In the fifties and sixties to get hired as a stewardess put you in a club that was akin to being a movie star. Around this time, a highly qualified woman, top of her training class, beautiful and poised, didn't understand why she wasn't being hired, until an instructor told her it was because she was Black. The lawsuit that followed opened the door to Black women being hired as stewardesses, but the result was less of a floodgate and more of a trickle. By the mid-1960s, most US airlines had hired their first Black flight attendant, but these women continued to face discrimination and their representation in the industry hardly mirrored the overall population. On today’s episode, we explore the history of Black women flight attendants by hearing directly from some of the first to serve.

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