In 2011, African American scholars Dr. David W. Jackson III and Charletta Sudduth collaborated with University of Northern Iowa professor Katherine van Wormer, a white scholar, on an oral history project to record the experiences of African American women who had been domestic workers in the Jim Crow South before moving to Iowa. These oral histories, combined with additional interviews with white individuals whose families had previously employed Black domestic workers, contributed to the publication of The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South (LSU Press, 2012), co-authored by van Wormer, Jackson, and Sudduth. The collection includes material for 20 of the 50 individuals whose testimonies were recorded as part of this project.

Katherine van Wormer was born in 1944 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Van Wormer attended the University of North Carolina, where she studied English and became involved in Civil Rights and peace activism. Van Wormer continued her studies at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland and taught English before receiving a PhD in sociology from the University of Georgia and a Master of Science in Social Work from the University of Tennessee-Nashville. Van Wormer pursued a career in addiction treatment before becoming a professor of social work at the University of Northern Iowa. Van Wormer’s academic work focused on women in prison and addiction treatment. She published numerous articles and textbooks in her field. The oral history project for The Maid Narratives was initially inspired by van Wormer’s memories of growing up in the South and her interest in the 1930s Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) effort to record interviews with the last generation of men and women who were formerly enslaved. [Biographical information found in van Wormer’s biography as published on the University of Northern Iowa website]

David W. Jackson, III was born in Des Moines, Iowa and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jackson earned a BA in general studies, with an emphasis in African American World Studies, from the University of Northern Iowa; an MA in African-American World Studies from the University of Iowa; and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Iowa. His graduate research included a master’s thesis, titled “Colonial Origins of Instability: The Case of Nigeria,” and a dissertation, titled “The Walking Nkisis: African-American Material Culture in Iowa: A Case Study of Yard Art in Waterloo, Iowa,” which explored African American Iowans’ yard art collections. Jackson was an Associate Professor in the Africana Studies Department at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. He subsequently became a visiting scholar and Adjunct Assistant Professor in African American Studies at the University of Iowa, teaching courses on Africana Studies, the Black community, and African American culture, among other topics. In the early 2000s, Jackson produced a four-volume oral history video project, “African-American Voices of the Cedar Valley,” for which he received two awards. Jackson also produced a two-volume oral history video project focused on African Americans living in Denver, Colorado. Jackson authored several articles and the book Key Issues Confronting the Black Community in Denver, Colorado: A Community in Transition (2021). In 2012, Jackson was co-author of The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South; he conducted most of the interviews with African American women for the project. [Biographical information found in Jackson’s biography for the African American Voices of Cedar Valley project]

Charletta Sudduth of Waterloo, Iowa, was born in 1968. In 1991, Charletta D. Williams married Toril E. Sudduth. The couple had six children. Charletta Sudduth earned a BA in Liberal Arts (1992), an MA in Youth and Human Service Administration (1998), a Master in Social Work (2002), and an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (2011) from the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). In 2006, Sudduth began working for Waterloo Community School District as an early childhood consultant. Charletta and Toril Sudduth hosted a radio program called “Parents, Love Your Children” on the Waterloo, Iowa non-commercial educational African American radio station KBBG (88.1). The program included children’s story readings and parenting tips. Charletta Sudduth’s mother, Annie Pearl Stevenson, was a Civil Rights activist who previously worked as a maid in Oxford, Mississippi. Sudduth joined the Maid Narratives oral history project while she was a doctoral student at UNI. For the project, she interviewed her mother and several other African American women who had worked as maids in the Jim Crow south before moving to Iowa. [Biographical information found on the University of Northern Iowa and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier websites]