In Black America

Speaker: From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio. This is in black America.

Blair LM Kelley: Black women were, were part of this household of labor and, and the work that they had to put in in this field was, was really hard. And so you had black women who were, uh, taking in laundry in the south in early days and trying to, uh, build a cash base and the independence.

You have black women who are migrating in the 20th century away from agricultural work who end up in, in domestic household labor, uh, working for white households as made. Uh, nannies cook and, and, you know, really, really suffering under a, a lot of victimization, a lot of sexual exploitation, uh, not being protected by the labor laws that click in For most workers in the 20th century, neither agricultural workers nor domestic workers were protected.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Dr. Blair Kelly noticed scholar of Black History and the African-American Experience Director of the Center for the Study of the American South Co-Director of the Southern Future Initiative, and author of Black Folk. The roots of the Black Working class published by Live Right Publishing Incorporated in her book, Keller Restored the African American working class where it should be at the center of the American story.

The journey takes us from Georgia to Philadelphia, Florida to Chicago and Texas to Oakland. We learned of the resilience of the community found among African American workers in the face of adversity. Taking the jobs shunned by white people, black folk found solace and supporting intimate spaces with the confines of racially segregated neighborhoods.

Also, Kelly takes us beyond during African American workers, sos laborers, class members or activists, recognizing them as individuals who everyday experiences matter. I’m John L. Hansen Jr. And welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week’s program, black Folk, the Roots of the Black Working Class with Dr.

Blair Kelly in Black America.

Blair LM Kelley: So I think of the solicitor story, the story of my great-grandfather, solicitor Duncan. Um, as the founding story of my family, uh, it was a story my mother, uh, who passed away about 10 years ago told me very frequently. It was a story that my grandparents told all the time, and it was really the story of how we came.

Uh, north our migration story and, uh, my great-grandfather was a preacher, but he was also a sharecropper and he basically had the value of his crop stolen by the landowner. Told that he owed money at the end of the year, and so he fled. In the nighttime, in the dark with his, his family and his wife, and to move to North Carolina out of calmer Georgia.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Drawing on family histories and continuing into the archives, black folk illuminates the adversities and joys of the African American working class in America in the past and present. Covering 200 years from one of Dr. Kelly’s earliest known ancestors and enslaved blacksmith to the essential workers of the COVID-19 Pandemic black folk highlight the lives of the washer women, Pullman Porters, domestic maids, and poster workers who entrenched the African American working classes of forest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Through emotional stories of a great-grandfather, a sharecropper named solicitor, and a grandmother Bruell, who worked for more than a decade, is domestic. Maid. Kelly captures in intimate detail how generation after generation of labor was required to improve and at times maintained her family status Recently in black America, spoke with Dr.

Kelly.

Blair LM Kelley: You can call me Dr. Blair anytime. I’m, I’m thrilled to be here.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Of all the websites I went to, to find out a little bit more about yourself, I couldn’t as, as find out where were you born and raised.

Blair LM Kelley: I was born in Kansas, New Jersey. I was raised in South Jersey, but I am the child of, you know, southern folks and so it all interconnected for me.

My version of New Jersey is not everyone else’s version of New Jersey because it, you know, my grandmother had a lot of land and everybody was growing food in the yard, so it just wasn’t that. North Jersey, more urban experience that a lot of people have.

John L. Hanson Jr.: And before we started this conversation, I was talking about starting the conversation at the beginning of the book, but I wanted to start at the conclusion because what you wrote about your grandmother really reminded me of the time I spent with my grandmother as far as learning how to.

Cook and come conversation she was having with her sisters and what have you. Talk to us about your grandmother and how that had an, a lasting effect on who you are today.

Blair LM Kelley: Yeah. My grandmother was, uh, Brunell Rayford Duncan. Uh, she was born in Newbury, South Carolina. Um, but she migrated with her family as a young girl, uh, to Thomasville North Carolina, and then on to Philadelphia.

Uh, eventually, um, you know, building a home for herself in South Jersey and West Atco, New Jersey, and she was such an incredible influence on me. She was, uh, a Deacon Nest. My grandfather was a deacon. She had. Basically land that should have been for three houses. Uh, so she had the one house, she had like her big garage and then she had all these fields and so she would plant corn and tomatoes and okra and string beans and strawberries.

She had grapevines and so beautiful marigolds lining her long driveway. So I just spent my young childhood. In her yard. Um, learning from her in her kitchen where she was canning and cooking those chicken and dumplings and making, she was the best pie maker by far. She would burn her cake sometimes, but those pies were always perfect.

And so just learned so much about where I came from, um, and who I was from my grandmother.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Now from your grandmother to your mom, talk to us about her. I understand she, you know, worked in the shipyard, a navy yard. I mean

Blair LM Kelley: Yeah. She worked in the Philadelphia Navy yard.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Okay.

Blair LM Kelley: Um, that was a job she got after the, basically after the advent of the civil rights movement.

So after the 1950s, she was able to get a job at the, the, uh, Philadelphia Navy Shipyard. A place of importance for my whole family, my mother. And father met on a bus at the shipyard, and my daddy was like, that’s gonna be my wife. So that was a place where, you know, there really was an opportunity and transformation for my grandmother and, and for the rest of my family as well.

John L. Hanson Jr.: What made you undertake this journey of telling your family’s ancestry?

Blair LM Kelley: I, when thinking about writing about the black working class, wanted to make sure. That I was thinking through my family’s history and centering the way that I talk about the black women class through their everyday experiences, and that was so important for me as I thought about the everyday people that I wanted, the Chronicle, the oral histories I wanted to use.

My family is not extraordinary. They weren’t leaders of movements or those kinds of things, but they were. Exemplary in teaching us why everyday people matter. So starting with them was just a gate gateway for thinking about this history.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Now when most people think of the working class, African Americans are not thought of in those terms.

Why? So

Blair LM Kelley: I think we center, uh, the white working class politically in, um, this time period. You know, we only really think about the working class during election season, and reporters will go to a diner somewhere in the Midwest and find some folks to talk to. And we’ve centered, you know, this white working class as the American working class and we’ve erased people of color in general and black people in part.

From our understandings of it. But if we put black people back into the story, we learn a whole lot. They’re not just a parallel subset, just like white working class communities. They are really unique people who’ve gone through a tremendously challenging, uh, journey, but also built some amazing things in the process.

And so there’s a lot to learn from that history.

John L. Hanson Jr.: I found it interesting and as far as a history lesson that you talk about how slavery had an effect on, on, on people of color, but also how the land was distributed and when African Americans wasn’t afforded that same opportunity, considering the land was owned and, and and cultivated by Native Americans.

Talk to us about that history.

Blair LM Kelley: I think, you know, when we think about it. From these origins, from a native point of view, um, that people who had been on this land for centuries and who were forcibly removed from their historic land, uh, and then that land was made productive with the stolen labor of Africans.

We have to, we have to think of that long story. So, you know, I, I do that over and over and over again in the book. I talk about. Our native presence, their removal, and, and then the, the, the building, the upbuilding of enslavement as the means by which, uh, the colonial experiment in this country and the expansion of this country was facilitated.

But in that process, black Americans were paying attention to what they saw, uh, who they were, the role that they played, the wealth that they built. And so when they finally did reach freedom, well, they were prepared to really think about. Um, the ways to strategize, ways to build collectively and ways to use the community they had fostered in enslavement, uh, for their benefits.

John L. Hanson Jr.: You begin the book with solicitor John d. Why that particular ancestor over someone else?

Blair LM Kelley: So I think of the solicitor’s story, the story of my great grandfather solicitor Duncan, um, as the founding story of my family. Uh, it was a story my mother, uh, who passed away about 10 years ago, told me very frequently.

It was a story that my grandparents told all the time, and it was really the story of how we came, uh, north, our migration story. And, uh, my great-grandfather was a preacher, but he was also a sharecropper. And he basically had the value of his crop stolen by the landowner. Um, told that he owed money at the end of the year, and so he fled in the nighttime, in the dark with his family and his wife, and to move to North Carolina out of calmer Georgia.

And that founding story really was my mother’s way of saying, you know, we were. Sure of ourselves, we were accomplished and yet we were cheated and there was nothing that was wrong with my family and having to leave. There was something wrong with the system that forced them to run like slaves, even as free people.

And so I wanted to start the story there. That’s not the normal working class. Mm-hmm. Labor history story, but it’s black people come from. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s how we’re learning who we are in the world. It’s, it’s a common story and I just wanted to begin there as a different kind of framework for thinking about the meaning that can be found in a black working class.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Now, solicit the left South Carolina and went to Thomasville and the situations there wasn’t as much. Better than what he had just left.

Blair LM Kelley: Absolutely. My family, um, both branches of my family, uh, my, my grandmother’s family leaves Newbury, South Carolina and goes to Thomasville. My grandfather’s family leaves Comer, Georgia and ends up in Thomasville.

That’s where my grandparents meet and where my mother was born. And, uh, Thomasville wasn’t any better because of the segregation. There. They, they were a lot of carpenters in my family and they wanted to do that work. Um, black men weren’t being that given that opportunity to be furniture makers. Um, they were only janitorial staff at, if at all, in those big factories.

And so my family kept moving and, and kept trying to seek out a better situation and, and all end up, uh, the surviving folks who, uh, make it past Thomasville end up in Philadelphia and then in South Jersey.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Tell us why Philadelphia, above all them places North.

Blair LM Kelley: I, I dunno, that’s a, that’s an interesting question.

I guess that’s where they got off the train.

John L. Hanson Jr.: I heard that.

Blair LM Kelley: And, you know, you know, the migration stories are so amazing because like, if you have one relative who goes mm-hmm. And that, that’s the place that stacks up and everybody ends up going there. So it’s amazing. You know, as I’ve, I’ve researched the far off branches of cousins and families.

They’re all in Philadelphia for the most part. I have a few relatives that kept going, uh, to New York and a few relatives that made it to Boston, but, um, Philadelphia was where 90% of them stopped on both branches and, and really lived right there. I.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Before African American women became domestic workers, they also, they worked in the fields.

Talk to us about that experience when you write about them toing the soil, but it was something that they were looking forward to for a better existence.

Blair LM Kelley: Yeah, I think, you know, black women were, were part of this household of labor. Um, and, and the work that they had to put in, in the fields was, was really hard.

Uh, and so you had black women who were taking in laundry in the south in, in early days and trying to build a cash base and independence. You have black women who are migrating in the 20th century away from agricultural work who end up in, in domestic household labor, uh, working for white households as maids, uh, nannies, cooks, and, you know, really, really suffering.

Under a, a lot of victimization, a lot of sexual exploitation not being protected by the labor laws that click in For most workers in the 20th century, neither agricultural workers nor domestic workers were protected, and domestic workers are still not protected today. They’re still suffering under sort of the segregationist mindset of those earlier policies.

And so it’s an incredible story, but again, it’s a story of of, of fighting back, of organizing and resistance, uh, that also has to be told at the same time.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Now we somewhat romanticized about cotton being king, but during that period, slave holders measured productivity by the weight of the cotton, which they picked that day.

Blair LM Kelley: Yes, absolutely. And so you can, you know, in those historic photographs you can see, you know, these massive, uh, bundles of, of cotton picked by individual, uh, hands in the field. And it, it’s incredible, you know, when you think both of the skill that the enslaved and then the free folks, uh, who did that work, had to put into, um, uh, harvesting that cotton and then the, the, the fundamental devaluation of them as people, uh, as humans, that that’s still part of it.

Um, you know, I, I, now I’m talking about this book, I meet people who all the time are like, I picked that cotton. I know that work, my mother and my father picked their cotton. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s a, a tremendous part of our legacy as the skill of our, our hands, making this country wealthy and yet, um, robbing us of our future in many key ways.

John L. Hanson Jr.: I found it interesting when you wrote about slavery, but you also wrote about the overseers and how they kept the enslaved, or called the the folks in Bonders, in check choc was how that mentality worked in their favor, but it also worked against them in the long term.

Blair LM Kelley: Yes. I think it’s really powerful for us to remember that the white working class of the South really had to participate in the slave economy because that was the only economy around them, and so they were the infrastructure that made plantations function.

They were the controls and the checks. On the enslaved who were always resisting and always fighting back. Um, so they were trying to keep pace in the field. They were trying to, they worked as patroller keeping, um, the enslaved from escaping on the roads. And so, um, it, it, it, it put a damper on the whole economy.

If you’re a, a free farmer and you’re competing with somebody that holds a whole bunch of people in bondage up the street, you, you’re never really gonna make it. And you’re never, um. You’re never gonna be able to afford, uh, to compete in that kind of market. And so instead, they were paid with the what I, uh, a historian has called the, uh, the wages of whiteness, right?

This notion that somehow any second now, they were gonna burst forth and have, uh, a similar opportunity to own people in bondage. Most of those, those, uh, slave holders began that process of inheriting slavery in colonial times. And so there really was no chance for a white working class, uh, to, to benefit from slavery the way that the others had.

But they were not seeing, uh, those slave holders as their competition, but as their their peers,

John L. Hanson Jr.: they sure didn’t. This is in Black America. We’ll be back with more of our conversation in a moment. If you’re just joining us, I’m Johnny O. Hanson Jr. And you’re listening to In Black America, from KUT Radio and speaking with Dr.

Blair m Kelly PhD, the Joe R. Williams, distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and author of Black Folks, the Roots of Black Working Class. Talk to us about the, the. As I stated earlier, my grandmother was a a washer woman. Talk to us about washer women and how that particular profession really led to the modern day black middle class.

Blair LM Kelley: Yes, I mean, I loved having the opportunity to write about washer women really. A class of women who were so independent, uh, so determined to set the terms of how they would work, that the way that wash was done throughout the entire region was set by black women. Mm-hmm. Uh, white customers, they wanted.

Black women to labor in their yards or in their household, right? Mm-hmm. They wanted their stuff done faster. They’re like, why does it take so long? But as a class across the south, black women determined the schedule of picking it up on a Friday or Saturday. Uh, when they dropped off the previous load and then having the entire week to, to wash on Monday, dry on a Tuesday, press on a Wednesday, fold stuff up and deliver it back on that Friday or Saturday.

That was a powerful, uh, labor negotiation that happens. Right? One of the very first unions I could find of black women was the washer women of, of Jackson, Mississippi, who in 1866. A year after freedom come together and demand a living wage, demand certain terms for doing their work, demand, that independence.

Um, these women come out of bondage with a full sense of who they are as a class and what they can demand because of the stigmatization on doing laundry that white women suffered. And so they knew that if only black women are gonna do this whi then we’re gonna set the terms of how we do it.

John L. Hanson Jr.: I found it interesting because I was kind, I was kind of remembering how my grandmother, uh, used to wash clothes and press and get them starch, but it was interesting prior to modern day laundry assistance.

Mm-hmm. Talk to us about how they made a way outta basically a noway.

Blair LM Kelley: It was, it’s powerful when you think about it. It really is. My, my namesake is, is a woman named Julia Blair, my great grandmother. Mm-hmm. And she was a washer woman. It, it, it. They made their own soap exactly from my ashes. They, they found refuge to use in their fires.

They boiled their own board. They made bluing, they made starch. They, they, they knew how to raise stain with concoctions that they of clay and different things around the, their, their household. They were really skilled workers. We, we think of this as unskilled labor. But boy, if you can take a piece of iron, hot iron and put on some coals, and then get those clothes smooth and clean and just pristine, no polyester in, in any, uh, fabric at that time, right?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So everything had to be pressed. It, it was powerful knowledge and skill and how that they brought to bear. They train, they train their children, generation after generation to do this work. Um, it, it, it’s a powerful cohort. And, um, really a, a, a wonderful opportunity for us to really remember the labor that went into everyday, household, past,

John L. Hanson Jr.: exactly back to domestic workers.

It’s been in movies and ized that when African American domestic workers worked in the home, uh. The people they were working for, considered them part of the family. But, uh, the workers had a dis different attitude and a different frame of, of mine talked to us about that.

Blair LM Kelley: A part of the family who you didn’t know anything about.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Exactly. Exactly.

Blair LM Kelley: I always, you know, people love to tell me those stories. Mm-hmm. I heard one recently we’re like, oh, we just, you know, buried her and she was so wonder, she was like my sister. I was like, well, did you make sure she had a retirement account? I gotcha. But anyway. Mm-hmm. The women who worked in household, my grandmother did that work, um, for more than a decade, uh, in Philadelphia, really suffered a unique burden.

So many of them had to worry about being assaulted. Uh, sexually in those homes, uh, they were isolated as workers, you know, so when you’re working in the home, there’s no, uh, cohesion with other women. Most, in most cases, you, you are oftentimes, you know, away from your own household and your own children, uh, for hours or sometimes days at a time.

If you were a live in domestic, um, it’s hard work. It’s kind of boundless and endless what people could ask for and would demand of women just simply because they could in times of, um, depression or, um. Um, the Great Depression women, you know, oftentimes were ripped off and not paid, you know, suffering from wage theft, um, giving clothing or food or, or nothing at all for the time that they were working in households.

It was really hard work, and yet those women. Build with each other. Uh, they organize in unions. They, um, come together on their buses or their street cars or their stoops when they do get back to their neighborhood and they, they talk together and they strategize together, and they too are the building blocks of, of how, um, black life came together in so many communities.

John L. Hanson Jr.: That takes me to my next question. The Freeman’s pension Bill. Talk to us about that, that particular legislation that actually started out as, as something of, of, of a fantasy, but actually grew into something that was beneficial.

Blair LM Kelley: Uh, yes. Uh, it, we get to talk about C House.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Yes.

Blair LM Kelley: Uh, one of my favorite figures in American history.

You know, so much of a conversation about. Reparations that we are having today, uh, is forgetting Callie house. Uh, a black woman, uh, who was, um, you know, a, a washer woman herself, a seamstress, the daughter of, um, enslaved people. Um, and, and wanted to make sure that the. The aging people around her who were ex-slaves had some, uh, um, support as they aged.

And so she thought of a pension movement. It was a bit of a scam that a, a white man, Mr. Vaughn, Mr. Vaughn at the time, but she turned that scam into. A mutual aid society and a and a call, and a demand for recompense for what black people had suffered. And it was one of the largest organizations in the 19th century of black folks who were organizing to say Yes.

Did the former slaves deserve? Something and, and, uh, repayment for what they suffered as in, in bondage. Um, she was arrested under federal charges for church, trying to organize this and served time in, in federal prison because of it. Um, but boy, what a vision. Uh, a vision that we still have yet to fulfill.

John L. Hanson Jr.: And as I stated earlier, my uncle was a Pullman porter, but

Blair LM Kelley: yes.

John L. Hanson Jr.: I had a interview some years ago on the rail of Pullman Porters. One would’ve thought that was a, it was at the time, it was a dream job, but it was a job that took a whole lot of time and dexterity, and it wasn’t really that advantageous for African American men.

It was a better job than working in the field, but. All you do is subs look like they substituted one slavery type of, of, of, of function for another.

Blair LM Kelley: I mean, it’s really powerful. You know, I remember my mother wanting me to understand that, like being a Pullman porter, being a postal worker, being an elevator operator.

These were jobs that black men, you know, could excel in because, you know, there was so few opportunities. And so, she said that the Pullman porters were just so important in that, in the neighborhood and in the community. And they were, um, they were the most well-traveled black people in America. Uh, George Mor Pullman, who founded, um, the, the Sleeping Cars on Trains had the, this vision of having the black male man service who would be, uh, hearkening back to slavery on his train cars.

Um, but they couldn’t

John L. Hanson Jr.: have a college education. High school was as far as they could go.

Blair LM Kelley: High school was as far as they were supposed to go. Exactly. Some of that cause Exactly. Anyway. No wages and that wisdom. Um, but boy, he ended up accidentally putting together, uh, a profoundly powerful voice and vision, uh, for black labor in America, the largest private employer of, of black men and women in, in the country.

John L. Hanson Jr.: Dr. Blair Kelly noted scholar of Black History and the African-American Experience Director of the Center for the Study of the American South Co-Director of the Southern Future Initiative and author of Black Folk, the Roots of the Black Working Class. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions as to future in Black America programs, email us at In Black america@kut.org.

Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and X. You can find previous programs online@kut.org. Also, you can listen to a special collection of In Black America programs at American Archive of Public Broadcasting. That’s American archives.org.

The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessary though of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin In Black is a listener supported production of KUT and KUTX in Austin, Texas. You can support our work by donating@supportthispodcast.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez.

I’m John L. Hansen Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week.

Speaker: Cd copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America. CDs, KUT Radio 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas 7 8 7 1 2. That’s in Black America. CDs, KUT Radio 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard.

Austin, Texas 7 8 7 1 2. This has been a production of KUT radio.