Slaving Irish ‘Ladies’ and black ‘Towers of strength in the labor world': race and women’s resistance in domestic service

Southern Black and Irish immigrant women represented the majority of domestic workers in US northeastern cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article argues that these women engaged in discursive resistance to make the argument that domestic workers in their respective communities were uniquely deserving of labor rights. Their approaches and goals, however, were distinct. Irish domestics used slavery as a metaphor to whiten themselves in comparison to Black domestics, and position themselves as even whiter than their employers. Slavery was not a metaphor for Black women. Victoria Earle Matthews and other southern Black women argued that they had been exploited for over two hundred years and their labor rights were thereby long overdue. This comparative history is intended to trace and advance discussion about the persistence of race in women’s labor struggles historically and today.