My mother was hired to work in the factory at the Kellogg cereal company in Battle Creek Michigan in 1962.  Her job at the time was in the “Plant Services Division” which was a fancy name for the janitorial department. At the time it was the only department you could work in if you were a black woman at Kellogg’s. But by the late 1960’s the company was under tremendous pressure to open up the more lucrative 8 hour shift jobs to women. These jobs had traditionally been “men only” positions.
According to the company these jobs were too demanding or dangerous for women to do and having a woman in one of these positions would be distracting and would endanger the safety of the men trying to perform their duties. But these jobs were among the highest paying jobs in the factory and pressure was mounting to let women into these departments. So Kellogg’s announced a pilot program: they would open up five 8-hour jobs as an “experiment.” When the jobs were posted women could bid on the jobs and the company would choose who would fill the positions.
I remember how excited my mother was when she came home and announced that she was going to bid on the jobs, we sat and daydreamed about what we would do if she got such a high paying job. But a few days later that excitement turned to anger when the jobs were posted. The way my mother told it was: “As soon as they posted those jobs I knew the fix was in. Those were the hardest jobs in the plant, and men washed out of those jobs all the time. They weren’t  gonna let women get any of the good jobs. They wanted us women to fail.”
I remember my parents arguing over it. My dad told my mom to forget it. It wasn’t worth the trouble and she should be happy with the job she had. But my mother said she was going to bid on one of those jobs anyway. “Hell, what do I have to lose,” she said, “If I wash out they’ll just give me back my old job.”My dad countered with “You’ll look stupid, and besides those aren’t jobs a lady should be doing anyway.” Now my father had made a huge tactical error. I watched my mom’s lips set in a tight line and her eyes turn a bright cat-like yellow. My mother’s eyes were always changing color going from grey to green to light brown, but they only turned this particular amber color when she was furious, and at that moment I actually feared for my father’s life. My mother stood silently for a moment then said in a low whisper,
“I’ll tell you a secret, if I get one of those jobs, I won’t give you or the company the satisfaction of seeing me wash out.” Then she turned and stormed out.
The next day she put in her bid and waited. About two weeks later she found out she had been chosen for the job of “lamp changer.” Later my mom would say she was excited and terrified all at the same time,  because of the 5 jobs on the list, lamp changer was the hardest of all. Now if you simply read the job description for “lamp changer” the job seemed pretty mundane. Clean and maintain all light fixtures in the factory. But the devil is in the details. The light fixtures were industrial florescent fixtures that were between 2 and 5 feet long and weighed between 15 and 40 pounds. They hung from chains in the ceiling often as high as 30 feet off the ground.
Because grain dust is highly combustible the factory had to be kept squeaky clean, and no dust could accumulate on any surfaces, especially around electrical outlets and heat, so keeping the light fixtures clean was a top priority. To do the job of lamp changer they put you on a cherry picker (an industrial lift) and raised you up to the light. They kept the fixture at just about head height so you had to reach up over your head and unplug the fixture from its power cord then lift the fixture off the S hook that connected it to its chain. After that you lowered the light down to the basket of the cherry picker, you washed the fixture, replaced the light bulbs then lifted the fixture back up over your head and put it back on its S hooks and plugged it back in. Then you moved on to the next light. You did that for 8 hours. Remember that many of these lights weighed 40 pounds and were awkward and unruly and you were as much as 30 feet off the ground when you did this. Mom was five feet seven inches tall and at the time weighed 120 pounds so she wasn’t exactly a big burly girl, which is probably part of the reason she had been chosen. But they had made one big mistake: They had severely misjudged the size of the woman’s heart.
Mom said after the first week she found out there was pool going around and people were betting on how many weeks Elva was going to last as a lamp changer, which really pissed her off. For the most part mom was pretty easy going and always had a smile on her face, but if you made her mad she was an unstoppable force. She told a guy she knew that if he didn’t want to lose his money, he shouldn’t bet against her.
After a couple of months mom came home from work just beaming. I asked her why she was so happy and she said,
“A couple of my coworkers came up to me in the break station today and told me I had to slow down. I asked them why, was I breaking some kind of safety rule? They said no, you’re just doing too many lights.” When she asked them what they meant, they said, “You’re doing too many lights every day; we don’t do that many lights every day, so you don’t have to do that many lights.”
She smiled at me and said, “I’ve gone from being the girl who was gonna fail to the girl who is making them look bad. And that’s good.”
Mom didn’t wash out. In fact she held that job until the day she retired 20 years later. Mom became one of the most well-liked people in her department and one of the most respected. Later I got a summer job at the plant when I was in college and had the honor of working right alongside my mother (who by the way, I could not keep up with when it came to cleaning lights. She always did more than I could, no matter how hard I tried)

I’ve always been proud to be Elva Burden’s son. She was one incredible woman. Here’s to you, Mom.