Wash, Rinse, Re—Stop! Here's How You Bring the Status Quo to a Standstill

The washerwomen in Atlanta, Georgia, were so low on the ladder, they hung on the bottom rung by a clothespin. They knew they deserved to climb higher.
 
In the summer of 1881, a few of them threw out the wash-water, leveraged the little clout they had, and brought the powers-that-be in the City of Atlanta to their knees, or more accurately, their dirty drawers. 

Woman African American woman washing laundry outdoors in a yard in or near Richmond County, Ga., in late 19th century.

Only 15-20 years before, these Black women were enslaved by the very people who now employed them to do their wash. Though a constitutional amendment guaranteed their freedom, the white families in Atlanta still had the Black women trapped.

 Until the washerwomen exercised their most powerful weapon: unity. 
They wrote the mayor, "We mean business...or no washing."

Let me paint a picture of Atlanta in 1881. Destroyed by General Sherman at the end of the Civil War, the city was rising from the ashes. In fact they called it the Phoenix City of the South. 
 
In truth is was struggling to rise above the sewage. The only water system served wealthy white neighborhoods in the Central District, where big houses sat back from the dirty streets.
 
City boosters advertised Atlanta's plentiful, subservient workforce in an effort to entice northern businesses. New industry arrived, including slaughter houses and stock pens of pigs.
 
But leaders failed to extend water and sewage lines for most residents. Atlanta’s poor and working class families lived in row houses, tenements, and shanties on the outskirt low lands. Everything ran down hill. 
 
The neighborhoods suffered seasonal flooding and poor drainage. Outdoor privies contaminated wells and springs. Dead animals rotted in the street where they fell. And the better-off townsfolk dumped their household garbage in the poor neighborhoods.
 
In short, the whole city stank. Here's one of the better streets in the outskirts of town.

Black neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. Library of Congress photo.

It was up to the washerwomen to keep at least the clothes clean. Ninety-eight percent of Atlanta’s Black women worked as domestics for former slave owners, the largest number washing laundry. They started work as young as ten, and could not count on retirement.

Black women earned low wages for long hours cooking, cleaning and caring for kids, all the time under the oppressive eye of their employers. Laundresses had a bit more freedom, working at their own homes or neighborhoods and on their own schedules, as much as one can schedule work that goes on all day every day.

A typical washerwoman started Monday, picking up dirty bundles from the homes of white families and cleaning them during the week to return before Sunday. Hiring a washerwoman was affordable even for working class whites.

It was hard labor, customers were demanding and if they shorted the pay, a woman had no recourse.

​​​​​​Woman washing clothes with children’s help circa 1900. Library of Congress.​

Large cotton mills in the north made cloth readily available and much cheaper than ever. People had more clothes and changed them more often. Each family had mounds of laundry: dresses, shirts and pants, plus tablecloths, napkins, dirty sheets, underwear and diapers.

First water had to be carried from the pump and heated in an iron pot over a fire.Then it was poured in a tub where the washerwoman rubbed the clothes on the washboard with soap, rinsed them and ran everything through a ringer the children cranked by hand. Next, all the laundry was hung on the line to dry.

Someone had to keep hauling water from the pump to keep the pot on the fire full and boiling. The women provided their own soap, making it at home from lye and starch from wheat bran.  And when the clothes were dry, the woman heated irons in the coals and ironed them, taking care to press collars and pleats.

"I could clean my hearth good and nice and set my irons in front of the fire and iron all day [with]out stopping....I cooked and ironed at the same time," said laundress Sarah Hill.

Woman African American woman washing laundry outdoors in a yard in or near Richmond County, Ga., in late 19th century, Robert E. Williams Photographic Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries.

 handful of Atlanta washerwomen got together in July, 1881, and formed a trade union. They called themselves The Washing Society.

The women needed higher pay. Working their fingers raw and their backs bent, they could hardly feed their families. They also wanted more autonomy and respect.

The Washing Society decided to demand a uniform rate of one dollar for every dozen pounds of wash. They went door-to-door recruiting members on all sides of town. Black ministers helped spread the word and the trade union called a mass meeting to organize a strike.

A few white customers agreed to meet the society's demands. Others sent their laundry out of town.

The newspaper declare the laundresses were demanding “unreasonably high prices.” However, within three weeks, membership in the society grew from 20 to 3000, and dirty clothes piled up in homes throughout the city.

The women rallied nightly for speeches and prayer meetings, bolstering each other's persistence.

"[A] "thoroughly organized association...." the Atlanta Constitution wrote: “The Washerwomen's strike is assuming vast proportions and despite the apparent independence of the white people, is causing quite an inconvenience among our citizens.”

There remains almost no documentation of the strike beyond a few newspaper articles and we only know the names of a few strikers because they were arrested as the city applied pressure to end the strike.

Authorities charged Matilda Crawford, Sallie Bell, Carrie Jones, Dora Jones, Orphelia Turner and Sarah A. Collier with disorderly conduct and quarreling and assessed five dollar fine. Apparently, all but one paid and went free. "In the case of Sarah A. Collier," the newspaper reported, "twenty dollars was assessed, and the money not being paid, the defendant’s name was transcribed to the chain-gang book, where it will remain for forty days."

The Washing Society timed it strike in the months before Atlanta was due to host the International Cotton Exposition, an effort by the city to promote investment.

Illustration published in Harper’s Weekly, October 1881.

With such a fancy affair on the horizon, city official couldn't have citizens walking around in dirty clothes. They threatened the strikers, floating the possibility of charging members of The Washing Society an annual license fee of $25. In addition, officials tried to eliminate their jobs entirely by offering tax incentives to businessmen to start up steam laundries.

The license would be an enormous expense given the women were lucky to earn eight dollars a month, but they agreed it was worth it for a uniform rate of pay.

The women wrote the city mayor directly: "We the members of our society, are determined to stand to our pledge and make extra charges for washing...and are willing to pay $25 or $50 for licenses as a protection...and will do it before we will be defeated, and then we will have full control of the city’s washing at our own prices."

The letter ended with a promise. "We mean business this week or no washing."

Through united, grassroots organization, Atlanta washerwomen proved themselves a force to be reckoned with. They improved their situation and their income and the strike motivated other black domestic workers, cooks, house servants, nurses and hotel maids to likewise push for wage increases.

Do you want to topple the ladder? Unity and persistence may be the only weapon we have.