The 1940s: Lifestyles and Social Trends: People in the News

American Decades | Date: 2001

THE 1940s: LIFESTYLES AND SOCIAL TRENDS: PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

On 28 February 1943 Carrie Chapman Catt, honorary president of the League of Women Voters, issued a statement opposing an Equal Rights Amendment before Congress.

On 11 April 1947 Stanley B. Cofall, director of liquor control for the state of Ohio, announced the abolishment of the rationing of liquor, in effect since May 1943.

In July 1949 Dr. Samuel J. Green, of Georgia, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan was interviewed for the Nation magazine. Responding to the question of why the KKK always wore disguises, Green replied that "So many people are prejudiced against the Klan these days."

In 1942 Mary Halleren entered the Officer Candidate School of the newly formed Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. A year later she commanded the first Women's Army Corps (WAC) unit sent overseas, and in 1945 she was appointed director of all women's overseas units. She became director of the WAC in 1946, and in 1948, when the WAC was officially integrated into the army, Halleren, by then a colonel, became the first woman to receive a U.S. Army commission.

In 1943, responding to public concerns over reports of immorality in the ranks of the Women's Army Corps, director of the WACs Oveta Culp Hobby announced that contraceptives would no longer be issued to women in the corps.

On 15 July 1941 Judge John S. McClelland of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company grocery store chain announced that the company would adopt the fiveday, forty-eight-hour workweek.

On 16 July 1941 two doctors, Morris J. Renner and Nathaniel Collins, and four assistants were arrested in New York City for operating what was termed a "wholesale abortion mill."

On 4 September 1949 black singer Paul Robeson gave a concert in Peekskill, New York. Because Robeson was widely criticized for his leftist politics, mobs of anti-Communists attacked concertgoers, leading to the arrests of six people. A grand jury refused to indict the attackers on the grounds that the concert abetted Communists—"the shock troops of a revolutionary force which is controlled by a foreign power."

On 11 April 1947 Jackie Robinson became the first black to appear in a major-league-baseball uniform when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the New York Yankees.

In June 1949 Mr. and Mrs. Clark Seabloom returned to their Tacoma, Washington, home to find it ransacked. The only thing missing was the cream skimmed from the tops of four bottles of milk.

In March 1947 British historian Arnold J. Toynbee delivered a series of sold-out lectures at Bryn Mawr College. Toynbee was in the midst of a triumphant tour celebrating his bestselling multivolume series A Study of History.

On 28 February 1943 Steve Vassilakos, a peanut vendor who occupied a corner outside the White House for thirty-eight years, died.

On 16 July 1941, at a meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Professor Carle C. Zimmerman called on Americans to have more children, preferably three or four, and at a younger age. At the same meeting Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed the call for more children. A later speaker, Lt. Col. Donald F. Currier, reported that only 34.8 percent of draftees passed the physical examination.

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