Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940

by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

This oral history portrays the lives of African American women who migrated from the rural South to work as domestic servants in Washington, DC in the early decades of the twentieth century. In Living In, Living Out Elizabeth Clark-Lewis narrates the personal experiences of eighty-one women who worked for wealthy white families. These women describe how they encountered—but never accepted—the master-servant relationship, and recount their struggles to change their status from “live in” servants to daily paid workers who “lived out.”

With candor and passion, the women interviewed tell of leaving their families and adjusting to city life “up North,” of being placed as live-in servants, and of the frustrations and indignities they endured as domestics. By networking on the job, at churches, and at penny savers clubs, they found ways to transform their unending servitude into an employer-employee relationship—gaining a new independence that could only be experienced by living outside of their employers' homes. Clark-Lewis points out that their perseverance and courage not only improved their own lot but also transformed work life for succeeding generations of African American women. A series of in-depth vignettes about the later years of these women bears poignant witness to their efforts to carve out lives of fulfillment and dignity.

Genres: History, American History, Race, Read For School, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 1994

Reviews

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended oral histories of women who left their southern homes at the turn of the century to work in Washington DC. Amazing to think that all these women were still alive when I first moved to the States.

[Jen Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this one after we moved into a Victorian-era house that still has architectural evidence of domestic servants. I was curious what the lives of these people were like, but I learned so much about the Great Migration, too.

[Antaje Aldridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Clark-Lewis through the narratives of the women who witness the migration and their stories. This book is recommended in showing the discrimination that African American women faced during the Jim Crow era.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting analysis of oral histories surrounding African-American women who moved to the North during the Great Migration.

[Austin High]

331.4 CLA