To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War

“The limitations of the extant evidence for the strike cautioned me about the difficulties of finding primary sources covering a broader scope. Just as the strike had yielded limited first-hand accounts by the women, finding direct testimony of black women would be my biggest challenge. The process of researching the strike also taught me how to make the most of sources that are typically used to study ordinary people but have less been frequently applied specifically to black women workers. By thinking expansively about how to find and interpret historical sources and scavenging for clues in whatever evidence was at hand, I was able to discover a great deal of relevant material about the broad dimensions of black and Southern lives.” 

Hunter addresses one of the significant challenges of finding information on African-American women of the working-class. This problem of methodology is a central one of writing history “from below,” history that focuses on ordinary people instead of great men like George Washington.

“Tillory replied, ‘To ‘joy my freedom.’” 

Hunter takes the title of her book from a Freedmen’s Bureau of ex-slave Julie Tillory, who explains why she came to Atlanta despite the severe economic challenges she was likely to encounter there. Hunter’s use of a working-class, African-American woman’s voice signals the centrality of this perspective to her historical project. It highlights her focus on leisure as a subversive activity in the lives of women like Tillory. 

“Atlanta was conspicuous within the region from its inception. The predominance of merchants and manufacturers and the absence of planters within the city’s economic elite invited early comparisons to the commercial ambitions of cities in the North. Even at this incipient stage of urban development, some Atlantans took pride in an entrepreneurial spirit that attracted young, upwardly mobile white men dedicated to commerce and industry, and this foreshadowed events and accolades to come [….] But even as Atlanta self-consciously touted itself as a progressive divergence from the South’s dependence on one-crop agriculture, it also resisted social and political change.” 

Hunter describes the peculiarity of Atlanta in the South even prior to the end of the Civil War. The characteristics she describes here are ones that positioned Atlanta to be a leading example of New South ideals.

“As African Americans asserted themselves during the heat of the war, they set the stage for the renegotiation of labor and social relations for many years to come.” 

Hunter gives numerous examples of African Americans contributing to the victory of the Union and advocating for themselves in Atlanta, even before the end of the Civil War. Their actions, she argues, formed the basis of their resistance to the domination of white employers following the war’s end.

“African Americans moved to the city not only in search of safety, but also in search of economic self-sufficiency. Though most ex-slaves held dreams of owning farm land, many preferred to set up households in a city with a more diverse urban economy. In Atlanta they encountered an economy that was quickly recovering from the war and continuing to grow in the direction propelled by military demands and the promise of modernization.” 

Hunter explains in this passage why African Americans left the rural South and moved to Atlanta. The rapid expansion of the African-American population in Atlanta owed much to the terrible conditions in rural areas. Hunter’s emphasis here, however, is on how working-class African Americans made strategic financial decisions about re-locating to the city. 

“Freedom meant the reestablishment of lost family connections, the achievement of literacy, the exercise of political rights, and the security of a decent livelihood without the sacrifice of human dignity or self-determination. Ex-slave women migrated to Atlanta, where they hope they would have a better chance of fulfilling these expectations. They were faced with many challenges; uppermost among them were the white residents who were resentful of the abolition of slavery and persisted in thwarting the realization of the true meaning of freedom.” 

An important theme in Hunter’s book is the resistance of working-class African-American women against the efforts of white employers to dominate labor relations. Hunter establishes that this struggle was an early feature of the labor relationships between blacks and whites. This quote also explains the major achievements spearheaded by working-class African-American women during the period of Reconstruction. 

“The range of job options for black women was severely limited to working for white families. But within these strictures, laundry work was the optimal choice for a black woman who wanted to create a life of her own. The washerwoman was the archetypal domestic laborer in Atlanta. By 1880, laundry work engaged more black women than any other single category of domestic work, and washerwomen outnumbered male common laborers.” 

Hunter describes the reality of the limited options African-American women had after slavery, but she also makes the point that they made decisions that prioritized what was important to them rather than their employers. Making optimal choices for family and community is a hallmark of the identities of the women Hunter represents in her work.

“Quitting was a thriving strategy for resisting domination precisely because it could not be prohibited in a free labor system.” 

Regardless of their low wages and need for regular employment, black working-class women still managed to assert themselves, even as white employers attempted to control them. Quitting, along with “pan-toting” and collectively supporting one another, were just some of the many ways they managed to assert agency. 

“Scavenging, borrowing, and pan-toting helped to increase the provisions for subsistence of those with little cash [....] They conducted this activity at the level of neighborhoods, creating informal social networks in communal laundry spots, on the streets, in lunch carts, and in dancehalls. The casual mechanisms of mutual aid, in turn, facilitated the development of more formal institutions such as churches and secret societies which provided other outlets for social, spiritual, and political expression, as well as economic cooperation.”

Hunter outlines several important strategies that African-American women used to survive in Atlanta’s difficult economic environment. Important aspects of their identities highlighted in this quote include resilience, creativity, resistance to domination, and an emphasis on collective action as a source of leisure and power.

“African Americans in the New South would be closely defined by the Old—in cotton fields or in servile labor in private homes, rather than factory, managerial, or professional positions. Black workers would serve a visible and integral, yet subservient, role in the modern economy. These and other symbolic gestures imbued the fair with a characterization of the New South that idealized white supremacy as racial and economic progress.”

This quote highlights important characteristics of the New South. Hunter describes the painting The New South Welcoming the Nations of the Earth in order to explain the odd coupling of progressive ideals with retrograde means, a coupling that defines the New South. Her use of the painting is one of many creative approaches she takes to describing the psychological and cultural reality of white employers and inhabitants of the New South.

“Through the use of formal and informal community networks in which they shared work routines, work sites, living space, and social activity, the strikers organized thousands of women and men. The importance of these everyday networks and sequestered social spaces was thrown into relief by the strike: they not only promoted quotidian survival, but also built a base for political action. The areas of everyday survival, on the other hand, and resistance and large-scale political protest, on the other, were mutually reinforcing; both were necessary parts of a collective cultural whole of working-class self-activity.” 

Hunter’s focus here is on the washerwomen’s strike in the lead-up to the 1881 International Cotton Exposition. Hunter’s account of the strike emphasizes how collective organization before the strike was one of the strengths of the strikers. Collective action is therefore an important aspect of black women’s working-class identity.

“White southern domesticity at nearly every level of society was built on the backs of black women.”

Although black washerwomen were poorly paid, they were critical parts of the economic engine that drove the businesses and industries of Atlanta. Whites from all economic levels were able to afford the services of the washerwomen and therefore able to engage in wage-earning activities elsewhere or leisure activities. Hunter’s point here highlights the paradox between the importance of black working-class women and the lack of value accorded to them by their white employers.

“The impact of increased black political leverage, the retaliatory campaign against police brutality, the acquisition of property by blacks, and the development of thriving African-American social and educational institutions unleashed more white violence. By 1906, the tensions generated by black social and economic mobility reached a boiling point that would spill over into one of the worst race riots in the South.” 

Hunter outlines several of the important ways African Americans resisted white domination during the early 20th century. Unfortunately, the most potent response of whites was the riot in 1906. Hunter’s argument here is that the race riot was the moment of greatest despair for black Atlantans and solidified the legal application of racial segregation.

“The hardening of segregation in the South led black women to redouble their coping efforts. In the wake of the riot, the development of private institutions became especially important to substitute for the public services that were denied to blacks by the white establishment. This institution building coincided not only with the development of segregation, but also with the Progressive reform movement that was sweeping the nation.” 

Hunter places important developments, such as the Neighborhood Union and other collective self-help organizations, in historical context by describing the historical forces—reform and segregation—that contributed to these developments. 

“Progressive reformers were typically middle-class professionals and their objects of reform were generally working-class women and men—regarded as menaces to society to be studied, controlled, and transformed. Working class people were not passive beneficiaries of altruism, however. Many were reform leaders in their own right.” 

Hunter makes the point that contests over representation existed not only on the basis of race, but also along class lines. Working-class women, regardless of skin color, were objects of reform. Part of Hunter’s overall project is to present working-class women’s perspectives on reform, an important task since the dominant narrative prioritized the perspectives of more affluent women.

“Blacks in Atlanta vigorously created a separate and unequal, but vibrant and distinctive, world of entertainment that was at once removed from and subjected to the limitations imposed by Jim Crow.” 

This quote identifies the importance of leisure in the lives of the black working-class population of Atlanta during this period. Hunter’s focus on leisure rather than labor allows her to provide a more nuanced perspective on black working-class life of the period.

“These parks also provided ways of reaffirming whiteness through ritual play and reinforcing racial unity against a perceived black threat. During the era of the riot, promoters and advocates of parks made explicit the rationale for creating playgrounds explicitly for whites. Jim Crow parks were designed not simply to put white urbanites closer to nature, but also to give them moments of reprieve and distance from blacks in order to channel racial friction in ‘wholesome’ directions.” 

The implicit argument in this passage is that leisure is an activity that has political and economic implications, thus making it an appropriate object of analysis for a historical study of labor. Public spaces like parks were subject to intense racial segregation, further drawing the line between whites and blacks in Atlanta.

“Despite its reputation for the intermingling of people from diverse nations and cultures, Decatur Street made its name as a ‘negro playground’ on the basis of its prominent ‘African majority.’ Decatur Street attracted more peripatetic African Americans than any other local thoroughfare. Its only rival was Auburn Avenue, the black ‘Great White Way.’ The two fairways were perceived by some residents as representing opposite ends of the spectrum of respectability, character, and status.” 

Decatur Street and Auburn Street are identified here as two important sites associated with black working-class identity. Decatur Street was an important place for entertainment, a place where members of the black working-class population could escape to for leisure activities. 

“A central issue at stake was control over black women’s and men's bodies. Employers insisted it was their prerogative to limit the physical exertions of black women’s bodies to domestic service. Black middle-class reformers tried to mollify white animosity and racial prejudice, especially in the post-riot era, by insisting that blacks conform to the standards of a chaste, disciplined, servile labor force—on and off the job. African-American wage earners, however, asserted their own right to recuperate their bodies from exploitation.” 

Hunter zeroes in on the contest over dancing in public spaces as a political one among white employers, the black middle-class, and the black working-class. Again, she makes the case that this contest reveals important dimensions of class struggle in Atlanta and the agency of the black working-class during this period.

“The blues aesthetic is the key to understanding why African-American vernacular dance was such a contested terrain in Atlanta and the urban South and how it generated conflict over the black body. As an object of discipline and liberation, the body is the site where society's ideas about race, class, gender, and sexuality are constructed to give the appearance of being mandates of nature while actually conforming to cultural ideologies. The body is a vehicle through which labor produces wealth, although the powerful usually resist acknowledging and rewarding the centrality of labor in the production of wealth. The importance of laboring bodies in the political economy is revealed, however, in the obsession of employers to repress and contain the autonomy of workers in order to reap the maximum benefits of their exertions.”

In this passage, Hunter explains why white employers spent a great deal of energy regulating the ability of the black working-class to dance in public spaces. The centrality of regulating the black body to white employers’ efforts appeared in all facets of life. This quote also highlights the importance of the theme of dominance and resistance in the book.

“In the segregated South, black women became identified with TB and with infecting their white employers with the disease as a result of their frequent trips across the color line in their daily work.” 

This quote explains the seemingly odd association between African-American domestic workers and tuberculosis. Hunter’s point is that the language used to talk about African-American women as carriers of TB reflects anxieties over the ability of African-American domestic workers to violate the supposedly rigid boundary between black and white. The presence of African-American women in white domestic spaces also undercut white supremacist arguments related to the separation of the races because it revealed how dependent whites were on black domestic laborers.

“The film resonated with the resurrection of the [Ku Klux Klan] because it embodied many of the contradictory characteristics of progress that the Jim Crow era symbolized. Griffith’s technical virtuosity, captivating artistry, and box office success place him among the nation’s most innovative filmmakers. Like the modern qualities of Jim Crow itself, Griffith’s medium was a product of technological advancement that was used to celebrate are you running for real and imagined South of yore.” 

Hunter’s description of the film The Birth of a Nation explains why it was an important symbol of the link between progress and white supremacy in the New South. The popularity of this infamous film exposed the racist beliefs and attitudes that eventually propelled the Great Migration.

“Long-term oppression, wartime hysteria, and increased intimidation and physical assault by the [Ku Klux Klan] challenged the tenacity of African Americans to defend their bodies, property, and civil rights. Dismayed by unrelenting racial oppression, many began returning to the alternative of last resort.” 

Hunter outlines several important reasons for the participation of black Atlantans in the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans to urban spaces outside of the South. Fed up with ongoing oppression and racist treatment, many African Americans left Atlanta.