Save Rosie! A Piece Of Women’s History Faces The Wrecking Ball

Rosie the Riveter needs your help.

The Willow Run bomber plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan is one of a few places where the myth of Rosie — a wartime symbol of women leaving domestic doldrums for the workforce and flexing their economic power — was born. Over a three-year period, 8,685 B-24 Liberator airplanes were constructed there by thousands of Rosies, including Rose Will Monroe, one of two real-world inspirations for the character.

Unless organizers are able to raise just over $1 million in the next two days, however, the World War II-era site will face the wrecking ball.

Demolition has already begun on other parts of the plant — making way for a connected vehicle research center — but the people behind the Save the Bomber campaign want to preserve the plant as the new home of the Yankee Air Museum. At present, they have raised $6.8 million of the $8 million necessary to stop the plant from being razed.

You can do something to stop it, though. We can do it.

While the famous "We Can Do It!" propaganda poster wasn't actually connected to the Rosie movement — the image was little-known during the war and lost for decades before being revived as a feminist icon in the 1980s — it has since become inextricably connected in our collective memory as a symbol of mobilization for justice and equality. (The Rosie of yore looked a little rougher around the edges, as in Norman Rockwell's 1943 image for the Saturday Evening Post.) Remember that when you donate a couple bucks here to save this piece of history. (NPR)