Citizenship, consumerism, and gender: A study of District 65, 1945–1960

McCarthyism and the Cold War, suburbanization and the rise of shopping malls, and the slow, quiet, steady increase in numbers of women working outside the home marked the period from 1945 to 1960. In New York City during this time, workers in wholesale, warehousing, retail, and light manufacturing organized themselves into a union, District 65. These workers created a left-wing union that offers historians new insights into how the major trends of the post-World War II period interrelate. In the anticommunist rhetoric of the period, Americanism meant patriotism, prosperity, and individualism, all secured by democratic free enterprise. Leaders of District 65 emphasized as core American values liberty, equality, the dignity of labor, freedom, and rights of citizenship, especially forming unions and picketing. They also focused on economic rights such as a decent standard of living and participation in the consumer culture. Gender was central to the ideals of citizenship consumerism as articulated both by the union and by its critics. Operating in ideological frameworks that defined citizens and workers as male but consumers as female, women and men 65ers sought to create a space for their activism and participation in radical politics and to secure benefits for themselves as workers in consumer industries. This dissertation examines the union\u27s responses to post-World War II reconversion, red-baiting, ideological shifts within the Communist Party, the Korean War, and changes in the retail marketplace. District 65 is significant because it shows how even a strong, militant union in a relatively hospitable climate was not immune to the national trends of the post-war period: anticommunism, bureaucratic unionism, suburbanization. It is significant because the union\u27s struggles with these trends reveal the complexity of the period and the many contours of citizenship, consumerism, and gender