ABSTRACT
After (Mrs.) Lillian M. Potts unsuccessfully applied for an operator's job at the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company in March 1944, she contacted the San Jose chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP then filed a complaint on her behalf with the regional branch of the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC). Her conversation with Pacific Bell's personnel official illuminates the ways that race provided the key term through which citizenship and national identity remained differentially defined even during World War II, a conflict fought for democracy and against racial supremacy. And race was gendered, with exclusions and stereotypes derived from conceptions of black and white womanhood and manhood. “When the application called for nationality,” Potts explained, “she said, ‘just American won't do, you'll have to state race.’ I said Negro. ‘Negro![’] the lady exclaimed, then added, ‘Well, I am sorry but we don't have any vacancies just now.’ “ But Potts “noticed they were hiring girls then, but not my color of skin.” 1 Lillian Potts's experience was common. She found white-collar work in the private sector closed to a black woman. But she did not merely face discrimination; she sought restitution, turning to the state—by way of a race-advancement organization—to receive “the right to work” 2 denied by combinations of employers, workers, and trade unions.
