I’m pleased to announce that my book is available for preorder on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. If you have trouble finding it on Amazon, I suggest you search “Elaine Rock Dusty Roads” to find it. The book will be released in August.
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 1950s and ’60s, “stewardesses were glamorous. They were beautiful. They were poised,” says former Delta Air Lines flight attendant Casey Grant at the beginning of a new documentary film about the history of flight attendants.
But over time, thousands of stewardesses, as these workers were called then, were also angry and exasperated by the working conditions they had to endure in the sky and on the ground.
“Fly With Me,” premiering Tuesday, Feb. 20, on PBS’ “American Experience,” tells the story of women hired as stewardesses when airline policies dictated everything from their weight to their marriage status who went on to fight — and win — battles for equal pay, gender and race equality and workplace reform.
“So many of the women who became flight attendants were young, ambitious, and adventurous,” says Sarah Colt, who directed the film with Helen Dobrowski. “Some thought they’d do the job for two or three years and then follow societal norms of the ’50s and ’60s and then get married and move on. But the job became much more of a career for them.”