Ella Lee Carley joined the workers flooding into Mobile from the rural areas of Mississippi and Alabama during World War II. The demand for workers at the city's shipyards and Brookley Army Air Corps Base was so great that the city's population doubled almost overnight.
Ella Lee, as she was always called, moved from Electric Mills, Mississippi, and counted herself lucky because she had friends in Mobile who gave her a place to live. Housing was very scarce. So scarce in fact that many places rented beds for 8-hour shifts.
Ella Lee met, and later married, Raymond Lamont Pierce (1923-1981) when the two of them were working at Gulf Shipbuilding Corp. in Chickasaw, Alabama, during World War II. The above photo is of Ella Lee's worker identification badge.
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