Reclaiming Labor History: How Domestic Workers Resisted Racism in the '60s and '70s

[marmar]

Reclaiming Labor History: How Domestic Workers Resisted Racism in the '60s and '70s

Sunday, 18 October 2015 00:00
By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview


The following is a Truthout interview with Premilla Nadasen about her new book, Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement.

Mark Karlin: You state that your book "offers an incredibly powerful, little-known story about working-class African-American women told through their own words." Why are their voices so important?

Premilla Nadasen: The story of household labor is often one of victimization. We frequently hear about the exploitation and abuse of household workers. It's not uncommon to pick up a newspaper and read about another domestic worker who has been mistreated or kept as a virtual slave. In these recountings of the occupation, the voices of domestic workers are muted and they are the object of our pity. We rarely get a chance to hear what they think, what they feel about their labor, their hopes and dreams. This story offers a different lens.

The African-American women at the center of my book organized a nationwide movement to challenge the basic contours of the occupation. They testified, they lobbied, they shared their stories, they wrote codes of conduct and they worked to educate employers. This is an example of an especially marginalized group of people who were deeply engaged in social reform and were able to shape their lives. They sought to bring dignity and respect to this occupation and aided in the passage of legislation that brought domestic labor under federal minimum wage protection after nearly 40 years of exclusion. How they achieved so much with so little is quite phenomenal.

Why does history remember so little about the activism and impact of African-American domestic workers who organized for better treatment, pay and respect in the '50s and '60s of the last century?

Historical narratives are shaped to a large degree by the available archival information. So, those people who kept papers, who wrote memoirs or who had access to media outlets dominate the historical record. People with little political clout and limited writing skills are often left out of the narrative. Marginalization in the archive, however, is not reflective of one's significance, as this movement so clearly demonstrates.

In addition, conceptual categories can be exclusionary or circumscribe our frame of reference. Feminism, for example, is often equated with the struggle of white middle-class women to enter the labor force, and this, of course, establishes boundaries about who is included in that framework. Although domestic workers were struggling for dignity and protections for women workers, they have not been considered a part of the larger women's movement. ..............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/33268-reclaiming-labor-history-how-domestic-workers-resisted-racism-in-the-60s-and-70s