United we win
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Library of Congress · LC-DIG-ds-13150 (digital file from original) · Public domain · Catalog record
The pins
Context
For discussion
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Flag-waving The flag The flag fills the top half. Whatever the picture below claims, the flag has already said it is American.
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Card stacking The two workers A Black and a white worker rivet one seam. Most plants were segregated and the riots of 1943 were about this; the poster shows the workplace the government needed.
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Glittering generalities "United" A word nobody can be against, attached to a fact that was not yet true. The slogan makes the claim the photograph cannot.
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Staged photography "OWI photo by Liberman" A photograph, credited. The medium says this happened, which is the point of using a photograph rather than a painting.
A War Manpower Commission poster of 1943, photographed by Howard Liberman. A Black and a white worker rivet an aircraft together under the flag. The armed forces were segregated, and so were most war plants; the poster was aimed at a labor shortage, and at the race riots in Detroit and elsewhere that summer. It shows the workplace the government needed rather than the one it had.
- What is the poster claiming about American war production, and was it true?
- The flag takes up the top half. What is it doing there?
- Can a propaganda poster be ahead of its country? Is this one?
See also
Same era, or the same techniques.
