Tag Archives: Women of Color

Resources & Further Research

The following materials were used to create this toolkit, outside of the archival records:

  • Nancy Robertson’s book Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations and the YWCA 1906-1946 as well as Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt’s book Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City, both serve as good books to learn about the history of the YWCA and its relationship to race.
  • Vanessa May’s Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York 1870-1940 focuses on the YWCA’s work with domestic workers in several sections of the book. This is a good resource to learn the history of the organization and see the beginning stages of their engagement in domestic work. See pages 10, 76-80, 124-171.
  • Phyllis Palmer’s Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945 also serves as a good reference. It is more focused on the NCHE and its creation. It gives lots of details on the formation of the first conference in 1928 and provides context for looking at box 494 in the SSC. See pages 112-125.
  • Premilla Nadasen’s Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Who Built a Movement has historical information about the NCHE. It is mostly focused on the second leg of the organization in the 1960s when the organization shifted to support domestic workers more fully. It focuses on a different time period than the SSC collection, but serves as a good resource for further research into the NCHE. See pages 58-81.
  • This is a helpful, short article that has a timeline of the YWCA history: https://www.thebalance.com/the-history-and-impact-of-the-ywca-on-women-s-rights-3515999
  • This is a resources put out by the YWCA website that also has a timeline of their work: http://www.ywca.org/site/c.cuIRJ7NTKrLaG/b.7515891/k.C524/History.htm

YWCA Records — Boxes on Domestic Workers

Sophia Smith Archive Collection Sign

Box 493: This box has a lot of different resources, more so than the other three boxes in the collection. All of the documents in this box are from the national chapter, not states. The first few folders give information about the Subcommittees and YWCA meetings that discussed rights of employers and employees. These documents have input from both of these groups. The folder titled “Bibliographies” has citations of essays and written works about household work, household employment, household management, etc. Several other folders include legislation, placement and unionization which include bills and acts as well as correspondence between the YWCA and Washington offices. There is a small folder titled “Negro” in this box that gives information about black women working as domestic workers, the unemployment crisis of black domestic workers as well as the difficulties in placing black women. The last few folders deal with the Subcommittee on Household Employment from the National Board. These folders include correspondence between chapters as well as publications regulating employee/employer relations.

Box 494 and 495: These two boxes contain documents from different state Subcommittees. Box 494 holds information about each state’s chapter from California to New Jersey and 495 holds New York to Wisconsin. These folders contain correspondence between state chapters with the national YWCA chapter as well as contracts put forth by the states to mediate employee/employer relations. Some of these states, see the Chicago folder, have publications and books with information on how to negotiate with employers for things like time off, reducing hours, responsibilities, etc.

Box 496: This box contains documents discussing employer-employee relations in the home. There are documents from the 1928 conference discussing relations in the home (See section 2 of this toolkit). The two first folders state “National Committee on Employer-Employee Relations in the Home” which was the original name of the NCHE. The documents are write-ups from the conference discussing ways to improve relations on the part of the employers as well as the employees. The folders in this box span from 1928-1936, tracing the trajectory of the organization and the conferences it had each year. There are also resources produced by the NCHE in this box. There are several booklets for employees and employers on how to navigate their relations and in the final folder, there is one booklet publicizing demands of domestic workers.

Brief History of the YWCA

  • The YWCA started in London, England in 1855, coming to the New York in 1858
  • The organization was created and supported by white middle-class women, most of whom were financially supported by their husbands.
  • The YWCA services were targeted working class women.
  • The YWCA provided services such as job trainings and employment services as well as resources like gyms, libraries and inexpensive restaurants.
  • The YWCA started engaging in advocating for protective labor legislation and other reforms in 1904. They never took a stance on protective labor legislation for domestic work, but worked to understand the pros and cons of both sides for workers and employers alike.
  • The YWCA focused much activism on relations between workers and employers, serving as a bridge between domestic workers and their employers by advocating for both groups.
  • The YWCA helped to find employment for domestic workers, which they interpreted as meaning that they should help make workers more appealing to employers.
  • The YWCA only served white women until 1889 when the first African American branch was open in, Dayton, Ohio,
  • In 1890 a branch for Native American Women was opened in Oklahoma.
  • Because women of color were marginalized in mainstream political arenas, white women engaged in the political work while women of color focused more on programming in their organizations.
  • The Harlem and Brooklyn Branches (both segregated for African American women) began to hold training programs for domestic workers in the early 1930s, being the first branches to develop such services.
  • While the African American branches of the YWCA were the first to support and provide for domestic workers, other chapters soon caught on and began to work with other organizations that were working with domestic workers such as the Domestic Workers Union (DWU) and the Urban League.

Sources:

“History,” Young Women’s Christian Association.

Wolfe, Lahle. “The History and Impact of the YWCA on Women’s Rights,”  The Balance. Sept. 14 2016.

May, Vanessa H. Unprotected Labor Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York, 1870-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.