Who has the right to call a place home? Who gets to decide? Building a home is personal, but it also political. This thread contains stories of belonging and exclusion. At the heart of each story is a woman or group working, organizing, or fighting for their homes and homelands. Most of them fought for full inclusion in American society despite systemic challenges and racial injustices. Some fought for an autonomous homeland. The written word dominates – all pleas for justice.
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Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park
Article 1: Betty Hardison and the American Dream
Betty Hardison worked at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California during World War II, helping workers find housing. Living in the all-white government housing development, Atchison Village, Betty forged lifelong connections and community with other young couples. These experiences helped her family achieve the postwar American Dream of suburban home ownership, a dream made possible by government subsidies and racial exclusion. Read more
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Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
Article 2: Nancy Gilliland Firsthand Account and Eugene Coffee Jr. Gravesite
The explosion at Port Chicago Naval Magazine claimed the lives of hundreds of young African American sailors who worked under segregated and unsafe conditions. It had a deep impact on the local civilian community, the sailors’ families, and U.S. military alike. For Nancy Gilliland, it was a frightening night she never forgot. For Robert Harris, whose uncle Eugene Coffee, Jr. died in the explosion, finding out the truth about his uncle’s death has been a homecoming long in the Read more
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Honouliuli National Historic Site
Article 3: Haruko Takahashi
Haruko Takahashi was a Shintō priestess who spent part of World War II imprisoned at Honouliuli Internment Camp on O’ahu, Hawai’i. She died on December 24, 1972, and her life is still celebrated every year in a memorial service at the Konko Mission. Read more
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Death Valley National Park
Article 4: Timbisha Shoshone Demonstration
National parks are often thought of as America’s best idea: to preserve uninhabited, pristine wilderness. This 1996 Timbisha Shoshone demonstration belies this vision. Death Valley National Park sits on their homeland. Decades before the park was created, women elders waged a campaign against an NPS eviction policy and demanded their homeland restored, forcing us to confront that America’s “best idea” was only possible by taking the ancestral homelands of Native Americans. Read more
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Wing Luke Museum Affiliated Area
Article 5: Immigration Interview of Ou Shee Eng
The immigration interview of Ou Shee Eng provides an intimate window into the exclusionary governmental practices that Asian immigrant women experienced. Despite being treated poorly at the border, Ou Shee created a welcoming home within a thriving Chinese immigrant community in Seattle’s East Kong Yick building. Today, this building houses the Wing Luke Museum. Read more
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César E. Chávez National Monument
Article 6: Fence around Chávez Home
Visitors to César E. Chávez National Monument might be surprised to see the Chávez home surrounded by a chain-link fence. It was erected after federal agents uncovered a plot to assassinate the famous labor union organizer. For Helen Chávez, the fence was an example of how home and union life merged. She worked ceaselessly to support both family and union, understanding that violence could follow them home at any time Read more
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Minidoka National Historic Site
Article 7: Memo to the Incarcerated Women of Minidoka
During WWII, a group of Japanese American women incarcerated at Minidoka swayed a labor dispute in favor of striking workers. They were among 112,000 Japanese Americans who were removed from their homes and unconstitutionally confined by the government. They fought to make living conditions more bearable for their families. Their efforts to make a temporary “home” reveal the depths of Japanese American women’s courage in the face of injustice. Read more