Posted: April 24th, 2025

Women, Labor, & Reform Discussion

1. We, as students of women’s history, can’t seem to escape “Domesticity.” How does domesticity play a role in shaping women’s experiences, women’s concerns, or women’s responses as they grappled with labor conditions, racism, urban crises and more? Consider one of our topics this week–Black women’s labor and reform, women’s labor and union activity, or middle class women’s reform. “Cross reference” between groups if the connections occur to you and make clear and explicit reference to the readings using examples and quotations in your answer.

2. How do strikes happen? Can you use your learning about strikes in this week’s reading to come up with a recipe? Use examples from the reading so that your ingredients are understandable. You may focus on one strike from a specific reading or look for common ingredients in all readings, using examples and quotations.

Women’s Labor & Reform
1865-1910s

Click Slideshow above for best ‘view’ of this slide deck (hit
escape to click on photo links).

I. Black Women’s Labor Force Participation

A. How would Southern society organize labor?
1. Recall women’s work under slavery

https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/delta-and-pine-company-african-ameri
can-sharecropper-lonnie-fair-family

https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/delta-and-pine-company-african-american-sharecropper-lonnie-fair-family

I. Black Women’s Labor Force Participation

A. How would Southern society organize labor?
1. Recall women’s work under slavery
2. Conflict over women’s labor

a. For whom?
b. Where?
c. Occupations

3. Migration–urban centers and the North

a. Schooling for the next generation
b. Black Community life
c. Emerging Elites

African American Population Map 1890 Census

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-
american-odyssey/reconstruction.ht
ml

Scroll down to the map three images down after following link.

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/reconstruction.html

II Black Women’s Labor Force Participation and 19th c.
Developments

A. Emergence of a Black Professionals
B. Black Women and “Respectability”
C. Black Women and Reform
1. Universal Suffrage
2. “Uplift”
3. Reform and Black Women’s Suffrage

II Black Women’s Labor Force Participation and 19th c.
Developments

A. Emergence of a Black Professionals
B. Black Women and “Respectability”
C. Black Women and Reform
1. Universal Suffrage
2. “…a question of race I let the lesser question of sex go. But the white women all go for sex letting the race occupy a minor

position. Being black means that every white including every working class woman, can discriminate against you.” Frances
Harper

3. “Uplift”
4. Reform and Black Women’s Suffrage
5. NACW: “the resources and energies of scores of local and regional clubs into one strong

organization in order to attack the prevailing negative image of black womanhood.” (1896)

II. Women’s Wage Labor and Union Organization

A. Lowell: Early Factory Employment & Protest
1. Workforce
2. Work Conditions
3. Workplace Consciousness & Organized Protest
B. Women’s Employment after the Civil War
1. Changes
a. Civil War

b. Immigration
c. “Scientific Management”

2. Wage-earning Daughters

https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/robinson.htm

III Women’s Wage Labor and Union Organization

A. Unions
1. Knights of Labor
2. AFL
B. Women’s Trade Union League
C. Women in the Garment Industry
1. ILGWU/Uprising of the 20,000
2. Triangle shirtwaist fire
3. Precedents

1886 Women’s Delegates to the KOL convention

https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a14849/

https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/convention_1910.htm

III. Middle Class Women’s Reform

A. Women’s Club Movement
1. Changes
a. Women’s Education
b. Smaller families
c. Rising expectations

B. Self Improvement Clubs

1. Education
2. Awareness & Consciousness
3. General Federation of Women’s Clubs
DANTE IS DEAD. He HAS BEEN DEAD FOR SEVERAL CENTURIES AND I THINK IT IS TIME THAT WE DROPPED THE
STUDY OF HIS INFERNO AND TURNED OUR ATTENTION TO OUR OWN

A city is in many respects a great business corporation, but in other respects it is enlarged
housekeeping. May we not say that city housekeeping has failed partly because women, the
traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its manifold activities?

https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbcmil.scrp5015501/?st=text

Scroll down to the last row of the table to link to a ‘hive mind” document for questions or
comments, definitions of unfamiliar words or terms about this week’s reading. Log in to the
CSUEB Library first!

Title Citation

How Did Cross Class Alliances Shape
the1910 Chicago Garment Workers Strike?

(Primary Sources)

Karen Pastorello, How Did Cross-Class
Alliances Shape the 1910 Chicago
Garment Workers’ Strike? (Binghamton,
NY: State University of New York,
Binghamton, 2005, originally published
2005), 200 page(s),

“Feminism or Unionism? The New York
Women’s Trade Union League and the
Labor Movement.” (a secondary source so
not a candidate for primary source analysis)

Nancy Schrom Dye,“Feminism or
Unionism? The New York Women’s Trade
Union League and the Labor Movement.”
Feminist Studies 3, no. 1/2 (1975):
111–25. https://doi.org/10.2307/3518959

Where are the organized Women
Workers? (a secondary source, not a
candidate for primary source analysis)

Alice Kessler-Harris, “‘Where Are the
Organized Women Workers?’” Feminist
Studies 3, no. 1/2 (1975): 92–110.
https://doi.org/10.2307/3518958.

“The Need for Settlement Work For the
City Negro” (Please note this is a primary
source document that contains a word
employed by Blacks at the turn of the
century. As scholars today, students and
faculty should use Black or African
American.)

(A Primary Source)

Fannie Barrier Williams, “The Need of
Social Settlement Work For the City
Negro,” in Southern Workman, Vol. 33, no.
9, September 1904, pp. 501-06, 6

Fannie Barrier Williams: At the Intersections of
Region, Race and Reform ((

(A secondary source).

Fannie Barrier Williams: At
the Intersections of
Region, Race and Reform

written by Wanda A. Hendricks, fl.
1998-2014 (Alexandria, VA: Alexander
Street, 2014)

Susan Ware, American Women’s History:
A Very Short Introduction, 50-74

Ware, Susan. 2015. American Women’s
History: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford Univeristy Press.

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https://login.proxylib.csueastbay.edu/login?qurl=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3518958

https://doi.org/10.2307/3518958

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