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Domestic Workers, Sex Workers, and the Movement: Reimagining

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Domestic Workers, Sex Workers, and the Movement: Reimagining DOMESTIC WORKERS, SEX WORKERS, AND THE MOVEMENT: REIMAGINING BLACK WORKING-CLASS RESISTANCE IN THE WORK OF WILLIAM ATTAWAY, RICHARD WRIGHT, AND ALICE CHILDRESS, 1935-1960 by SHANA ALEXSSANDRA RUSSELL A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-Newark Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in American Studies written under the direction of Barbara Foley and approved by Newark, New Jersey October 2015 ©2015 Shana A. Russell ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Domestic Workers, Sex Workers, and the Movement: Reimagining Black Working- Class Resistance in the Work of William Attaway, Richard Wright, and Alice Childress, 1935-1960 By: Shana A. Russell Dissertation Director: Barbara Foley To novelists, short story writers, poets, and playwrights of the early twentieth century, works of fiction provided spaces to explore the ways that black women workers shaped and were shaped by the theory and practice of working-class resistance. This dissertation is an analysis of domestic labor and sexual labor that imagines the possibilities of black women’s resistance through the lens of literature. It examines four key figures, who considered these possibilities by centering domestic and sexual laborers in their work: sociologist, theorist, and longtime Communist activist, Esther Cooper Jackson, proletarian novelist William Attaway, famed author Richard Wright, and playwright, essayist, and short story writer, Alice Childress. For contemporary scholars, fiction (and the process of writing fiction) provides us with an intellectual framework that emerges from its historical moment, with which we can further understand and historicize black women’s sexual and domestic labor, both at the places where they overlap and those at which they diverge. More importantly, in analyzing domestic work as wage work, sexuality, sexual violence, and sexual desire, Wright, Attaway, and Childress generate new questions and new understandings of black womanhood, labor, and ii activism. While the writers’ evolving theorizations are certainly flawed and by no means comprehensive, an examination of their methodological processes (both those that work and those that don’t work) demonstrate a cultural, political, and historical significance of black women workers that cannot be ignored. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I share this accomplishment first with my incredible committee: Barbara Foley, Beryl Satter, and Belinda Edmondson. It has been a tremendous source of pride for me from the beginning to have a committee made up of all women. And not just any women. Women who are remarkable intellectuals and accomplished scholars. You chose to take this journey with me, not out of professional obligation, but because you really believed in me as a scholar and the work that I was doing. To all of you, for your generosity and your willingness to see this through with me, I am so grateful. Barbara: I cannot put into words how appreciative I am for all that you do. You have been such a champion for me and my work. You have made me a more critical thinker. I am sure that not every dissertation committee chair hand delivers archive copies from the trunk of their car or makes herbal tea during meetings in their office. You have been a truly exceptional teacher, mentor, and comrade. Beryl: You have at times been my toughest and most outspoken critic. But the completed dissertation is something that I am proud of because of your guidance. You made this something greater than I could have ever imagined by forcing me to deal with only what was there on the page. I now know the work it takes to do justice to historical subjects. These are lessons I will never forget. Belinda: I know from your guidance that being a young black woman in the academy is not an easy journey. I have to be my own advocate and demand respect from my colleagues and students. I learned from you that it is okay to take risks. That’s how you find your intellectual voice. Thank you Belinda for helping me find mine. iv To my family: Even though my PhD is a first for us, thank you for keeping me grounded. For reminding me that no matter how much I write about the movement, you lived it. Your openness about our history, and the four generations of domestic workers that labored so that I could live freely, helped me to put names and faces to the experiences of black women workers. You were my first teachers. To my father: For more than thirty years you have been the only man in a house full of women. I would not know that everyday black women could do such extraordinary things if it weren’t for your willingness to give us the space and support to do it. Thank you for reminding me that I am always exactly where I belong and no one can tell me otherwise. To my mother: I am consistently inspired by your openness about your life, labor, and your time in the movement. The pages that follow are imbued with peace, power, and prosperity for the people because of your love. To Sissy: You, too, were one of my first teachers. Thank you for nurturing my love of reading and my unshakable curiosity so long ago. And for making sure that I never forgot it. To Myles: I see so much of myself in you. I never told you this but you have always been my motivation. I had to see this through to pave the way for you to do even greater things. And I know that you will. To C. Randall: Your brilliance, taken from late night conversations, bar napkins, theological orations, and song recommendations, is scattered throughout the pages that follow. Thank you for caring for my ideas as much as you have cared for me. Couldn’t have done this without you. v To Rob Snyder: Thank you for being the first at Rutgers-Newark to believe in me. For walking through the city with me talking about black bluegrass bands. For offering me a fellowship. And for planting the seed that would become the dissertation. To Tim Raphael: You gave my work life beyond what is written on the pages of my research notebook. You consistently made space for the work that I do. For being an advocate for me, my research, and domestic workers in general, I am eternally grateful. To Sherri-Ann Butterfield, Ruth Feldstein, Timothy Stewart-Winter, Whit Strub, Jason Cortes, Fran Bartowski, Mark Krasovic, and Clem Price: I have been absolutely shameless about asking for help and not one faculty member at Rutgers-Newark has ever told me no. Thank you for reading my work and talking through ideas with me. For listening to me ramble in your offices about any and everything. Your encouraging words, even in passing, have meant the world to me. To Kyle Farmbry and the Graduate School: Thank you for awarding me the dissertation fellowship that allowed me the privilege of spending a year researching and writing. You said a good dissertation is a done dissertation. My dissertation would be neither if it weren’t for your support. To Georgia, Joanne, and Christina: Everyone who knows anything is very clear that entire universities would fall apart if it weren’t for our department administrators. Thank you for always punctuating my random visits with smiles and kind words. Because of you I survived. To Polly: There is so much more to a dissertation than research and writing. You taught me how to navigate that endless list of “other things.” Thanks for giving me the tools to live happily and healthily. These are things I will carry with me forever. vi To John, Steve, Rosie, Janessa, Asha, Julian, Kevin, Sean, Paul, Laura, and the rest of my American Studies comrades: You know better than most that interdisciplinarity is both a gift and a curse. Thanks for commiserating with me about that…and everything else. To my Simmons family: Ally, Cat, Brenda, Candace, Meiver, Jess, and Gwen, you are and have always been my sisters in this struggle. To Rod, Karen, and the TBGWT family: Writing about celestial arthropods really does weigh on the spirit. In spite of this I never forgot that “nothing’s wrong if it’s funny.” Thank you for providing me with hours and hours of laughter at my fingertips any time of day. To my friends and chosen family in Newark and elsewhere: I am so lucky to have so many people in my life who love and take care of me. For making sure that I eat, sleep, and shower regularly. You have given me the soundtrack to my life for the last five years. You have cleaned, cooked, and done my laundry. You love me unconditionally. And I love you with all my heart. vii DEDICATION I dedicate every word written here to my mother, Paula Russell, who, when asked if she had ever been ashamed of the history of domestic work in our family, replied, “Why would you be ashamed of someone for working?” I hope to one day embody the same pride, dignity, power, and grace that you (and those who came before you) possess. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………….……………..…….ii Acknowledgements/Dedication………………………………………..………………....iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………..…..ix Introduction:……………………….…………………………………………………...….1 Chapter 1: “It was our party as much as it was theirs”: Esther Cooper, Domestic Workers, and the CPUSA……….………………...............................14 Chapter 2: “I’m for the union too”: Sexual and Reproductive Labor in the Novels of William Attaway….....................................................................55 Chapter 3: Richard Wright’s Native Daughters: Fictional Domestic Workers and the Theorization of Black Women’s Labor………………………….………85 Chapter 4: Not “Like One of the Family”: Alice Childress and Domestic Worker Protest …………………...……………..………………..………….…129 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….…..158 Bibliography………………………………………..…………….…………………….161 ix 1 INTRODUCTION It’s a brisk September day in New York in 1935.
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