Swing Shift

1937

Swing Shift, 1937. Will Barnet (American, 1911–2012). Etching; plate: 24.8 x 27 cm (9 3/4 x 10 5/8 in.); sheet: 31.9 x 35 cm (12 9/16 x 13 3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Carole W. and Charles B. Rosenblatt Endowment Fund 2020.286 © Will Barnet The furnishings in this room suggest that this man works in a domestic space, likely one of the thousands of tenements where recent migrants to the city worked in contract garment shops that doubled as living quarters. The garment industry in New York City had once been staffed primarily by immigrants from European countries, but after World War I, Black people from the American South began to take what was often the lowest-paid work in the city. While the thriving garment industry in early 20th-century New York City had once been staffed by immigrants from European countries, after World War I, Blacks migrating from the American South began to take what was often the lowest paid work in the city.