Behind the Bandana Discover Richmond’s Riveting History of Rosie the Riveter Chances are, if someone asked you who Rosie the Riveter was you could at least explain a vague recollection what the iconic image looks like, but do you know what it means? What it stands for? You do?! Good for you! You’re in the 1% of Americans that actually pay attention to history. Although the odds a likely a bit higher here rather than other parts of the United States since the national historic park is located here. That percentage of amateur historians is slowly growing, thankfully, with the help of organizations like the Rosie The Riveter Trust in Richmond, whose primary function is to raise money and resources to expand their public education programs. The Trust works in active collaboration with the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park on the Richmond waterfront. Here you’ll find the SS Red Oak Victory cargo ship launched in 1944, an awesomely abstract Rosie the Riveter Memorial, trained docents to guide you, a 38-seat theater with films showing every half hour, and much more! The grounds are so vast that you’ll need a car to get to all three of their waterfront park sites in one day. One might not think a “Rosie the Riveter”-based memorial park would have so much to learn about, but there’s By Matt Larson quite a bit of story to tell… “It’s an amazing history that most people know very little about,” said Marsha Mather-Thrift, Executive Director of the Rosie the Riveter Trust. “The war really catalyzed a lot of social efforts that produced enormous changes in the way our society functions,” she explains. “Women entering the workplace is just one example, but more than 100,000 people migrated to Richmond—many of them black people and poor people from the south and midwest—so there was an enormous
Contra Costa Marketplace - Aug 2016
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