A Case of Black and White: White Women Protest the Hiring of Black "Wage-Slaves"

Abstract: Before the Civil War, some enslaved African Americans labored in Southern textile mills, especially in the spinning and weaving rooms. But with the jump in the price of slaves in the 1850s, manufacturers decided that poor white farmers provided a cheaper labor force. After the Civil War, the textile mill workforce remained entirely white for a number of reasons: landlords wanted African Americans to work in cotton fields; white leaders promoted industrialization as the salvation of poor whites; and the dominant racial ideology forbade the mixing of white women and black men in the workplace. Although planters and manufacturers had the most to gain from a segregated work force, white workers--as this 1898 protest from the women of Atlanta's Fulton Mills indicated--accepted the idea that factory work was the privilege of "loyal white citizens." There were few opportunities for white women to earn cash wages in this period, and family farms yielded little cash. The only jobs open to black women--domestic service--paid even less.

Details