Continually Working tells the stories of Black working women
who resisted employment inequality in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the
1940s to the 1970s. The book explores the job-related activism of
Black Midwestern working women and uncovers the political and
intellectual strategies they used to critique and resist employment
discrimination, dismantle unjust structures, and transform their
lives and the lives of those in their community.
Moten emphasizes the ways in which Black women transformed the urban
landscape by simultaneously occupying spaces from which they had been
historically excluded and creating their own spaces. Black women
refused to be marginalized within the historically white and
middle-class Milwaukee Young Women's Christian Association (MYWCA),
an association whose mission centered on supporting women in urban
areas. Black women forged interracial relationships within this
organization and made it, not without much conflict and struggle, one
of the most socially progressive organizations in the city. When
Black women could not integrate historically white institutions, they
created their own. They established financial and educational
institutions, such as Pressley School of Beauty Culture, which
beautician Mattie Pressley DeWese opened in 1946 as a result of
segregation in the beauty training industry. This school served
economic, educational, and community development purposes as well as
created economic opportunities for Black women. Historically and
contemporarily, Milwaukee has been and is still known as one of the
most segregated cities in the nation. Black women have always
contested urban inequality, by making space for themselves and others
on the margins. In so doing, they have transformed both the urban
landscape and urban history.