"I think representation is how people are seen. It’s fundamentally about how the world sees us...."

“I think representation is how people are seen. It’s fundamentally about how the world sees us. In terms of domestic work, the way these women were seen was so utterly central to the way they were marginalized. Because houseworkers were seen as maids and servants, the mammy stereotype promoted the idea that they purely existed to serve white families and had no families of their own. That representation of the African American woman as a mammy defined the occupation for so long that I think transforming that representation or that self-presentation was really the crux of this movement. That’s when the women said, ‘we are not maids, we are not servants, we are not nannies, we are household technicians.’ “Household technician” is a slightly awkward term, but I think what it really symbolized for houseworkers is how their labor was skilled labor. Their labor was utterly important labor and it was work that needed to be valued.”

- How Black Domestic Workers Organized Without ‘The Help’