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Slavery at the South: A Negro Nurse
Independent, LXXII (Jan. 25, 1912), 196-200.
I am a negro woman, and I was born and reared in the South. I
am now past forty years of age and am the mother of three children
My husband died nearly fifteen years ago, after we had been married
about five years. For more than thirty years or since I was ten
years old I have been a servant in one capacity or another in
white familes in a thriving Southern city, which has at present
a population of more than 50,000. In my early years I was at first
what might be called a "house girl," or, better, a"house
boy." I used to answer the doorbell, sweep the yard, go on
errands and do odd jobs. Later on I became a chambermaid and performed
the usual duties of such a servant in a home. Still later I was
graduated into a cook, in which position I served at different
times for nearly eight years in all. During the last ten years
I have been a nurse. I have worked for only four different families
during all these thirty years. But, belonging to the servant class,
which is the majority class among my race at the South, and associating
only with servants, I have been able to become intimately acquainted
not only with the lives of hundreds of household servants, but
also with the lives of their employers. I can, therefore, speak
with authority on the so called servant question; and what I say
is said out of an experience which covers many years.
To begin with, then, I should say that more than two thirds of
the negroes of the town where I live are menial servants of one
kind or another, and besides that more than two thirds of the
negro women here, whether married or single, are compelled to
work for a living,-as nurses, cooks, washerwomen, chambermaids,
seamstresses, hucksters, janitresses, and the like. I will
say, also, that the condition of this vast host of poor colored
people is just as bad as, if not worse than, it was during the
days of slavery. Tho today we are enjoying nominal freedom, we
are literally slaves. And, not to generalize, I will give you
a sketch of the work I have to do and am only one of many.
I frequently work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. I am
compelled by my contract, which is oral only, to sleep in the
house. I am allowed to go home to my own children, the oldest
of whom is a girl of 18 years, only once in two weeks, every other
Sunday afternoon- even then I'm not permitted to stay all
night. I not only have to nurse a little white child, now eleven
months old, but I have to act as playmate or "handy andy,"
not to say governess, to three other children in the home, the
oldest of whom is only nine years of age. I wash and dress the
baby two or three times each day, I give it its meals, mainly
from a bottle; I have to put it to bed each night; and, in addition,
I have to get up and attend to its every call between midnight
and morning. If the baby falls to sleep during the day, as it
has been trained to do every day about eleven o'clock, I am not
permitted to rest It's "Mammy, do this," or "Mammy,
do that," or "Mammy, do the other," from my mistress,
all the time. So it is not strange to see "Mammy" watering
the lawn in front with the garden hose, sweeping the sidewalk,
mopping the porch and halls, dusting around the house, helping
the cook, or darning stockings.
Not only so, but I have to put the other three children to bed
each night as well as the baby, and I have to wash them and dress
them each morning. I don't know what it is to go to church; I
don't know what it is to go to a lecture or entertainment or anything
of the kind. I live a treadmill life; and I see my own children
only when they happen to see me on the streets when I am out with
the children, or when my children come to the "yard"
to see me, which isn't often, because my white folks don't like
to see their servants' children hanging around their premises.
You might as well say that I'm on duty all the time from sunrise
to sunrise, every day in the week I am the slave, body and soul,
of this family. And what do I get for this work this lifetime
bondage? The pitiful sum of ten dollars a month!
And what am I expected to do with these ten dollars? With this
money am expected to pay my house rent, which is four dollars
per month, for a little house of two rooms, just big enough to
turn round in; and I'm expected, also, to feed and clothe myself
and three children For two years my oldest child, it is true,
has helped a little toward our support by taking in a little washing
at home. She does the washing and ironing of two white families,
with a total of five persons; one of these families pays her $1.00
per week, and the other 75 cents per week, and my daughter has
to furnish her own soap and starch and wood For six months my
youngest child, a girl about thirteen years old, has been nursing,
and she receives $1.50 per week but has no night work. When I
think of the low rate of wages we poor colored people receive,
and when I hear so much said about our unreliability, our untrustworthiness,
and even our vices, I recall the story of the private soldier
in a certain army who, once upon a time, being upbraided by the
commanding officer because the heels of his shoes were not polished,
is said to have replied: "Captain, do you expect all the
virtues for $13 per month?"
Of course, nothing is being done to increase our wages, and the
way things are going at present it would seem that nothing could
be done to cause an increase of wages. We have no labor unions
or organizations of any kind that could demand for us a uniform
scale of wages for cooks, washerwomen, nurses, and the like; and,
for another thing, if some negroes did here and there refuse to
work for seven and eight and ten dollars a month, there would
be hundreds of other negroes right on the spot ready to take their
places and do the same work, or more, for the low wages that had
been refused So that, the truth is, we have to work for little
or nothing or become vagrants! And that, of course, in this State
would mean that we would be arrested, tried, and despatched to
the"State Farm," where we would surely have to work
for nothing or be beaten with many stripes!
Nor does this low rate of pay tend to make us efficient servants.
The most that can be said of us negro household servants in the
South- and I speak as one of them is that we are to the extent
of our ability willing and faithful slaves. We do not cook according
to scientific principles because we do not know anything about
scientific principles. Most of our cooking is done by guesswork
or by memory. We cook well when our "hand" is in, as
we say, and when anything about the dinner goes wrong, we simply
say, "I lost my hand today!"
We don't know anything about scientific food for babies, nor
anything about what science says must be done for infants at certain
periods of their growth or when certain symptoms of disease appear,
but somehow we "raise" more of the children than we
kill, and, for the most part, they are lusty chaps all of them.
But the point is, we do not go to cooking schools nor to nurse
training schools and so it cannot be expected that we should make
as efficient servants without such training as we should make
were such training provided And yet with our cooking and nursing,
such as it is, the white folks seem to be satisfied perfectly
satisfied I sometimes wonder if this satisfaction is the outgrowth
of the knowledge that more highly trained servants would be able
to demand better pay!
Perhaps some might say, if the poor pay is the only thing about
which we have to complain, then the slavery in which we daily
toil and struggle is not so bad after all. But the poor pay isn't
all -not by any means! I remember very well the first and last
place from which I was dismissed. I lost my place because I refused
to let the madam's husband kiss me. He must have been accustomed
to undue familiarity with his servants, or else he took it as
a matter of course, because without any love making at all, soon
after I was installed as cook, he walked up to me, threw his arms
around me, and was in the act of kissing me, when I demanded to
know what he meant, and shoved him away. I was young then, and
newly married, and didn't know then what has been a burden to
my mind and heart ever since: that a colored woman's virtue in
this part of the country has no protection. I at once went home,
and told my husband about it.
When my husband went to the man who had insulted me, the man cursed
him, and slapped him, and had him arrested. The police judge fined
my husband $25. I was present at the hearing, and testified on
oath to the insult offered me. The white man, of course, denied
the charge. The old judge looked up and said: "This court
will never take the word of a nigger against the word of a white
man."
Many and many a time since I have heard similar stories repeated
again and again by my friends. I believe nearly all white men
take, and expect to take, undue liberties with their colored female
servants not only the fathers, but in many cases the sons also.
Those servants who rebel against such familiarity must either
leave or expect a mighty hard time, if they stay. By comparison,
those who tamely submit to these improper relations live in clover.
They always have a little"spending change," wear better
clothes, and are able to get off from work at least once a week
and sometimes oftener. This moral debasement is not at all times
unknown to the white women in these homes. I know of more than
one colored woman who was openly importuned by white women to
become the mistresses of their white husbands, on the ground that
they, the white wives, were afraid that, if their husbands did
not associate with colored women, they would certainly do so with
outside white women, and the white wives, for reasons which ought
to be perfectly obvious, preferred to have their husbands do wrong
with colored women in order to keep their husbands straight! And
again, I know at least fifty places in my small town where white
men are positively raising two families a white family in the
"Big House" in front, and a colored family in a "Little
House" in the backyard In most cases, to be sure, the colored
women involved are the cooks or chambermaids or seamstresses,
but it cannot be true that their real connection with the white
men of the families is unknown to the white women of the families.
The results of this concubinage can be seen in all of our colored
churches and in all of our colored public schools in the South,
for in most of our churches and schools the majority of the young
men and women and boys and girls are light skinned mulattoes.
The real, Simon pure, blue gum, thick lip, coal black negro is
passing away certainly in the cities; and the fathers of the new
generation of negroes are white men, while their mothers are unmarried
colored women.
Another thing it's a small indignity, it may be, but an indignity
just the same. No white person, not even the little children just
learning to talk, no white person at the South ever thinks of
addressing any negro man or woman as Mr., or Mrs., or Miss. The
women are called, "Cook," or "Nurse," or "Mammy,"
or "Mary Jane," or "Lou," or "Dilcey,"
as the case might be, and the men are called "Bob,"
or "Boy," or "Old Man," or "Uncle Bill,"
or "Pate." In many cases our white employers refer to
us, and in our presence, too, as their "niggers." No
matter what they call us no matter what they teach their children
to call us we must tamely submit, and answer when we are called;
we must enter no protest; if we did object, we should be driven
out without the least ceremony, and, in applying for work at other
places, we should find it very hard to procure another situation.
In almost every case, when our intending employers would be looking
up our record, the information would be give by telephone or otherwise
that we were "impudent," "saucy," "dishonest,"
and "generally unreliable." In our town we have no such
thing as an employment agency or intelligence bureau, and, therefore,
when we want work, we have to get out on the street and go from
place to place, always with hat in hand, hunting for it.
Another thing. Sometimes I have gone on the street cars or the
railroad trains with the white children, and, so long as I was
in charge of the children, I could sit anywhere I desired, front
or back. If a white man happened to ask some other white man,
"What is that nigger doing in here?" and was told, "Oh,
she's the nurse of those white children in front of her!"
immediately there was the hush of peace. Everything was all right,
so long as I was in the white man's part of the street car or
in the white man's coach as a servant a slave but as soon as I
did not present myself as a menial, and the relationship of master
and servant was abolished by my not having the white children
with me, I would be forthwith assigned to the "nigger"
seats or the "colored people's coach." Then, too, any
day in my city, and I understand that it is so in every town in
the South, you can see some "great big black burly"
negro coachman or carriage driver huddled up beside some aristocratic
Southern white woman, and nothing is said about it, nothing is
done about it, nobody resents the familiar contact.
But let that same colored man take off his brass buttons and
his high hat, and put on the plain livery of an average American
citizen, and drive one block down any thoroughfare in any town
in the South with that same white woman, as her equal or companion
or friend, and he'd be shot on the spot.
You hear a good deal nowadays about the "service pan."
The "service pan" is the general term applied to"
left over" food, which in many a Southern home is freely
placed at the disposal of the cook or, whether so placed or not,
it is usually disposed of by the cook. In my town, I know, and
I guess in many other towns also, every night when the cook starts
for her home she takes with her a pan or a plate of cold victuals.
The same thing is true on Sunday afernoons after dinner-and
most cooks have nearly every Sunday afternoon off.
Well, I’ll be frank with you, if it were not for the service
pan, I don't know what the majority of our Southern colored families
would do. The service pan is the mainstay in many a home. Good
cooks in the South receive on an average $8 per month. Porters,
butlers, coachmen, janitors, "office boys" and the like
receive on an average $16 per month. Few and far between are the
colored men in the South who receive $1 or more per day. Some
mechanics do; as for example, carpenters, brick masons, wheelwrights,
blacksmiths, and the like. The vast majority of negroes in my
town are serving in menial capacities in homes, stores and offices.
Now taking it for granted, for the sake of illustration, that
the husband receives $16 per month and the wife $8. That would
be $24 between the two. The chances are that they will have anywhere
from five to thirteen children between them. Now, how far will
$24 go toward housing and feeding and clothing ten or twelve persons
for thirty days? And, I tell you, with all of us poor people the
service pan is a great institution; it is a great help to us,
as we wag along the weary way of life. And then most of the white
folks expect their cooks to avail themselves of these perquisites;
they allow it; they expect it I do not deny that the cooks find
opportunity to hide away at times, along with the cold "grub,"
a little sugar, a little flour, a little meal, or a little piece
of soap; but I indignantly deny that we are thieves. We don't
steal; we just "take" things they are a part of the
oral contract, exprest or implied We understand it, and most of
the white folks understand it Others may denounce the service
pan, and say that it is used only to support idle negroes, but
many a time, when I was a cook, and had the responsibility of
rearing my three children upon my lone shoulders, many a time
I have had occasion to bless the Lord for the service pan!
I have already told you that my youngest girl was a nurse. With
scores of other colored girls who are nurses, she can be seen
almost any afternoon, when the weather is fair, rolling the baby
carriage or lolling about on some one of the chief boulevards
of our town. The very first week that she started out on her work
she was insulted by a white man, and many times since has been
improperly approached by other white men. It is a favorite practice
of young white sports about town and they are not always young,
either to stop some colored nurse, inquire the name of the"sweet
little baby," talk baby talk to the child, fondle it, kiss
it, make love to it, etc., etc., and in nine of ten cases every
such white man will wind up by making love to the colored nurse
and seeking an appointment with her.
I confess that I believe it to be true that many of our colored
girls are as eager as the white men are to encourage and maintain
these improper relations; but where the girl is not willing, she
has only herself to depend upon for protection. If their fathers,
brothers or husbands seek to redress their wrongs, under our peculiar
conditions, the guiltless negroes will be severely punished, if
not killed, and the white blackleg will go scot free!
Ah, we poor colored women wage earners in the South are fighting
a terrible battle, and because of our weakness, our ignorance,
our poverty, and our temptations we deserve the sympathies of
mankind Perhaps a million of us are introduced daily to the privacy
of a million chambers thruout the South, and hold in our arms
a million white children, thousands of whom, as infants, are suckled
at our breasts- during my lifetime I myself have served as
"wet nurse" to more than a dozen white children. On
the one hand, we are assailed by white men, and, on the other
hand, we are assailed by black men, who should be our natural
protectors; and, whether in the cook kitchen, at the washtub,
over the sewing machine, behind the baby carriage, or at the ironing
board, we are but little more than pack horses, beasts of burden,
slaves! In the distant future, it may be, centuries and centuries
hence, a monument of brass or stone will be erected to the Old
Black Mammies of the South, but what we need is present help,
present sympathy, better wages, better hours, more protection,
and a chance to breathe for once while alive as free women. If
none others will help us, it would seem that the Southern white
women themselves might do so in their own defense, because we
are rearing their children we feed them, we bathe them, we teach
them to speak the English language, and in numberless instances
we sleep with them and it is inevitable that the lives of their
children will in some measure be pure or impure according as they
are affected by contact with their colored nurses.
Georgia
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