Dr. David Childs, Ph.D.
Northern Kentucky University
In this article we will continue our series on women’s rights, honoring the 100th Anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1919. The bill officially became law throughout the United States when Tennessee adopted the legislation in 1920. This article will be devoted to women of color who were domestic workers in the early to mid-twentieth century across the United States in the homes of white Americans. We will also offer some lesson plan ideas that can be used in middle and secondary classrooms.
My grandmother
My maternal grandmother (Mattie Childs) earned a living as a domestic servant in South Florida in the early to mid-twentieth century –An occupation she called “day work.” She cooked and cleaned for the “white folk” everyday. Ms. Childs often worked from sun-up to sundown running the household of her employer, often having very little energy for her own children at the end of the day. She made $2 a week, trying to help feed a family of eight in the mid-twentieth century; slave wages even for the time period she lived in.
Introduction
The experience of women of color has often been different from their mainstream counterparts. Mainstream feminism has often overlooked their experiences, giving way to the womanist tradition, a movement that arose as a corrective to mainstream feminism. Womanist theory tries to highlight the unique experiences of women of color in the United States. As we continue to pay homage to the anniversary of the passage of the nineteenth amendment we point to the unique experiences of black women in America. Below we offer a brief history of black domestic workers in the United States during the early to mid 1900’s.
Black Domestic Workers post-Civil War to World War I
After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th and 14th amendments, slavery was legally abolished in 1865. However, many African Americans did not have any options in making a living, after all, the only skill set they had was to work on the plantation. Furthermore, the Freedmen’s Bureau told former slaves that they could either sign labor contracts with white planters or be evicted. Often the men turned to sharecropping while many of the women in the late nineteenth century became domestic workers. Furthermore, domestic work was the only work they could get because southerners wanted to keep African Americans in their place; that is, in a position subservient to whites. Many of these women migrated to the North for higher paying jobs and more opportunities, only to find out that still the primary job they could get was as a domestic servant. Domestic workers in both the north and the south were “generally treated as poor, child-like beings that were seen as victims of their own ignorance of living in communities of crime and other societal infringements.” However, even with these hardships these women still settled for these positions, as this was often the only work they could get before World War I. In many African American homes both the husband and the wife had to work in order to have enough to support the family financially, unlike many of the women in middle class white families who could stay at home and tend to the house while their husbands worked.
Black Domestic Workers during the Great Depression
From the end of the Civil War until the 1930’s domestic servants could steadily find work. However, with the advent of the Great Depression, many of the women lost their jobs because white families lost their source of income and could no longer afford to higher them to work in their home. As a result, many of the women solicited work from various places, often working a grueling 18 hours on decreased wages. Of course the women accepted these conditions because of the desperate times and low status of black women.
Black Domestic Workers during 1960s America
Nearly ninety percent of African American women worked as domestic workers during the Civil Rights era. Domestic workers played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement. “Since many white households relied on the African American domestic workers for housework, the workers were able to have a direct impact on the white race when rebelling for their civil rights.” Typically the domestic workers rebelled in an informal manner. For example, Many women refused to live in the same home in which they worked or secretly did only a limited amount of work that they felt was reasonable for pay. “By doing this, the African American domestic workers transformed the domestic services, and collective organizations came about promoting a better work environment for African American domestic workers. Their act of rebellion gave way for a change of how they were treated, how they were paid, and how they were respected.”
Activity Ideas for Discussion
It is important to have students share their experiences.
- Have students talk about the challenges they have had as a woman.
- Allow women of color, the space to freely and comfortably share their experiences.
- Have students compare and contrast their lives to women of color?
- Have students also look at how the experience of low-income women might be different from their own.
Discussion Questions
- How is the womanist tradition different from mainstream feminism?
- How do the two movements compliment one another?
- How might you address this topic in your classroom?
This article made me realize how many women of color struggled to find work in the early 1900s. It’s crazy the low income they earned for all the work they did. When I hear the term women’s rights, I often just picture white women and their rights, since that’s what we were taught in school and focused on. That is why it is so important in a classroom setting to focus on African American women in the early 1900s as well. They gave way to the future of equal rights and respect for all women. I think most people associate women back then as stay at home moms, that cooked and cleaned. While most African American women were working in industries and at home.
This Article made me think about way that black women’s lives were impacted in the 1930’s. when reading this it made me think of the movie, The Help. That movie described a lot of the situations that this article went over. It showed how the women went and raised the white family’s children, than had to go home and cook and clean for their own families. Through out the movie the women were inspired to start standing up for themselves, and that is aligned with how black women who worked as domestic servants were able to take a stand that directly impacted the way that they were treated. They worked long hours and got paid very little.
This article was very interesting to read as I had never heard much on the topic beforehand. I took history every year as required by my elementary, middle, and high school but this was a topic that was very little talked about or just completely avoided. I find it interesting as a future teacher that this was and still is true in schools. The history of all people of color is as important to the history of the United States, if not more, yet we still see topics such as this one being omitted from curriculum. When I am a teacher I plan to research topics such as this where I see gaps in the textbook and curriculum and ensure that all students have (at least) a base understanding of the importance of these issues.
I find this article very informative. I had never thought about how women of color are essentially excluded from feminism in the past. I also never realized how hard it was for people of color to get a job doing something other than being a domestic servant. This article would make a very important point in a history class however, I have been through multiple history classes and this concept has never been mentioned. People who support women’s rights should be very aware of this fact in hopes that they will come to realize that women of color are often left out. I do think that feminism can be whatever you want it to be so it is very good to see that others support it while having their own take on it.
This article was very interesting to me because it gave a clear example of how women of color were excluded from the feminists. They fought long and hard for womens rights only to ignore the rights of women who happen to be of color. It saddens me to know that women of color were discriminated against in such desperate times and still are today. Gender and skin color should not be the characteristics we judge ones work ethics on because it has nothing to do with how hard one works.
I feel like it is important to discuss how mainstream feminism tends to ignore the experiences of women of color. Though women experience injustices based on their gender, women of color experience these injustices in tandem with the injustice that coincides with being a member of a minoritized group. The womanist tradition is a movement that provides a necessary viewpoint when considering the experience of women in society, both historically and in modern day.
While mainstream feminism focuses on injustices that affect most women, the womanist tradition is a beneficial addition because it allows those studying it to understand the privileges held by women within the dominant racial groups and the injustices that women of color experience.The problems women of color faced during the time periods you described were not the problems faced by white women at these times. The womanist theory recognizes that these groups do not face the same injustices to the same extent, and this differentiation is important to discuss when theorizing potential solutions to said injustices.
My grandmother always told me that her mother was a housewife. She talks about dinner always being on the table when she got home for school. To be honest, it had not occurred to me that African American women were not given the same privilege. My grandmother talks about how it was hard for her parents during the Great Depression. As stated in this article, most women were forced to work during this time for a reduced wage. This is the first time I realized that the Great Depression would have been even more difficult for African Americans. They already had been working significantly different wages then their white counterparts. I am thankful that today, not every place is biased of African Americans and even women. I hope in 50 years, that racism will be a thing of the past.
Being a white male it was interesting to gain the perspective of working African American women. Though these women worked long, strenuous hours they were still not recognized as a respectable member of society. Their efforts in gaining equality and rights is one to be recognized and applauded. Their experiences in gaining better quality work, pay, and the way they were to be treated by employers is inspiring.
Often times in history, there is a pursuit for equality that directly neglects its total form. African men were given the right to vote long before women of the same color were able to. Society still favored the men and neglected the contributions of women. Specifically, black women routinely worked in white households from post-war America to the Civil Rights era. Because of this, they were able to protest dissatisfaction with their domestic work or lack thereof. The strife felt by low-income women then was much different than those of higher incomes that were predominatly white. The experiences of these women who lived through these events can still be taught and heard from them today. Any teacher from any subject should strive to include their stories within the classroom to spurr discussion.
I really enjoyed how African American women have their own specific part of feminism with the womanist tradition. I think the unique struggles should have a place in the movement although it was not part of the mainstream it was still just as important. This article made me think of the movie, The Help. That movie highlighted life for African American house workers. It went into detail of the long hours and countess chores, as well as how they were viewed in society. The women the movie focused on also took a part in changing the conditions as part of the civil rights movement.