1
MORE THAN SEX EQUALITY
FEMINISM AFTER SUFFRAGE
Dorothy Sue CobbleTwenty-three-year-old labor organizer Myra Wolfgang pushed her way through the throngs of Detroit
shoppers enjoying a sale at Woolworth’s five-and-dime, a low-cost retail giant with hundreds of stores
nationwide. Woolworth’s salesgirls, cashiers, and lunch counter waitresses awaited her signal. Wolfgang
blew the strike whistle, and, as planned, they moved away from their counters, politely escorted the
customers to the door, and barricaded themselves inside. A hundred and ten workers, all young women,
were already occupying the main downtown Woolworth’s, and the union was threatening to escalate the
strike to all forty Detroit branches. The 1937 Woolworth’s sit-down strike was under way.
Aided by gifts of food, mattresses, blankets, dance records, cigarettes, and other supplies from friends
and sympathizers, Woolworth strikers stayed inside the main store for six nights and seven days. Like the
millions of other workers who sat down that spring in workplaces across the country, they struck for fair
wages and a voice in decisions at work. In addition, their long list of grievances included abusive and
disrespectful supervisors, unpredictable hours, and expensive uniforms. Dubbed the “girl strikers” by the
national press who camped outside the store, they appeared on radio, in movie theater newsreels, and in
major newspapers and magazines. At one point, they penned their desires on the brown wrapping paper
covering the store’s large front windows. “All we want is a living wage,” one striker scrawled in bright
red crayon letters. The occupation ended after F. W. Woolworth Company executives in New York
capitulated and promised wage increases of 20 to 25 percent, union recognition, and more worker say
over scheduling and job retention. Within months, following the path blazed by Myra Wolfgang and the
“girl strikers,” retail workers in New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Paul struck and won
similar gains.^1
The Woolworth victory in the spring of 1937 was just one of many campaigns Wolfgang led and won.
In 1932, she dropped out of art school when her family’s finances collapsed in the midst of the
Depression. Soon she was giving her share of soapbox speeches for radical causes and organizing for the
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE). A natural orator with a wicked wit, she
signed up thousands of Detroit service and retail workers and helped raise standards in a sector of the
economy renowned for low pay, disrespect, and insecurity. In 1953, she became an international vice
president of HERE, which represented a quarter of U.S. hospitality workers nationwide. A lifetime
member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she devised
strategies to end racial segregation and open up better-paying jobs for African Americans and other
minorities in hotels and restaurants. At the same time, she never lost sight of the particular problems of
women in a low-wage industry where female sexuality and sociability generated hefty profit.
In the 1960s, she led a sleep-in at the Michigan statehouse to persuade legislators to raise the
minimum wage and launched a successful campaign to unionize Playboy Club waitresses, or “Playboy
Bunnies.” With a union backing them, Wolfgang announced to the delight of scribbling reporters, the