In the summer of 1881, 20 formerly enslaved Black women and a few men met in a Summerhill church to form a union.
- What was dubbed the “Washing Society” became a political movement and an incredible, if little-known, moment in Atlanta history.
Why it matters: The “Washing Amazons” as they were also known, managed to execute a strike that was “the largest and most impressive among Black Atlantans during the late nineteenth century,” writes Tera Hunter, a Princeton University historian who studied the strike and more broadly Black women in the postbellum era in her book “To ‘Joy My Freedom.”
- “Southern black women’s labor stood on the periphery of the burgeoning economy in the new South, but their work was essential to its effective functioning. Few events in history would demonstrate this more profoundly than the washerwomen’s strikes,” Hunter writes.
The big picture: By 1880, laundry employed more Black women than any other domestic profession. There were more washerwomen than male common laborers, Hunter explains.
- The job gave women more independence than doing in-house cooking or cleaning for another family.
- Plus, demand grew after the 1870s recession. Many white people couldn’t afford in-house help and outsourced their washing.
What happened: After trying other tactics to force a wage increase, Hunter writes, by the summer of 1881, these Atlanta women decided to organize and set pay at $1 per dozen pounds of wash. Black ministers spread the word around the city, women went door-to-door recruiting members, and the society elected officers and created subsidiary societies in different city wards.
- Membership grew to 3,000 within weeks, including a small minority of white women.
Soon, as the city was in the throes of preparation for that fall’s much-anticipated world’s fair, the International Cotton Exposition, the women called for a strike.
- As the city geared up for the high-profile event, whose visitors would indeed require domestic labor like laundry, the strike got…
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