Domestic Workers in the South

Between the Civil War and World War II, millions of African American women earned their livings as cooks in white people's homes. Enslaved African Americans had cooked for their owners long before 1865, but after emancipation, many former field workers left the countryside and then had to find ways to make their livings in growing towns and cities. They quickly discovered that white families were willing to pay for domestic work, particularly laundry, child care, and cooking, and the women seized the opportunities before them. While most of these cooks were in the South, a large number moved North during the so-called Great Migrations that began during the 1910s.

 

By the 1930s, many African American women had found other means of supporting their families, but the majority of those employed still worked as domestics. In many ways, the work that these women did remained similar to what their mothers and grandmothers had done for more than half a century.

 

Many cooks balanced their daily meal preparation with tasks such as house cleaning and child care, but their primary work was to prepare two or three meals a day for their employers. If breakfast was part of her expected labor, as it often was, a typical cook left home while her own family was still in bed so that her employer's husband could have a hot breakfast before leaving for his workplace. The cook then turned her attention to the large mid-day meal, commonly known as dinner. Some cooks finished work by cleaning up from dinner, and others remained through the simpler evening meal, known as supper. In some households, cooks were at times expected to stay on to fix elaborate meals for company. They often dreaded preparing for guests, as the employer's reputation was at stake, and tensions and expectations often ran dangerously high.

 

The food that African American cooks prepared for their employers varied widely with the families' tastes, and each cook had to learn the preferences of her employers. Many southern families ate foods familiar for many generations. Cooks often prepared quick breads from flour, such as biscuits, or from cornmeal, and some continued to make yeasted wheat bread. Urban southerners had access to poultry and beef, as well as pork, which served as seasoning for vegetables as well as an entree. Frequently, town homes featured chicken yards to provide both eggs and meat. A cook could regularly find herself slaughtering and cleaning a chicken early in the morning for her employer's noontime meal. Less commonly, families, particularly in small towns, still kept cows in the yards of their homes during the 1930s, ensuring a supply of fresh milk and butter in season. Very few pigs lived in town, but because the meat preserved easily, pork remained extremely common for the great majority of southerners. Fresh fruits and vegetables varied not only with the growing season but also with the availability of trucks and trains to bring out-of-season produce from other parts of the U.S. Some employers had specific religious requirements, such as the Jewish dietary laws that required cooks to avoid pork and to separate meat and milk, or the prohibitionists who would not allow the use of alcohol in their food. And some cooks learned to work with foods entirely new to them, like avocados and Cornish game hens, for employers with adventurous palates.

 

People who employed domestic workers were often slow to invest in new kitchen technologies, since they were not the ones doing the labor such devices could ease. Despite the reluctance of their employers to provide up-to-date tools, almost all cooks at some point had to navigate changing kitchen equipment. Most southern urban homes by the 1930s had removed wood stoves in favor of gas or kerosene models. While cooking on a wood stove required great skill and care, so did adapting to a stove that used an unfamiliar fuel. Mechanical refrigeration, electricity, and running water spread unevenly through the South, even in large cities. The presence or absence of such utilities had a strong impact on a cook's day.

 

Domestic wage work is always challenging, in part because the work space is someone else's home, and employers have strong opinions about what takes place under their roofs. While genuine affection sometimes existed between employee and employer, friction more often ruled the day. The racial tensions of the South played out daily in the cooks' workplaces, as almost all of the cooks were African American and almost all of the employers were white. A cook might find herself segregated within her employer's home just as she was in public space by Jim Crow laws—limited, for example, to only the kitchen and the dining room. Although cooks spent their days preparing food for their employers, they almost never tasted that food in their employers' presence and in extreme circumstances were even forbidden from touching it with their hands. A cook might be fired for any perceived transgression, and sexual harassment by the male members of the employers' household was rampant. Not surprisingly, the turnover rate was high, as domestic workers often used their limited power to quit and search for better employers.

 

By the 1930s, very few cooks lived with their employers, preferring to have their own households away from their work, even though transportation costs could be great. Hours were generally quite long, from early morning until at least mid-afternoon or later, and many cooks worked six or six and a half days a week. Cash wages varied greatly but were almost always low. Some employers expected their employees to accept old clothing or other used goods in lieu of cash wages. The practice of "toting"—being paid in leftover food instead of cash—continued past the 1930s. While she might take greater care with a meal if she knew her own children would get part of it, a cook also had to wonder each day what she would be bringing to her family for their evening meal. Because of pressure from southern Congressmen, domestic workers and farm workers – who in the South were mainly African American – were excluded from the wage and hour legislation of the New Deal. One result was to make domestic service even less attractive than it had been compared to other occupations. As the 1930s drew to a close, domestic workers found little change in their working situations, and when the United States entered World War II, many eagerly left their employers' kitchens for the new opportunities brought by the wartime economy.

 

Rebecca Sharpless is professor of history at Texas Christian University and the author of Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010).