History of ‘Rosie the Riveter’
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The “We Can Do It” poster associated with Rosie the Riveter was made by J. Howard Miller, a Pittsburgh artist hired by Westinghouse to create the poster. It was displayed for two months in 1943, only to Westinghouse employees in the Midwest — both male and female —as a motivational tool to boost worker morale. Four decades later the poster was resurrected in the 1980s as a symbol of feminism and mistakenly labeled “Rosie the Riveter.” The original term Rosie the Riveter came from a song written in 1942 by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. The tune became a national hit when recorded by big band leader Kay Kyser. The woman who inspired the song was Rosaline P. Walter, who worked the night shift building the F4U Corsair fighter, according to Fortune Magazine.
Later riveter Rose Will Monroe, who helped build B-24 bombers for the U.S. Armey Air Forces as a riveter at the willow Run Aircraft Factory in Michigan became widely known as Rosie the Riveter after being asked to star in films and posters encouraging women to go to work in support of the war effort. A drama film titled “Rosie the Riveter” was released in 1944. The result of the campaign was that it unified the experiences of working women and proved to themselves and the country that that they could do a man’s job and do it well, according to Modern American Woman: A Documentary History, written by Susan Ware in 2002.
