Ann Washington Craton

Ann Washington Craton (1891–1970) was a labor activist, social services, worker, and feminist who helped to organize and support low-paid women workers who worked in rural and suburban garment factories during the 1920s. Middle-class and American-born, she helped to expand unionization work beyond the then-dominant Yiddish-speaking urban shops of the time and helped as well to overcome male-dominated resistance to female labor organization. Using trial and error as her method, she became adept at working with women of varying ages and ethnic backgrounds. She refused to adopt party-line labor political positions. She successfully overcame accusations of being merely a "sentimental middle-class liberal" or "bourgeois intellectual" and showed that enthusiastic and idealistic college-trained women organizers could perform at least as well as the working-class men who dominated the labor movement.