‘HerStory’ photo exhibit at Oak Rige History Museum

K-25-69 Close up of welding in prefabrecation shop  1944  bld.300 (Photo by Ed Westcott)

The Oak Ridge History Museum will host “HerStory: A Photography Exhibition of Women in the Secret City.” The exhibit will open Friday, March 29, and will be open every Friday and Saturday during the month of April.

“From janitor to homemaker to chemist, the women of the Manhattan Project worked hard and talked little,” a press release said. “During World War II, Oak Ridge was a government town of 70,000 workers, primarily women who lived in a camp-like environment of barbed wire, security checkpoints, and code words.  Workers were fingerprinted, interviewed, assigned a job, and given a clearance badge. Housing was limited and cramped and often unheated. Food at the cafeterias was in short supply and lines were long.”

The photographs in the exhibition were taken by James Edward Westcott, a renowned photographer who worked for the United States government in Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Westcott was one of the few people permitted to have a camera in the Oak Ridge area during the Manhattan Project.

The photo exhibit was developed under sponsorship by the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of Energy. The Oak Ridge History Museum is located at 102 Robertsville Road in Oak Ridge, and it is open Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, call the Manhattan Project National Historical Park at (865) 482-1942.