Scope and Contents Dr. Hal Chase’s interview focuses primarily on his memories of the two domestic workers his family employed in their home. The first was a woman named Elsie Jackson, who was born in Oklahoma, and who worked for his family for about six years in the 1950s. After Chase’s parents divorced and his mother remarried, Jackson was let go. Chase attributes this to his stepfather’s opinion, which he characterizes as of his time and place, that Jackson was too independently minded. Chase’s perception is that Elsie Jackson did not enjoy her role and that she had ambitions beyond domestic work. The second woman Chase’s family employed was Leora Mitchell, a Roman Catholic woman from Kentucky. Chase describes learning about racial politics and humanity from her. He also recalls a boyhood friend, John Sykes, who his stepfather did not want him to be close with because he was Black. Chase also remembers a neighbor named Ora Jane Caise, a graduate of Kentucky State University, who worked as a...

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Verna Mae Dedrick’s interview focuses on her work as a housekeeper for several white families in Waterloo, Iowa, in the 1960s. Dedrick recalls her experiences cleaning and providing occasional childcare for $1.25 per day, a rate she insisted on despite the typical pay of $1 per day. Dedrick remembers having friendly relationships with the families she worked for and not experiencing some of the discriminatory treatment that African American domestic workers in the South did, such as not being permitted to use the front door or the bathroom.

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Nancy Hickman’s oral history interview focuses on her experiences growing up in Mississippi in a sharecropping family. Hickman describes a culture of integrated socializing between Black and white children in Mississippi. She also recollects her move to Des Moines, Iowa, where she worked as a housekeeper. While raising three children, she worked full days at multiple houses each week. Hickman recalls cordial relationships with many of the women she worked for, including sharing meals, watching television together, and talking about their personal lives. She says she was treated with respect by all of the families she worked for.

Scope and Contents Tyrone N. Hunt shares memories of his grandmother, Elmer Smith, and her experiences in domestic service. Hunt says that Smith cooked, cleaned, and took care of the children for a white family, the Gastons. Dr. Gaston was a medical doctor and owned a car dealership. Hunt recalls visiting his grandmother at work and walking along the shore of Mobile Bay with her. He says she entered the home through a side door attached to the kitchen. The Gastons gave her a card and money for her birthday, and food during the holidays. Smith worked for the Gastons for approximately 25 years, until she got cancer and was no longer able to work. The Gastons paid for her medical treatments. Hunt recalls his grandmother developing a connection with the Gaston children, who nicknamed her Bee Bee. He remembers that his grandmother was permitted to use the restroom in the Gastons home and may have eaten lunch at the table with them. Hunt describes his grandmother as the matriarch of their family, an active...

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Mamie Johnson recalls living and working in the South until the mid-1950s, when she moved to Waterloo, Iowa, with her husband and family. When she was a child, Johnson’s family lived and worked on white-owned land as sharecroppers. She had five siblings. Johnson worked in the field and for the white household, doing dishes, cleaning, and yard work beginning at the age of seven or eight. Johnson recalls the unspoken rules of racial etiquette that she and others lived by, such as being prohibited from using the front door or the outhouse at a white person’s home and being expected to address even children as “mister” or “miss.” Johnson speaks about the real and threatened violence that she and other African Americans lived under, including her own experience being harassed by white men and her vivid memories of Emmett Till’s murder and the subsequent trial.

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Jimmie Lane describes her first and only job in domestic service in Louisiana. Lane recalls that when she was in her mid-20s, she worked for the Waters family for a few months when her friend Nelly, the Waters’ regular maid, became ill. She remembers working four days a week, cleaning, running errands, taking messages, and occasionally babysitting the couple’s grandchildren. Lane recalls having a very friendly relationship with the Waters, with whom she often shared food and conversation. She shares memories of segregated schools and parks, African Americans being denied the vote, and watching Civil Rights protests and police violence on television.

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J.B. McCellan’s oral history interview focuses on his mother, Elra Wade Johnson, and her experiences working as a maid for a white family for three to four years in the 1940s. He characterizes her experiences differently than she did in an earlier interview, recalling that the family his mother worked for “treated her just like family.” [In a 2006 interview with Dr. David W. Jackson, III, which preceded the Maid Narratives project but was included in the book, Elra Johnson shared the racism she experienced from white families that she worked for. She described quitting a job after being made to use the back door and being made to eat off plates the family used to feed their dogs.]

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Ruthie O’Neal’s interview focuses on her grandmother’s and her experiences living with and working for Leland Norris, a white train driver and landowner. Helen Sisk worked in the house until she was in her late 60s, cleaning and looking after the children. When she was too old to continue the work, Ruthie Sisk took her place, living and working in the Norris home when she was in her early teens. O’Neal reflects on her family’s relationship with the Norrises and other white families and the racial etiquette that shaped their interactions. She describes having a positive relationship with Leland Norris, who regularly socialized with Black people, but says that his wife, Georgia Norris, was prejudiced. She shares an incident in which Georgia Norris used a racial slur to refer to her.

Scope and Contents Alberta Beaman Pugh and Shirley Joyce's interview focuses on Julia Boyd Beaman, mother to Pugh and grandmother to Joyce. Pugh discusses Beaman's work washing laundry for white families, as well as her own work as a child picking up and delivering laundry and pumping and carrying water with her siblings. Pugh speaks about not experiencing segregation in Buxton and says she did not see things like segregated water fountains or restrooms until she traveled to Alabama.Joyce describes accompanying Beaman when she did housekeeping work, remembering that she would help with dusting. She recalls that the white family her grandmother worked for treated her with respect (“They treated her more like one of their friends”), and that they would sometimes give her additional money, food, and secondhand children’s clothing. Joyce remembers that she and her grandmother shared meals with the family they worked for. She also mentions being able to use the restroom at the...

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Hazel Rankins describes her experiences in domestic service in Arkansas. She speaks about accompanying her sister to her job and helping with domestic work, such as sweeping and hanging laundry to dry. Rankins recalls having to use the back entrance at stores, as well as having to get in line behind white customers when making purchases in the store, even into the 1970s. Rankins remembers her sister discussing white men who she worked for trying to pressure her into sex, an experience she described as humiliating. Hazel Rankins describes having to use the back door and not being able to eat at the same table or off the same plates as white employers. She speaks about a cousin who spent time in jail because he would not tolerate racist boundaries and practices. Hankins shares an incident in which two of her cousins won a basketball game against a white team and were later run off the road and killed by some of the white players.

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Odessa Roberts shares her experiences in domestic service is Louisiana. She recalls a range of experiences working for white families. Roberts describes one family as nice; she was permitted to use the front door, to use the restroom, and they sent her home with leftover food. She describes a man in another family she worked for as being racist. Roberts recalls him not allowing her to use their washing machine or their clothesline to launder her own bedspread. She also recalls one of the children’s friends using a racial slur in conversation with her. Roberts discusses moving to Lincoln, Nebraska, where she describes her working conditions, pay, and treatment in domestic service work there as being better.

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Millie Saffold describes working as a cleaning lady for several white families in Iowa. She says she was not made to wear a uniform, she entered the house through the front door, and was permitted to use the restroom in the house. She also described unfair treatment, such as irregular employment from an employer who vacationed out of state for extended periods of time.

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Scott’s interview focuses on life growing up in Holmes County, Mississippi, as well as her experiences working with her grandmother, Pheobie Foster Walker, beginning at the age of nine or ten. She describes being allowed to use the front door at her employers’ home unless their extended family was visiting, during which they were made to use the back door. Scott recalls Black and white families in their area of Holmes County getting along well together but said that Ku Klux Klan members from other parts of the county would come to their area and harass people they knew to be part of the Civil Rights Movement, including her family.

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Loreatha Smith-Reid recalls her experiences growing up in Arkansas in a sharecropping family. Smith says she and her 19 siblings picked cotton and started working at a young age to help the family. She recalls that when she was nine years old, she started her first job cleaning houses for the Bowes family. Smith-Reid says that there was a dirty outhouse reserved for the use of “Coloreds” and that the husband, Lehman Bowes, was an angry and violent man who tried to sexually assault one of her sisters. In contrast, Smith says she had a friendly relationship with the white women whose houses she worked in as a child.

Abstract

Oral history interviews with African American women who worked in domestic service in the South before moving to Iowa.

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L. Walker shares her experiences growing up and working in Mississippi. She describes starting work at the age of nine doing childcare, cooking, and other domestic work. Walker recalls doing seasonal sharecropping work in the field and attending school sporadically for three months out of the year. She recounts a range of experiences with different white families she worked for. She describes one of the white women she worked for as being nice and “kind of like my mom.” In other households, there was a strong practice of segregation (e.g., Black employees were not permitted to use the restroom and had to eat outside). Walker recalls an experience when she was thirteen years old in which a white storekeeper attempted to sexually assault her. She connects her experience to stories of other Black girls in the area being sexually assault and killed by white men. Walker also speaks about white people in both Des Moines, Iowa, and Mississippi using a racial slur to refer to her.

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Dorothy Weathers’ oral history interview focuses on her experiences working as a cleaning lady in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1950s. She recalls working for a white couple, Fred and Patricia Pigott, for 44 years. Weathers describes having a positive relationship with them, noting that they paid her twice as much as many other women were making in similar roles. She remembers the Pigotts helping her navigate legal and financial decisions and says that Patricia Pigott encouraged her to pursue a formal education. Weathers also discusses her experience working for a Jewish family, the Michelins, for 22 years.

Scope and Contents In her interview, Irene Williams speaks about her grandmother taking care of her and her siblings when her mother had to leave home to work as a live-in maid. At the age of twelve, Irene Fuller began doing farmwork, and she recalls only being able to attend school when weather did not permit work in the fields. She describes her own work in domestic service—cleaning houses, cooking, and doing laundry—for three or four white families beginning around the age of sixteen. She recalls being paid very little, not always on time, and occasionally she was paid in secondhand clothes. She was not permitted to use the front door or the restroom at her employers’ home. She describes a time when white children called her and her siblings racial slurs. In the 1970s, Irene Fuller and her children moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where family members were already living. She worked for Holiday Inn and Hotel Fort Des Moines. She describes her life in Iowa as being better than her life in the South...