Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940

Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940

by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis
Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940

Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940

by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

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Overview

This oral history portrays the lives of African American women who migrated from the rural South to work as domestic servants in Washington, DC in the early decades of the twentieth century. In Living In, Living Out Elizabeth Clark-Lewis narrates the personal experiences of eighty-one women who worked for wealthy white families. These women describe how they encountered—but never accepted—the master-servant relationship, and recount their struggles to change their status from “live in” servants to daily paid workers who “lived out.”

With candor and passion, the women interviewed tell of leaving their families and adjusting to city life “up North,” of being placed as live-in servants, and of the frustrations and indignities they endured as domestics. By networking on the job, at churches, and at penny savers clubs, they found ways to transform their unending servitude into an employer-employee relationship—gaining a new independence that could only be experienced by living outside of their employers' homes. Clark-Lewis points out that their perseverance and courage not only improved their own lot but also transformed work life for succeeding generations of African American women. A series of in-depth vignettes about the later years of these women bears poignant witness to their efforts to carve out lives of fulfillment and dignity.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781588344427
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press
Publication date: 08/19/2014
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 256
File size: 10 MB

About the Author

Elizabeth Clark-Lewis is director of the Public History Program at Howard University and co-producer of the award-winning video Freedom Bags.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 God and they People: The Rural South 9

2 Who'd Have A Dream? the Migration Experience 51

3 New day's Dawning: the world of Washington 67

4 A' Endless Miration: Live-in Service 97

5 The Transition Period 123

6 This Work had A'End 147

7 Knowin' what I know Today 173

8 The sound Stays in my Ears 195

Notes 201

Index 239

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