A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing

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Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, New York Public Library

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1940s-1950s

Alice Childress

Writing Domestic Workers into Literature

Alice Childress (1916-1994) was an award-winning writer, playwright, director, and actress. She wrote about the everyday struggles that domestic workersA worker who performs paid labor in a home, such as cleaning, cooking, and caretaking. Their labor makes other forms of work possible. faced in the 1940s and 1950s.

Childress was born into poverty in Charleston, South Carolina. Like many Black women born in the 1910s, her great-grandmother had been enslaved. She moved to Harlem in New York City as a child, to live with her grandmother. She would later point to their weekly attendance at the local Black church as central to her education and desire to become a writer. She remembered, “We went to Wednesday night testimonials. Now that’s where I learned to be a writer. I remember how people, mostly women, used to get up and tell their troubles to everybody.”

These stories, and those of the women in her family, shaped Childress’ writing, as did her own experience as a domestic workerA worker who performs paid labor in a home, such as cleaning, cooking, and caretaking. Their labor makes other forms of work possible.. She was also active in New York City’s Black left feminist community in this period and their support of domestic workers influenced her writing. Childress would write over a dozen novels and plays, inspired by her desire to portray the complex lives of the “have-nots in a have society.”

Sources

Alice Childress, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic’s Life (Boston: Beacon Press, [1956] 2017), 3.

Philip Bader, African-American Writers (New York: Facts on File, 2004), 41.

Premilla Nadasen, Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015), 9.

Dayo Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 65, 108-9.

© Jennifer Guglielmo

AUDIO

00:00

00:15

Introduction

Introduction

0:15

Pre-Conquest

Domestic Labor as Sacred

1:09

Pre-Conquest

Indigenous Women's Power

1:44

1400s-Present

The European Conquest of the Americas

2:46

What is Capitalism?

2:11

1400s-Present

Capitalism and Colonialism

2:16

What is White Supremacy?

2:01

What is Patriarchy?

2:51

"Productive" vs Reproductive Labor

2:10

Patriarchy and Colonialism

2:03

1400s-

Creating a Servant Class

2:03

1500s-1700s

The Indigenous Slave Trade

2:22

1513-1821

Domestic Work in the Spanish Borderlands

1:33

1502-1527

Malintzin Tenepal

1:24

1500s-present

The Many Faces of La Malinche

2:41

1700s-1800s

Domestic Labor in the Catholic Mission System

1:46

1700s-1800s

Resistance in the Catholic Missions

2:11

1526-1867

The Transatlantic Slave Trade from Africa

1:50

What is Anti-Blackness?

1:44

17th-19th C

Plantation Slavery

1:17

1600s-1800s

Violence in the Plantation Household

1:15

1600s-1800s

Enslaved Women's Resistance

1:19

1822-1863

Emancipation Through Insurrection

3:55

1861-1865

The General Strike

1:21

1860s-1960s

Survival, Perseverance and Resistance

1:34

1860s-1920s

From Servants to Housekeepers, Cooks, and Washerwomen

1:52

Late 1800s to Present

The Mammy Figure and the Myth of Contented Servitude

2:38

1893

Aunt Jemima, Packaging Capitalism

2:49

1860s-1870s

Securing Autonomy Through Collective Action

1:19

1877

Anti-Chinese Racism Divides the 1877 Strike

2:23

1870s-1880s

Chinese Exclusion and the Creation of the "Illegal Alien"

2:13

1881

The 1881 Washerwomen's Strike

3:14

1860s-1880s

Building Domestic Worker Unions

3:08

1865 to present

Mass Criminalization

1:30

Late 1800s to early 1900s

Imprisoned Resistance

1:39

1821-1848

Domestic Work in the Mexican Borderlands

2:24

1821-1846

Resistance in the Mexican Borderlands

1:51

1848

"We Didn't Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us"

2:19

1870s-1930s

The Outing System

2:04

1870s-1930s

Menial Labor as Civilization

1:52

1880s-1930s

Rebellion in the Outing Program

2:05

1867-Present

Early U.S. Imperialism

1:43

What is Imperialism?

1:39

1890s-1920s

Early U.S. Imperialism and Migration

1:36

1898-1934

U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines

1:46

1890s-1910s

Creating the "Subservient Filipina"

2:21

1910s to the 1930s

Border Crossings

2:20

1917

Carmelita Torres and the Bath Riot of 1917

1:50

1920s-1950s

Clocking out for good

1:55

1920s-1950s

Dance and Survivance

1:53

1910s-1940s

Expanding Domestic Worker Unions

2:28

1915-1980

The Great Migration

1:58

1910s-1930s

Afro-Caribbean Domestic Workers

2:21

1930s-1940s

Origins of Home Health Care Work

2:10

1930s

Excluded from Labor Protections

1:32

1930s

Making Our Own New Deal

1:48

1956

Conversations about Domestic Labor

1:53

1930s-1990s

The Sexualized Latina

1:45

1960s-1970s

From the Caribbean Islands to New York's Suburbs

1:01

1940s-1970s

From Maids to Housekeepers and Nannies

2:49

1968-1994

The National Domestic Workers Union of America

2:23

1960s-1970s

"We Are Politically Strong and Independent"

3:15

1960s

Voter Registration and the Civil Rights Movement

3:11

1970

Winning Labor Protections at the State Level

2:49

1940s-1970s

Becoming Household Technicians

2:27

1971

The First National Organization

2:14

1960s-1980s

Storytelling to Build Solidarity and Power

2:08

1960s-1980s

“Our Right to Know”

2:31

1974

Finally, Minimum Wage

3:03

1970s-1980s

Threats to Publicly-Funded Home Care

1:45

1970s-1990s

“Take Us Out of Slavery”

3:53

1970s-Present

What is Neoliberalism?

2:35

1970s-1980s

A New Generation of Immigrant Domestic Workers

2:23

1980s-Present

Community-Based Worker Centers

1:22

1970s-1990s

U.S. Imperialism in Central America

2:38

1970s-1990s

Central American Migration to the United States

2:11

What is Solidarity?

1:55

1990s-Present

Teatro Popular

2:04

1970s-Present

Transnational Motherhood

2:00

1990s-Present

Chain of Care

2:10

2011

Diwang Pinay

1:17

1970s-Present

What is Human Trafficking?

1:16

1990s-Present

Trafficking Survivors Fight Back

1:33

2006

“Today we march, tomorrow we vote!"

2:34

2003

The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

2:14

2007

The Founding of the National Domestic Workers Alliance

2:19

2006-Present

Building an International Movement

2:27

2011

Winning An International Organizing Tool

2:34

2010s-Present

Latin American Domestic Workers Lead the Way

2:49

2016-Present

Care in Action

2:50

2018

The First Domestic Workers Standards Board

1:43

2019

NDWA's Roma Campaign

1:32