In celebration of Women’s History Month, PBS American Experience is presenting an encore of the documentary Fly With Me, which explores the history of flight attendants. It will air on Tuesday, March 18, at 9 PM ET. Check your local PBS station for broadcast times in your area. Featured in the documentary are American Airlines Flight Attendants Dusty Roads…
The Origins of Women’s History Month: A Legacy of Advocacy In 1978, a group of visionary educators from Sonoma County, California—Molly Murphy MacGregor, Mary Ruthsdotter, Maria Cuevas, Paula Hammett, and Bette Morganto—founded the National Women’s History Project (NWHP) in Santa Rosa. They were motivated by a crucial realization: women’s historical contributions were frequently overlooked or missing…
PBS AMERICAN EXPERIENCE honors Black History Month by featuring Pat Banks Edmiston, Undra Mays and Casey Grant who paved the way for future black stewardess careers in a short film on “Civil Rights in the Sky”. The film shows how these brave women fought strongly for their rights to have the job they wanted despite…
FROM: Sonoma County National Organization for Women February Newsletter Our March Women’s History Month meeting will feature local author Elaine Rock. She will discuss her book on Dusty Roads, who lived many years in Sonoma County. Dusty began her career as a flight attendant (or “stewardess”) and became a leading figure in the fight for…
Yesterday, the news broke that the Department of Transportation reached a record $50 million settlement with American Airlines for breaking laws by failing to properly help disabled passengers get on and off its planes, providing them unsafe help that caused injuries, and mishandling thousands of wheelchairs, damaging them. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), who lost both…
The Points Guy posted a great review, written by Harriet Baskas, about tonight’s PBS American Experience documentary. She mentions how Dusty and Jean entered the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Title VII passed Congress and filed the first discrimination complaint in the country based on gender discrimination. In the…
Flight Attendants across the industry are fighting to raise the standards for our career. More than two-thirds of the U.S. Flight Attendants are in contract negotiations right now, including red-hot contract fights at Alaska, Air Wisconsin, United, Omni, American, Southwest, Frontier and more. This moment is not about what uniform we wear: It’s about what…
I am thrilled to announce that I will be featured as an expert on Barbara “Dusty” Roads and early flight attendant history in the PBS American Experience documentary “Fly With Me,” airing on Feb. 20 at 9 p.m. on your local PBS station. It will also stream on PBS.org. Sara Colt Productions interviewed me last…
It is with great sadness that I announce Dusty passed away on Nov. 21, two weeks after I finished reading the final chapter of the draft manuscript to her. She said she loved it and then left the planet. PBS will have an “In Memoriam” tribute to her at the end of their documentary “Fly…