Black and white photo of a convivial scene. More details in caption.

Pete Seeger at twenty-five entertaining federal workers, sailors, and soldiers with a banjo and song at the opening of the Labor Canteen in Washington, DC, on February 13, 1944. This unsegregated place in a Jim Crow city was sponsored by the Federal Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.1 Note First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt enjoying herself in the mixed race and sex audience. On the wall behind the merrymakers are sketches of a hapless character undergoing physical training, perhaps Private Snafu.

Source: Office of War Information, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017864322/

  1. For further details about the Labor Canteen, see the long caption for Washington Area Spark, “Social equality at the Labor Canteen,” https://www.flickr.com/photos/washington_area_spark/54266105006/. ↩︎