- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - This is Remember Them, I’m Steve Adubato.

With my co-anchor, our executive producer Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui, over my left shoulder, that is Rosie the Riveter, who was whom during war time, World War II.

- Well, what she was, was a cultural icon to American women during that time to enter the workforce, to help the situation that was, the men were all fighting and there were many jobs left unattended and women were called into the workforce and they stepped up.

And I get to speak up next with Gregory Cooke, who created a documentary called "Invisible Warriors," and what he does is not just look at Rosie the Riveter, how you see her in that iconic poster, right?

A white woman in America, but he looks at the African American women who really rose to the occasion, has tons of interviews with the real Rosie the Riveters, a lot of them from New Jersey, because New Jersey had a huge manufacturing hub, especially in North Jersey, and they stepped up and they stepped in and they deserve recognition.

Gregory Cooke does that with his documentary and we're doing it here on "Remember Them."

- Hey Jacqui, but this Rosie the Riveter was actually Irene Stein Klalo, is that her last name?

- Yeah, they said she was the original inspiration for Rosie the Riveter.

- But that's not what she looked like.

- No, and then the poster evolved a few times.

There's a lot of iterations of the poster.

But- - Really?

- At the end of the day, Rosie the Riveter just was a symbol.

And that symbol needed to, and should include the African American community as well.

- Absolutely, so check out Jacqui's interview with Gregory Cooke, as we remember, not just Rosie the Riveter, but the millions of Rosies the Riveter who were much more diverse and made a difference as men, very sexist society at the time, as men went off to war and women at home kept things humming and moving forward.

We'd never would've been able to do that without those very strong women.

Check it out.

(uplifting music) - Dramatic Music - (Woman’s voice) Working at the navy yard made me feel patriotic that I did something to help the cause.

We were doing something to help the boys, and it just made you feel special.

- I'm so pleased to now be joined by Mr.

Gregory Cooke, who is a historian and director of the incredible documentary called "Invisible Warriors: African American Women in World War II."

It's so great to have you with us.

- Thank you so much.

I'm really honored and pleased to be here with you today.

- So when we, most of us hear, Rosie the Riveter, it's really a symbol, an icon of women during World War II when all the men were all fighting and a calling for them to jump into the jobs that needed them, 'cause the men weren't there to do them, a lot of factory jobs especially.

But the iconic poster that we all know was not representative of over the 600,000 African American women who jumped in and, you know, stepped up to the plate to jump into those jobs and make sure things were still running here, back at home.

Tell us what motivated you to want to create this documentary to honor, and speak with some of the real Rosie the Riveters.

- Okay, well, first and foremost, I hope you can see this, this is my mom.

- Ah, beautiful!

- Ethel Rebecca Becky Jones Cooke.

And when I was a little boy, three or four years old, mom was a stay, she was a stay at home mom.

And she told me this story about how when she was 18 years old, she rode on her suitcase, on her suitcase from Norfolk, Virginia to Washington D.C.

to get her very first job as a clerk typist.

And you know, the only reason I remember the job was because of the train ride.

But later on when I started this project, I realized that thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of women of all stripes did what my mother did, but were never recognized or never included in the Rosie discussion.

And so from my perspective, any woman who helped with the war effort was a Rosie, And there were hundreds of thousands of women who came to Washington DC like my mother, to help keep the federal government running.

But the fact that these women stepped up and took men's jobs, or what were traditionally men's jobs was essentially to... necessary to win the war.

And I'm so glad that 80, 85 years later, they're just now getting some recognition for what they did.

And I'd like to also add that these women did exemplary jobs and in many cases the anecdotal evidence suggests they were much better workers than the men were.

- (laughs) I'm sure that's correct.

I won't argue with you on that one.

- Yeah.

- Let's talk about New Jersey specifically and New Jersey's role during World War II and those factory jobs.

Can you tell us about one of the New Jersey, Rosie the Riveter African American women that you learned about and spoke to for this documentary?

- Yes, former Camden, New Jersey Mayor, Mrs.

Gwendolyn Faison was a Rosie the Riveter.

In 1942, she came to New Jersey.

She had tried to enlist in the military and they told her that they would not accept her because she was Black.

And she told me she remembered she had relatives in Camden, New Jersey.

She came up to Camden and applied at RCA.

Within about two weeks she was called to work.

And so Mrs.

Faison made electronic parts for the U.S.

Navy.

And she told me at the time she had no, she had no idea what she was actually making, she was just doing the job.

And so that's what she did.

And she said fundamentally it changed her life.

And what was interesting about her position was, she was very good in math.

And so she was made a supervisor, although she did not have the title, she did not get more pay, but she had the responsibility of the supervisor, because she was good in math.

And she was berated one time, I won't repeat what her boss told me, but she was berated one time, you know, for asking her boss a question.

And she confided in me that, although she considered herself to be a brave woman, coming from the Jim Crow South, she felt very insecure about things.

And she said every time that she wanted to do something, she'd go and ask her boss, "Is this the right way?"

"Am I doing it correctly?"

And she said one day he finally told her, he said, "I hired you, I gave you this job because I knew you could do it."

And he called her a few choice words and she said she felt like punching him in the face, But she said that wasn't the cool thing to do, but she later said it was the best experience of her life, because she grew up in one minute.

- Wow, and hearing from so many of these women, unfortunately so many have passed away, but you really got to speak with so many of them.

What were some of the things that a lot of them said that really shook you to your core and helped you understand what they were going through during that time?

- Yeah, well, you gotta understand that according to the 1940 census, more than 80% of all Black women who were employed were either sharecroppers or domestics, which basically low-paying, dead-end jobs.

And so when the war comes, it gives them an opportunity that they had never even, you know, really dreamed about having.

And so, they took these opportunities, but they had that double stigma of race and gender.

And they were often, most Black women got their jobs in 1944, the last four years of the war, so they were actually the last hired and first fired after the war.

There was also a lot of racial animus toward them.

Many white women across the country in various factories and shipyards, et cetera, did not want to work with them, did not want to share toilet facilities with them.

And so, in several locations, there were major strikes and perhaps the most notorious one was that Western Electric in Baltimore, Maryland.

It got so bad that President Franklin Roosevelt had to send the army in into Baltimore to keep peace.

But in North Jersey, we're looking at Kearny, New Jersey, Western Electric, the late actress Ruby Dee worked there, putting together electronic components.

And I recently met a woman, she since transitioned, but she did not know she was a Rosie.

That's the big tragedy of all this, these Black- - Didn't even realize that they were Rosie.

- Right, right.

They did not realize that they had done something historically significant.

And after I gave them a brief history lesson and talked them into it, they were all on board.

But this one woman, her name was Anya Sadler, and she did not know she was a Rosie.

She was 101 when I met her, she started crying and thanking me profusely.

Then she said that she finally had something to leave her family, and she was 101 years old.

- I mean, that's so moving and you're doing so much work to bring these real Rosie the Riveters, these African American women from all over our country, give them a name, not just Rosies, right?

Give their real names and the contributions that they made.

What, through your research and speaking with so many great women, what is the most important thing we should remember about the real Rosie the Riveters, but the African American Rosie the Riveters.

- That it was a time of great challenge, great obstacles, great patriotism, and it was a game changing and life changing experience for them.

And this was, I think for all of the women, regardless of their ethnic or racial stripe, that that slogan, "We can do it!"

Really resonated, because it gave so many of these women confidence that they could go on and do unheralded things after the war that heretofore had been the exclusive domain of men.

And so I think that's one of the biggest legacies of the Rosies, is that, it just gave them the ability, the confidence within themselves, that they could go on and do things.

And so my view is all women today, all American women today, women like yourself, women who are in professions, whatever they are, police officers, bus drivers, you are all standing on their shoulders because they were the first.

- Yeah, exactly.

And your documentary just puts it into perspective so beautifully.

So thank you so much for joining us today so we can hear a little bit more about the history of Rosies all over the country.

And check out Mr.

Cooke's documentary "Invisible Warriors."

Thank you so much for joining us!

- Thank you.

Bye-bye.

- Bye-bye.

We'll be right back after this.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- This is Remember Them.

I'm Steve Adubato with my co-anchor, our executive producer, Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui, over my left shoulder is an interesting and important book.

It's called "The Education of Betsy Stockton, an Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom."

You interview Greg Nobles, the author of this book, "All About Betsy Stockton."

Why do we remember Betsy?

- She's one of those folks that have been lost in history essentially.

Gregory Nobles took interest in her after learning about her in Princeton, being in Princeton, as she had spent a lot of her life in Princeton.

And he went on a search, a quest to learn more about this person who went from slavery to being a really important educator to young people.

And we get to hear more about what that quest looked like.

It took many, many years of digging and going through archives and trying to find all the pieces to fit the puzzle together.

So we hear from him and Steve, I was just in Princeton, you know, I live right up the road from there and I saw a plaque on the campus and the plaque says it's called the Betsy Stockton Garden.

And it says, with courage, Betsy Stockton nurtured many lives.

It is fitting she be remembered in a place of beauty and reflection for both town and gown.

Town and gown being Princeton in the center of Princeton University, the campus there.

So I loved speaking with Gregory, learning more about this important person in American history.

Someone we should and will remember.

- And P.S., as we go to this interview that Jacqui did another great interview from Jacqui with Greg Nobles.

Remember, there's a section of Princeton back in the day where African Americans lived.

Betsy Stockton was a slave to the president of Princeton University, the eighth president, the Reverend Dr.

Ashbel Green.

Princeton is a lot more than a beautiful university, Ivy, iconic.

It's got an interesting and checkered past in some ways.

And the story about Betsy Stockton helps tell the story.

Jacqui's interview, check it out.

(gentle music) - Joining us now is Gregory Nobles, the author of this great book called "The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom."

It is so good to have you with us Professor Nobles.

- It's wonderful to be here.

I really appreciate it very, very much.

- So, Betsey Stockton is unfortunately not a name that many people know about, but should know about, which is why you wrote the book and why we are doing this Remember Them on her.

You said she has been lost in history, but you wanted to bring her back to life.

Talk about why and how you got interested in her and her story.

- Well, I got interested in her, partly, I have to thank my wife for that a little bit.

In fact, more than a little bit.

We visit Princeton quite a bit, and one day, my wife was on the Princeton campus sitting on the bench dedicated to Richard Stockton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, a very prominent figure in Princeton and a very prominent slaveholder.

And then as my wife went down the street, down Witherspoon Street, she came to the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church and there was a plaque to Betsey Stockton.

And my wife said, "Stockton, Stockton, maybe there's some kind of connection there."

And she said to me, "Maybe you should write something.

This might be like a good op-ed piece."

Well, I started looking into it and it became much more than an op-ed piece, it became a book.

And it was a wonderful exercise, a very enjoyable exercise, and very challenging in the research.

But I'm pleased with the book, and I'm certainly doing what I can to give Betsey Stockton a more prominent place in history.

I will say, by the way, that she's always had a place in the memory of the Princeton Black community, but the wider community, the white community and Americans in general haven't heard much about her, and I thought they should.

- Give us an overview of her life for us and how she was able to go from being enslaved under Reverend Ashbel Green, who was the eighth president of Princeton University, to then being on her own and becoming really an educator for so many.

- Well, very briefly, she was born, we think, in 1798.

Slaveholders were not always very good about keeping exact records about the people born into their households.

But 1798, she's given as a young child, probably around age two, three, or four, to enter the household of Ashbel Green, whose wife was one of the Stocktons, Elizabeth Stockton.

She lives with Green while he's pastor in Philadelphia at Second Presbyterian Church, which is a very, very important church in Philadelphia at the time.

He was one of the chaplains to the Continental Congress, a very significant figure.

And then, of course, he becomes president of Princeton from 1812 to 1822.

Somewhere in there, and I think actually before 1810, he emancipates Betsey from slavery, but still keeps her in some kind of servitude.

She's a young girl, after all, she's in her early teens.

He doesn't completely set her free, and she remains in a kind of indentured to him.

And in fact, in 1813, he sells three years of her time to another Presbyterian pastor down in South Jersey.

And she comes back in 1816, rejoins Greens household, stays there until 1822 when, yes, she joins this group of missionaries heading off to the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii.

She goes up to New Haven, Connecticut.

In November of 1822, they get on board a ship called the Thames, or we would say the Thames, but they said the Thames.

Took off on a five-month voyage to Hawaii, which is a very long and difficult voyage for everybody, including her.

She gets to Hawaii, she's one of the missionary community.

She starts a school, and she starts the first school in Hawaii for ordinary children, ordinary people.

Most before had been schools for the children in the elite, teaching them to read, but she works with everybody.

And that I think becomes the signature of her life.

For reasons I won't go into, she comes back to the U.S.

in 1826.

In 1828, she gets a job as the first teacher in an infant school for Black children in Philadelphia.

A school for children eight, I'm sorry, two to five years old.

Does that for two years from 1828 to 1830, and then in 1833, she comes to Princeton, where she becomes the first and the only teacher in the only Black public school in Princeton.

And that's what she does for the rest of her career.

She's also a founder, a very important founder of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, it was a Black church in Princeton at the time.

Still, a very, very prominent and important church in that community.

And so yeah, she travels all over the world, literally halfway around the world.

And then once she settles in Princeton, though, she doesn't really leave.

In '33 on, she's there in Princeton, and she becomes not just a member, but I think a real pillar of the Black community in that town.

- Let's dive a little bit more into that voyage.

How prolific was it, especially for you trying to unearth and discover more about Betsey Stockton's life, was that journey to Sandwich Islands?

Because during that time, she was writing in a journal, and that's where you're getting a lot of information about that time in her life, correct?

- Absolutely.

I get a lot of information about her life, but also I think about her character.

It's a wonderful journal, it is beautiful, and it's also very intellectual.

She can quote passages from the Bible, from John Milton, out of her head.

They don't have a library on board this ship, and it's a whaling ship.

And there they are with about 17 young whalers and 18 missionaries, you can imagine the combination, the connections they had there.

But she writes in a wonderful sense about her travels, the beauty of the sea, sometimes the terror of the sea.

Her relationships with her fellow missionaries, sometimes good, sometimes maybe not so good.

Her relationships with members of the crew.

And she does come to have a very good kind of down to earth or down to the deck relationship with members of the crew, sometimes joking with them.

And so what I see in that journal is evidence of her intellect, evidence of her commitment, evidence of her sense of mission, and also evidence, happily, of her sense of humor.

- Well, let's talk about that, her intellect, her being able to read and write.

I mean, she was enslaved for so many years, so where did that come from?

How was she able to self-educate herself to the point where she was so smart, she was able to articulate different things in so many ways, and then become an educator when she herself wasn't even able given the opportunity to go to school in college?

- No, she never went to school a day in her life.

She lived in Ashbel Green's household where she was surrounded by books.

And there's some indication that one of his sons, Jacob, helped her learn to read early on.

But I think she became an absolutely voracious reader.

And she had all these very big books that Ashbel Green had, you know, not trivial novels, but works of theology, works of the classic literature, and she apparently just ate that up.

And she committed a lot of it to memory.

And I think she became, yes, not just literate, but intellectual.

I think that's an important distinction.

- Well, education was really at the basis of her life, and she wanted to pass that along to other members of her community, and she did just that.

And you write so extensively about all those different aspects of her life in your book, which people should pick up to learn more about Betsey Stockton.

But what do you think is the most important thing we need to remember and know about Betsey Stockton?

- Well, I will say, one thing about her commitment to education, and this is something I think people in our era need to know, and that was that education was not easily given to Black people in the 19th century.

It was either restricted or sometimes absolutely denied.

And so her act of being a teacher was not just taking on a job, it was taking on a calling, taking on a cause, a commitment.

And I think that that commitment, that she began to show even before she went to Hawaii, she said early on as a teenager that she wanted to teach young children, Black children.

When she went to Hawaii, she, again, she taught the children of ordinary people.

Came back to Philadelphia, taught Black children again, in Princeton, taught black children.

And I think the significance there, it's a social and political significance, it is that education for Black people was not something that white people by and large promoted.

And so for her to do that was not just taking on a profession, a job, it was taking on, I think, a very significant social and political cause.

And again, I think it's important to realize, this is in the North, this is not in the South.

And I think that this is another issue that I find very important in doing this book.

Many people think that in the early 19th century, the South was the land of slavery, the North was the land of freedom.

Well, sure, to some extent that's true, but I think that the restrictions on Black people, the racism toward Black people, the world at which Black people had to live is something that we need to think more about and learn more about.

And frankly, you know, having our minds not just about the 19th century, but about the 21st.

- And like I said, pick up Professor Noble's book.

It gives us such a deep dive, look into Betsey Stockton, as well as the history of New Jersey, Pennsylvania area during that timeframe.

So thank you so much for joining us to give us a little bit of insight into Betsey Stockton's life and why we should remember her.

- Well, I thank you very much, and I certainly think that all New Jersey teachers ought to take a look and see her as almost as a patron saint.

- I agree.

Thank you so much, Professor Nobles.

- Thank you very much.

It was great to be with you.

- Thank you.

For Steve Adubato and myself, thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Newark Board of Education.

Johnson & Johnson.

United Airlines.

Atlantic Health System.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

And by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by BestofNJ.com.

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