Project proposal for Fall 2023 Introduction to Public History Seminar.
Key Question:
How were the experiences of Black and immigrant women erased from the domestic sphere, and how do women like Fannie Barrier Williams attempt to bring them back into that sphere?
Abstract:
Leading up to the turn of the 20th century, catalogs, books, and advice columns hailed the woman who furnished and ran her home. She had a day for every chore, or at least had a hand in some of their completion if she had a housekeeper and girls to maintain her home for her. She was considered the light of the home for how well she kept her house. The largely unspoken issue, however, is that middle to upper class white women were the focus of the praise and products, even though they were often well off enough to employ other women – often Black and immigrant women – in their homes. In other words, Black and immigrant housekeepers are erased from the sphere despite dominating the sphere. Using Fannie Barrier Williams’ 1903 speech The Problem of Employment for Negro Women as a springboard, this project would attempt to bring Black and immigrant women back into the domestic service sphere, while also analyzing why white, mostly upper-class women were to take pride in running a home, while in Chicago among African American girls and women, “the demand [for domestic work] exceeded the supply” because domestic work was thought of as inferior work. The project will ultimately be a museum exhibit set up like a 1900s kitchen in an upper-class home, and will utilize firsthand accounts of women in the domestic service sphere on their experiences, in order to provide context as to the disconnect between domestic work being a source of pride for specific groups of women while being sources of shame for others.
Narrative:
The overarching argument of the project draws upon Fannie Barrier Williams’ argument that Black girls and women should not have to feel that there was no dignity in domestic work, or that to become a housekeeper was considered inferior to becoming a salesclerk or a teacher. One major theme of the exhibit will be acknowledging the labor that housekeepers and servants had to perform to keep a home running – to elevate them instead of making them invisible in the daily function of the home.
For materials, it would be best for the exhibit to be set up in a historic house that already has a kitchen from the time period (1890-1910). If a museum could be found which was willing to temporarily “loan” their kitchen, the only materials necessary would be display plaques of information which would be affixed to the walls and set up on surfaces for visitors to read. The plaques would include firsthand accounts of domestic workers, excerpts from Fannie Barrier Williams’ 1903 speech, and lists of daily and monthly work that the average domestic worker had to accomplish, often for little pay.
The intended audience would primarily be people who visit historic house museums, and people who have an interest in life in the Gilded Age/Progressive Era (1877-1920). A smaller audience might include those who have an interest in Black and immigrant history and how their stories are told among the stories of white Americans. The exhibit would connect up with this audience by already being in a place that they would be interested in visiting, or if they were part of that smaller audience, would spark their interest in visiting if they knew it was there.
Literature Review: Sources
Aside from Fannie Barrier Williams’ Problem of Employment speech from 1903, much of the secondary literature relevant to the exhibit and this proposal provide historical context to the exhibit and her speech. Some are magazine and newspaper articles on the “servant girl problem” and firsthand accounts of domestic workers spanning from 1900 to 1920, while others are books that detail the housework that “the lady of the house” was expected to carry out at the turn of the century – these are relevant because it can be assumed that servants would have been doing the same work, and these lists could be used in the exhibit display. Ultimately, because the sources detail what servants and housekeepers experienced, they provide the underlying context as to why Black girls and women in Chicago in the 1900s felt that by entering domestic service, they were taking a step down in society. This in turn provides context for why Fannie Barrier Williams might have felt she had to give her own solution to the “servant girl problem.” The full list of the ten sources used are as follows, with a proper Chicago style bibliography at the end of the proposal.
Christine Frederick. “It Works Like a Charm: Scientific Management and the Servant Problem.” The New Housekeeping Series, Ladies Home Journal, December 1912.
Ellen M. Plante. Women at Home in Victorian America: A Social History. New York: Facts on File, 1997
Fannie Barrier Williams. “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women”, July 1903
Harvey Green & Mary Ellen Perry. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983
Mary Elizabeth Sherwood. Manners and Social Usages. Harper & Brothers, 1887
“More Slavery at the South, by a Negro Nurse.” The Independent. January 25, 1912.
“Standardized Domestics.” America Magazine: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture. 1919
“The Servant Girl Problem,” Ohinemuri Gazette. March 1903
“The Servant-Girl Problem.” America Magazine: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture. 1910
W.E.B. DuBois and Isabel Eaton. “The Occupations of Negroes.” The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899.
Workplan and Budget:
If the proposal were to be accepted by an existing historic house, a timeline of January-May 2024 would be feasible, as the only thing that would need to be “created” would be the display plaques of text excerpts and signage, and possibly bringing in material items that the house may not already own – period accurate kitchen and cleaning utensils, items associated with housework etc. As it would be unlikely that the signage could be attached to the walls, freestanding signs and label plates would be necessary. ArtDisplay.com lists 8.5×11” signage plates for $69 to $75, with adapter stands sold separately at an additional $41 to $45, and these prices appear to be for sets of plates and adapters. As plate size increases, so does the price. With this in mind, if the math is correct, 10 signs and adapters would add up to approximately $1,160. More than likely, a $1,500 to $2,000 budget would be requested for a cushion in the event of unforeseen circumstances, like needing to purchase period-accurate material items, with the condition that any money that is not spent on the exhibit returns to the financial donor.
If a historic house would not accept the exhibit, the budget would be exponentially higher, as a replica kitchen would need to be constructed somewhere and filled with period-accurate objects. In this event, a “Plan B” would be advised for the exhibit to be made into a virtual webpage exhibit, with pictures of a period-accurate kitchen and point-and-click interactive elements that would display the same information that would have been displayed in the room exhibit. The pictures could either be singular images or a panoramic image made into a 360-degree template that the viewer could move around in to explore as if they were in the room in person. A webpage would also allow for more textual information to be posted below the picture portion, as there would be no worry about crowding an existing room with signage in order to convey the message of the exhibit. The timeline of January to May 2024 to find a historic house to take kitchen pictures of and create the webpage is still a feasible timeline in this case as well.
Consultants and Concerns:
The primary consultants for this project would be the curators of local historic houses, as they would ultimately be the ones giving their permission for the project to proceed. Their knowledge of the house and the family (or families) that lived there would be beneficial to the exhibit, and could even be incorporated if domestic workers were employed and records could be found. If an in person exhibit could not be accomplished, consultants for a digital page would be web page designers to ensure the page would be set up correctly and readable to site visitors, especially if the site has interactive elements.
The main concern would be to make sure that the exhibit properly brings the Black and immigrant domestic worker back into the sphere that they’ve been excluded from throughout history, despite being in the majority of employees that make up said sphere. A few of the sources are directed at upper-class women, presumably white upper-class women, and the glory of maintaining a nice home, so to overload the exhibit with excerpts from those sources would be doing the exact same thing that Fannie Barrier Williams so passionately spoke out against.
Bibliography:
Primary Sources
DuBois, W.E.B. and Isabel Eaton. “The Occupations of Negroes.” The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899. 102-104, 136-141. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044010520278&seq=135
Frederick, Christine. “It Works Like a Charm: Scientific Management and the Servant Problem.” The New Housekeeping Series, Ladies Home Journal, December 1912. Page 16, 79. https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5568/
“More Slavery at the South, by a Negro Nurse.” The Independent. January 25, 1912. 196-200. https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/negnurse/negnurse.html
Sherwood, Mary Elizabeth. Manners and Social Usages. Harper & Brothers, 1887. 380-394
“Standardized Domestics.” America Magazine: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture, 1919, 20 (19): 476–77. https://search-ebscohost-com.brockport.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hus&AN=34539174&site=ehost-live
“The Servant-Girl Problem.” America Magazine: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture, 1910, 3 (8): 200-201. https://search-ebscohost-com.brockport.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hus&AN=35360356&site=ehost-live.
“The Servant Girl Problem,” Ohinemuri Gazette. March 1903, page 3 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OG19030327.2.10
Williams, Fannie Barrier. “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women”, July 1903 in The New Woman of Color (Illinois: Illinois University Press, 2002) 52-57
Secondary Sources
Green, Harvey & Mary Ellen Perry. “Cleanliness and Godliness: The Tyranny of Housework.” The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Plante, Ellen M. Women at Home in Victorian America: A Social History. New York: Facts on File, 1997. 154-155
