If you were a young (white) woman looking for work in the early 1920s, becoming a telephone operator was a viable career option. AT&T, the telephone monopoly that emerged from Alexander Graham Bell’s Bell Telephone, employed a large number of women as operators during this time. These operators manually connected callers with each other by plugging wires into switchboards. In fact, in 1929, a government report estimated that there were 161,669 operators working for AT&T.
However, it’s important to note that AT&T did not hire Black operators until 1944, and immigrants and Jewish women faced barriers as well. But for […]
Full Post at fagenwasanni.com