Navy at Mare Island in Vallejo, California. After our wedding on June 14, 1942, in Vallejo, we enjoyed a brief few days of honeymoon around Tahoe, made possible by the family sharing gas and tire rations with us. We arrived at our new apartment, located in Atchison Village, in Richmond. Our new address was 164 Collins Street, a south-end unit of a four-plex building. It was a one-bedroom, living room and kitchen unit at street level. We were among the first to move in, and the front yard was not landscaped yet. Soon a small lawn appeared, and it still looks the same today ... . We had to purchase a few pieces of inexpensive furniture, mainly a sofa-bed and chair, and small table and chairs. Otherwise, our family helped provide odd pieces.
To welcome us at the other end of the building were Bob and Bobbie Trouton. Bob was a Standard Oil employee, and immediately next door to us (on the north) was a Richmond fireman, and his wife. It was serendipity that the Troutons should be our neighbors, because they were married a week before, and Don had known them when he boarded at the home of Bobbie Trouton's mother in Berkeley, and none of us had a clue where the other was going to be living.
Don, a Naval Architect, had worked for Kaiser since March of the same year, being at Yard I, and then transferring to the new Shipyard 3. I started work at Shipyard 3, assigned to the drafting room, located in the mold loft, above the Plate Shop. Don was head of the Production Drafting Department, and while I was in the same department as Don's, I was assigned as secretary to Stan Smith, an engineer. We were classified as exempt employees, which meant that we were cleared through the gate, with only our identification (no time card). After working there for about six months, I was advised that I would have to change positions because husband and wife were not allowed to work in the same department. We certainly didn't conceal this, and it was disappointing because we were all a great team. Even years later, Stan Smith was still upset because he lost a good secretary.
So, about the beginning of 1943, I was transferred to the Housing Office, located in a small building, inside the gate, shared with the First Aid Department. Our entrance was on the north side of the building. There were four people in the office: my boss was Karl Brackett, and his assistant was Don Sebastian. Both gentlemen had very small, separate glassed-in offices, as I recall. I took dictation from both, as well as clerical work pertaining to applications for housing of workers at Yard 3. Correspondence was often necessary for different situations, and inquiries. Another person working in the same department doing clerical work was Katharine Johnston. Applicants entered into a small entryway, waited turn, and were serviced at a raised counter, separating the entry and our workspace. I can't recall, but vaguely a sliding window through which we assisted the applicants. Our hours were 8:00 a.m. to 5;00 p.m. generally, and I usually just ate my bag lunch at my desk.
Those in need of housing would come in and apply, filling out the forms that stated their needs-number and ages in the family, etc. It was our job to accept the applications, assist in filling them out if necessary, and after processing we would forward the requests to the main federal housing office in uptown Richmond, where applications were considered along with Shipyards I, 2 and 4. Subsequently, workers would check back in from time to time to see when or if they had yet been assigned an apartment. In many cases it would take weeks before there could be assignments. Generally, people tried to be understanding of the waiting process, but it wasn't easy, as the need was so great. Many workers wanted to bring their families, many of whom had already arrived, and initially many were from rural farm communities in the mid-west, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas. Then in early ' 44, as I recall, families from Kentucky, Tennessee, and the deep South started coming, the majority of whom were poor minorities. In the earliest days, before the thousands of apartments being constructed by Kaiser and the Maritime Commission were available, people were having to double up with accommodations. In several cases, spare rooms in private homes were offered. We were told that different shifts took turns with the accommodations, and many even slept in movie theaters, so we knew the urgency. On a few occasions I needed to go outside the gate to deliver documents to the Administrator's Office. As an added note, many years after the end of the war, we became close friends of Dair and Lillian Tandy. I then discovered that the secretary I dealt with in Clay Bedford's Office was Lillian Tandy. (We continued to test our skills of shorthand with each other for years,)
Our weekdays included fixing bag lunches, (I can't remember what our sandwiches were-possibly spam) and driving to work together in our neat little Studebaker Champion. I wore regular clothes-usually a blouse, sweater and skirt, and was not required to wear a hard hat. My husband, Don, would come by my office and we'd walk out the gate to the parking lot and drive home. I did not drive then. We'd have a quick supper, and he would often return to the "swing shift" in the drafting room. Our meals were simple because of rationing of certain foods, mainly meats, and I was a bride learning the art of cooking.
Our weekends were catching up with laundry-we had found an ad in the newspaper for a washing machine, which turned out to be a real antique, but did the job, which was a relief from the old-fashioned washboard, which I actually used for a while. Clothes lines were stretched out in the unfinished back yards .... We tried a Victory Garden, but soon found that we couldn't give it much care, and our southerly neighbor, Emil Reiswig, a Shipfitter, had a super garden that was producing more than his family could handle, so we benefited greatly from his sharing .... Another neighbor in back of us was Jim McCloud, who ultimately became Superintendent of Outfitting, tried a small garden, but I think Emil supplied Jim and his wife as well ... Don often worked on Saturdays, so I usually walked up Chanslor, and cut over to MacDonald Avenue around 8th Street to do the grocery shopping. My favorite grocer, as I recall, was a delightful Greek fellow who made shopping there easy and enjoyable.
We joined the First Presbyterian Church, on 12th Street, for Sunday morning services. Through our church affiliation, we joined an interesting group, The Mariners, made up of young couples throughout the Richmond Area. We met regularly, like once a month, but became particularly close to a few couples, as well as near neighbors, with whom we exchanged dinner get-togethers. In addition to the Troutons, we were also close to the Corbins and LeTourneaus, who lived across our street. We remained good friends throughout our lives, with lots of good memories, and watched children being added. Our dinner get-togethers were usually casseroles, like tuna or chicken. And we exchanged lots of recipes. Other couples from throughout the city were the Richard Plates, the Meredith Morgans, Ed Lehmans, and others.
On rare occasions my parents, Lillian and Harry Decker, who lived in Vallejo, and my younger brother, Bud, who was in the Navy Reserve, visited us. We would sometimes use our gas rations to visit mom and dad. Other family members visited as well, but people didn't do much traveling or extended visits. It was largely work, and our church connections with friends-not many movies. Actually, the movies were also a place for many to sleep until they received apartments.
One very memorable night, or early morning hour, a tremendous explosion awakened us. We didn't know whether we were being invaded, or what, but learned the next day of the tragic explosion at Port Chicago that had sadly killed so many.
Our near neighbor, the Troutons, had their first child, John, while living there, and moved to larger quarters immediately after the war. During that period, Don and I experienced a couple of miscarriages, which saddened us, and we became acquainted with the prominent local doctor, Dr. Fraser. Then toward the end of the war I became pregnant, staying with my job almost until the end, around July 1945. Our first child, Stephen, was born in November, and we remained in our Atchison Village apartment until 1948, when we purchased our first home at 605 - 34th St., Richmond.
End of that chapter
Sent to Jan on April 10, 2009
1 Betty Hardison, “Betty Hardison’s Story, World War II, Shipyard 3, Richmond, California,” April 10, 2009, National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front NHP, RORI 3623.
2 For more on the mid-century American Dream, see Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, 20th Anniversary edition (New York: Basic Books, 2008), especially 153-73.
3 “The WWII Home Front,” National Park Service. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1996), 50-51.
4 Donna Graves, “Tending the Homefront: The Many Roles of Women in the San Francisco Bay Area During World War II,” National Park Service.
5 Hardison, “Betty Hardison’s Story.”
6 Ibid.
7 “Living on the Home Front,” Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, National Park Service. Hardison, “Betty Hardison’s Story.”
8 Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017), 35.. Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 81.
9 “Living on the Home Front.” Hardison, “Betty Hardison’s Story.” Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 87.
10 Hardison, “Betty Hardison’s Story.” Rothstein, The Color of Law, 35.
11 May, Homeward Bound, 153. For how the U.S. exported the American concept of homeownership as pillars of democracy and capitalism around the world, see Nancy H. Kwak, A World of Homeowners: American Power and the Politics of Housing Aid (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
12 Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 9. Rothstein, The Color of Law, 36.
13 For further reading on how federal policies segregated U.S. housing, see Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race & Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996; Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) .
Last updated: June 11, 2024