Women on the plantation, both black and white, were not merely left behind during the Civil War, but instead right at the center of victories and defeat. Beautiful pictures are created of southern belles and beaux with lavish entertainment, yet the strenuous work needed to maintain the extravagant estates is left out.…
During the 1900s, the American South was synonymous with Jim Crow laws and segregated facilities for African Americans and whites. However, since the establishment of Bassett Furniture African Americans were allowed to participate in the economic growth of the factories. In Factory Man, Beth Macy stated, “Unlike the employees in the white-only mills in nearby Martinsville and Fieldale, Bassett’s workforce was 20 percent black from the very beginning” (48).…
The African, female slaves, were basically brought to the colonies as an investment to the plantation owner. They were able to work like the men in the fields, and most significantly could reproduce more native-born slaves, which meant more property for the slave owner. They were only fit to marry with other slaves secretively, because marriage between slaves was not accepted by the colonies. Female slaves that didn't farm the land next to their male counterparts were in the homes with the upper class women. They cared for the children of the household, cleaned, cooked and helped in any way necessary. Working indoors was not surely better than working outside. In the fields, groups working together were not always watched by their masters, but being in the house meant continuous supervision and higher risk of sexual abuse. Constant physical labor like doing the laundry, carrying water and routine chores such as clearing chamber pots and making beds was expected day to day. They were also on call of their masters and master's wives 24 hours a day. The slave women that worked in the fields during the day, also had to prepare dinner for their families after the long day of work. Normally they would not even get a day off during the week, so they would have to fake illness, or labor to…
The American economy was growing and changing in the mid 1800’s and new technology meant more demand for work. With the demand for work increasing the work place also changed from just men working to both men and women working. This new trend was set in Lowell, Massachusetts by a man named Cabot Lowell. Cabot had seen the textile factories in England and he wanted to make sure that his factories were not as dirty as the ones in England. To give his companies a good name he made sure that the general public saw the woman that worked in his factories as pure church going woman (Wheeler and Becker, 136). Despite the efforts to make woman working in factories popular there was a lot…
Women getting the short end of the stick has been a prominent trend for ages. It is no different in the 1800s. Women in the 1800s did not have a large variety of fields to work in, thus many worked in mills where their wages were generally half of that of a male’s. Lowell mill was an attempt to make an industrial work place, without the…
“Women worked hard to create income for their family, such as making clothes from scratch, turning fresh raw game into meals, cleaning homes and baking” (Bowles, M. 2011). Women did just about everything that a man did on top of their own work; they had to be prepared for the unexpected. Women would have to do other things like, tending to the farm animals, and handling the crops. Where democratic freedom is concerned, women fell short along with African Americans for the longest of time. 1842-1932, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson,…
During the 1800s slavery was established. Slavery was common in the south, however slavery was abolished in several areas such as the North for example. Several African Americans for instance Harriet Tubman, she tried to escape from the South and tried entering the North for freedom and the pursuit of happiness. However this wasn’t any different from the South . Although slavery was abolished in the North, African Americans still had certain restrictions, therefore they were still slaves.…
The depression was a time of uncertainty, sorrow and pain. As a result, the farming industry was a very low point during the depression. People’s lives in farming were greatly influenced by the depression. Many people who were involved in farming were affected by the climate and economic instability causing many people to move to the cities.…
Ellis worked with both white and African American women in the cotton fields of the “great Cotton Kingdom”. Women were forced to reproduce large numbers of children. Women and children were the cheapest source of labor. Even during pregnancy, women were forced to work through their…
Economic freedom is the fundamental right of every person to control his or her own labor and property while political freedom is the freedom to exercise one’s rights as guaranteed under the laws of the country. In 1865 the African American Freedmen were finally given these rights under the 13th Amendment. It is not possible for the Freedmen to become politically free since they are not economically free because of the Vagrancy Act, the effect sharecropping had on their ability to make their own decisions, and the black codes implemented by the Southern States.…
This statement by William M. Tuttle shows the desperate situation black Souther migrants faced who “fled from oppression in the South to seek jobs and justice in the North”[ Harald Bloom and Blake Hobby, The American Dream (New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009) 178.] just as Mama and her husband did. Unfortunately, the situation…
While forced to largely remain in the domestic service and agricultural labor jobs they had performed during their enslavement8, freedwomen made a point of shaping their own working conditions and collectively resisting white employers' attempts to re-establish master-slave dynamics. They would, for example, refuse to work the fields with white overseers and to sign labor contracts.9 Domestic servants would dictate their own hours and split tasks to ensure only parts of the household work fell to them, as well as decline living in the servants quarters in the houses.10 These changes were reactions to the limited work opportunities, as African American women were excluded from about 86 percent of employment categories at the time11, to ensure their personal safety and stability for their own families in a society that made upward mobility for them near…
In the 1800’s women’s work exhausting, difficult the society was unappreciative. Women who couldn’t afford slaves to help were put permanently on household duties. Women would cook, clean, make clothing, take care of domestic animals, hunt, fish, and protect their family. There was a lot of work to be done as a colonial woman, especially since most had more than 8 kids to take care of. The wife of a family was an essential component. Without a strong and productive wife a family would struggle just to survive. Yet even though women had worked extremely hard day in and day out to ensure care of their family they were not allowed to speak among men, could not vote, and could not take part in government decisions.…
In her essay “Freedwomen’s Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina,” Leslie Schwalm describes land as critical to freedpeople’s freedom. She wrote, “land was critical to the freedom and independence they sought for themselves, their families, and their communities…freedom as their right not to simply survive, but to work and thrive without white intervention on the land they had worked as slaves.”19 Land, historically a prerequisite to voting, now became a symbol for independence and freedom. Mattie Curtis, a freedwoman, recalls her struggle after Emancipation, wrote, “De white folks hated de nigger den, ‘specially de nigger what was makin’ something, so I daren’t ax nobody whar de market wus.”20 Curtis exemplifies the ambition and desire to be able to have land and work for oneself, and the freedom it provides. The ability to work the land one owns without intervention of white people—that was…
They were mainly stay at home mothers and housewives. Since early times women have been viewed as a source of creating human life. “If a poor man wanted to send his children to the poor house then the woman could not object.” (Women Treated In The 1930s) Educated women learned to read and write at beginner level schools, they were not allowed to go to secondary school like men. Social classes between men and women did include race as a factor, “The typical black woman particularly in the south is a cook, housekeeper, nursemaid, or all three wrapped up in one for at least one white family. Therefore, she is the double matriarch, raising her own family and the families of her white employers” (JoAnne Marshall). in St. Louis Missouri black and white women finally united against unfair conditions. “In 1933, Connie Smith led a successful strike of 900 black women working in seven pecan-nut factories. Smith demanded higher pay, better working conditions, and the removal of differences in pay between black and white women workers. The factories' owner tried to divide the workers, offering white women an increase in wages if they returned to work. In answer to this, 1,500 women marched in protest to the city hall, forcing the factory owner to agree to the women's demands”(Women At Work). Due to this strike wages increased along with improved conditions and white and black women receiving equal pay.…