Meet Joe Copper : masculinity and race on Montana's World War II home front / Matthew L. Basso.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Basso, Matthew.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Copper miners--Montana--Social conditions.

Copper miners.

World War, 1939-1945.

Montana--Race relations.

Montana.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (375 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"I realize that I am a soldier of production whose duties are as important in this war as those of the man behind the gun." So began the pledge that many home front men took at the outset of World War II when they went to work in the factories, fields, and mines while their compatriots fought in the battlefields of Europe and on the bloody beaches of the Pacific. The male experience of working and living in wartime America is rarely examined, but the story of men like these provides a crucial counter-narrative to the national story of Rosie the Riveter and GI Joe that dominates scholarly and popular discussions of World War II. In Meet Joe Copper, Matthew L. Basso describes the formation of a powerful, white, working-class masculine ideology in the decades prior to the war, and shows how it thrived-on the job, in the community, and through union politics. Basso recalls for us the practices and beliefs of the first- and second-generation immigrant copper workers of Montana while advancing the historical conversation on gender, class, and the formation of a white ethnic racial identity. Meet Joe Copper provides a context for our ideas of postwar masculinity and whiteness and finally returns the men of the home front to our reckoning of the Greatest Generation and the New Deal era.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. GI Joe and Rosie the Riveter, Meet Joe Copper!

ONE. Butte: "Only White Men and Dagoes"

TWO. Black Eagle: Immigrants' Bond

THREE. Anaconda: "Husky Smeltermen" and "Company Boys"

FOUR. Redrafting Masculinity: Breadwinners, Shirkers, or "Soldiers of Production"

FIVE. The Emerging Labor Shortage: Independent Masculinity, Patriotic Demands, and the Threat of New Workers

SIX. Butte, 1942: White Men, Black Soldier-Miners, and the Limits of Popular Front Interracialism

SEVEN. Black Eagle, 1943: Home Front Servicemen, Women Workers, and the Maintenance of Immigrant Masculinity

EIGHT. Anaconda, 1944: White Women, Men of Color, and Cross-Class White Male Solidarity

CONCLUSION. The Man in the Blue-Collar Shirt: The Working Class and Postwar Masculinity

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226044194

022604419X

9780226044224

022604422X

OCLC:

847950112