When could minority women become air hostesses on US and Australian airlines?

                                           

Ruth Taylor,
Mohawk Airlines, 1958

In the U.S diversity among its flight attendants had been a Pan Am goal for years be­fore it actually happened. Different types of smil­ing, help­ful women were desirable, to reinforce the im­age of a global airline. In 1955 Pan Am hired Japanese -American women based in Honol­ulu bec­ause they spoke Jap­anese on Pacific routes. Pan Am also hoped that these women might entertain male passengers like geisha-girls.

Airline exec­ut­ives acknowledged they’d lose their mar­k­et share if Black women served mostly White pass­eng­ers. And that White flight attendant numbers might dwindle if the job’s glamour was down-graded by employing Negro girls!

Black civil rights were limited in U.S in the 1950s. In any case, racial prejudice was not the only thing hindering hopeful steward­esses. Weight, height, appearance, marital st­atus and age all infl­uenced a woman’s career.

On Wing Tips’ magazine cover, three women displayed new uniform opt­ions: a blond, an Asian and an African-American. At Pan Am in the 1950s-early 1960s Black women attended steward­ess-training courses that pre­pared them for succ­ess­ful inter­views. But the Black graduates still had to wat­ch their White peers re­ceive offers from small airlines that vis­ited the schools.

In 1957 African-American Ruth Taylor considered bec­om­ing a stewardess. She interviewed with US major Trans World Air­lines but failed bec­ause of her col­our. An angry Taylor filed a com­­plaint ag­ain­st TWA with N.Y’s State Commission of Dis­crimin­at­ion. No act­ion was brought again­st TWA, but ot­her compan­ies began to re-think their minority hiring practices.

The first was Mid-Atlantic carrier Mohawk Airlines. Of the 800 Black applicants who applied, only Ruth Taylor succeeded. By 1958 Taylor started working in the small airline, at a critical moment in U.S civil av­iat­ion his­t­ory! Note another absurd regulation that led to Taylor’s sacking THAT YEAR i.e married women were forbidden by all carr­iers in the 50s and 60s! Her car­eer was brief, but it had been a sig­nif­icant victory in the fight for American Black civil rights.

3 months later, facing Taylor’s disc­rim­­in­at­ion lawsuit, TWA revers­ed its own policies and hir­ed Marg­aret Grant, the first African Am­eric­an flight attendant for a major U.S airline. Unfortunately she was sacked due to illness. 

Patricia Banks, 1960
in Capital Airlines uniform

Although Ruth Taylor and Margaret Grant’s hard-fought victories counted, progress was slow. Only in 1960 did Capital Airlines hire Patricia Banks. She’d ap­plied 4 years earl­ier and had fared well in their in­it­ial screen­ing, but the airline hadn’t emp­l­oy­ed her with­out spec­ifying why. A public hear­ing ruled that Capit­al discrimin­ated against Banks because of her race; her employment was ordered by the N.Y State Commission Against Discrimination .

Even when African-American women finally began flying with the maj­or airlines, they still struggled. In 1962 Northwest Air­lines emp­loyed Marlene White, who had done very well in the train­ing, but claimed that the carrier had singled her out for de­g­rading tr­eat­ment. She was reinstated only after filing a case.

NAACP lawyers prosecuted cases on behalf of qualified Black graduates who earned flight att­endant jobs. As lawsuits started in court­­s everywhere, evidence of racial bias aga­inst African-American women appeared on news-papers nation­wide. In time, each stud­ent flight attendant won her case. In 1962 one of those plaintiffs appeared on Jet Mag­az­ine in a North­­west Airlines un­iform. A 1963 Ebony headline shouted “Open Skies for Negro Girls!” A Black newspaper The Chicago Defend­er praised Am­erican Airlines for pro­moting its first Black flight stewardess to super­vis­or; the South­ern Christian Leadership Conference organised a boycott against Del­ta, whose numbers of Black employees stagnated.

a successful plaintiff appeared on Jet Mag­az­ine cover

in a North­­west Airlines un­iform, 1962

By 1965, African-American women worked as flight attendants for all air­lines. Pan Am alone employed c100 Black women, and though the air­line hoped to hire more, recruitment stall­ed. So a group of former Pan Am flight attend­ants, The Blackbirds, told their stories on radio and on panels. And Delta flight attendant Casey Grant’s Stars in the Sky told of the Black pioneers’ personal experiences.

Today air crews work together to ensure the trav­ellers’ safety and comfort. Unfortunately it took 50 years after Taylor’s first flight for HER ach­ieve­ment to be publicly recog­nis­ed in 2008.

In Australia, equality was even slower. After the 1967 Referendum, where 90+% of citizens voted to have Indig­enous Australians included in the national census (sic), there were att­empts to actively promote opport­unities for Indigenous Australians.

The Department of Labour and Industry published inf­orm­ation about the duties of air hostesses in Dawn: A Magazine for the Aboriginal People of NSW (June 1968). They wrote work is often tiring and the host­ess must be of first-class health. She must speak clearly, have good eyesight, a pleasing appear­ance and per­sonal­ity, and an ability to get on well with peop­le. Many hostess­es were giving up their jobs because their health was suff­er­ing from medical condit­ions associated with flying and from ex­haust­ion, they warned. But why was this advice in an Aboriginal magazine?

Laurel Russ was the first Ab­or­iginal airhostess who flew with East-West Air­lines in 1966, the coun­try link for Ansett Airlines. [Later she grad­uat­ed Law, work­ed with the Legal Aid Com­m­iss­ion and then headed the Aboriginal Unit of the NSW Ombuds­man’s office]. Sue Bryant, another Indigenous Austral­ian air hostess, started working for Ansett  in 1970.

Under the new National Employment Strategy for Aboriginals, airline company TAA and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs undertook a re­cr­uitment drive to find suitable Aboriginal hostesses. 3 attractive Aboriginal girls (sic) graduated as air host­esses for the gov­ernment air­line TAA. They were Mary Cross from Shark Bay fishing village in W.A, Jennifer Pat­ter­son from the Qld Health Dept Townsville and Eve­lyn Schaber was from the Central Land Coun­cil at Al­ice Springs. Were they the on­ly Aborig­inal air hostesses working in Aust­ralia? The 3 graduated with 16 other beautiful and intelligent Austral­ians (sic). The three girls applied for an air hostess job because they saw their jobs as being public relat­ions officers, for their people. TAA’s chairman hoped the three girls would be the forerunners of more Aboriginal TAA hostesses.

Since 1994 Qantas has been very proud to bring Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander culture to the world. Qantas