This is a fantastic post! I spent a large proportion of my fannish history to date thinking about Steve and Bucky and Fury and Gabe and Peggy in the 1940s, so it's great to know that I wasn't foolish. :) I'm especially cheered by your emphasis on the various homosexualities possible, because I'm so easily annoyed by the facile meme that Stonewall invented being out.
One thing about racial segregation in NYC - not to minimize institutional (and personal) racism, but public schools in the state were officially desegregated in 1910 by statute.
In the neighborhood where Steve Rogers grew up, nearly all employed adult men would have belonged to a union. He didn't have a union, because he was a soldier I think learning about the Taft-Hartley Act would break his heart, absolutely. And while as a soldier he wouldn't have had a union, as an artist before the world, many comic writers have him working for the WPA and I like to imagine him trying to join/belonging to the Artists' Union.
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One thing about racial segregation in NYC - not to minimize institutional (and personal) racism, but public schools in the state were officially desegregated in 1910 by statute.
In the neighborhood where Steve Rogers grew up, nearly all employed adult men would have belonged to a union. He didn't have a union, because he was a soldier
I think learning about the Taft-Hartley Act would break his heart, absolutely. And while as a soldier he wouldn't have had a union, as an artist before the world, many comic writers have him working for the WPA and I like to imagine him trying to join/belonging to the Artists' Union.