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Short Stuff: The Atlanta Washer Woman Strike · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Dave's here sitting in on his own uh podcast,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: how about that? And this is just a funeral, right? Uh? No,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: definitely not. No, this is a much more happy occasion
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: because it's an episode of Short Stuff. And what's happier
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: than that? I agree? So, Chuck, we're talking about something
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that you dug up. I had never heard of this,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: despite living in Atlanta for more than half of my life. Um,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: something called Atlanta's washer Women's Strike. Granted I was not
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: alive in the eighteen eighties, but I'm still kind of surprised.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I never heard of it. I had not heard of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: it until I went to, uh, you know, the fantastic
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta. Every Halloween they have what's
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: called Capturing the Spirit of Halloween tour and it is
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Oakland Cemeteries, Atlanta's you know, historic, their Parade de Lachey.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: We're quite a few prominent people are buried and it's
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: our our big in town old cemetery and you walk
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: around during Halloween with a drink. They serve drinks in
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: groups of like twelve to fift and then it's a
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: good size. And what they have is I think five
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: different stories being told by actors in costume. Uh, next
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: to the graves of the people whose story it is.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Do they tell the stories like this? They do a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: but if that got really old, so we all just
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: said we please stop. So it's different stories every year. Um,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: they find different stories from the people buried there. And
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: one of the stories was a woman who was part
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: of this washer woman strike. And Emily and I both
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: were like, I've never heard of this, What a great story.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: She's like, you gotta do this on stuff you should know?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: And I said, why are you telling me what to
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: do the stuff you should know? You've never even listened
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: to stuff you should know? And she said, well, I'd
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: listen to this if you ever did anything I'm interested in, Emily,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: she might listen to this one. So I said that
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: that's actually a perfect short stuff. So here we go. Okay,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: two things. There's a documentary about Oakland Cemetery and if
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: you watch it closely, our colleague Robert Lamb from Stuff
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is in it. He's like in
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: in the crowd, surprised it's an uncredited cameo. The other
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: thing is you and I were over there the other
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: day to see We went to the Eastern for the
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: first time to see a show. Yeah, yeah, it was
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: really cool. And um, the the whole area, I didn't
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: even recognize it until I looked at the street name.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, we're like right by
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the cemetery. It's just completely changed. Uh, well, yeah, that
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: area is definitely different over there now, but it's five
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: minutes down the road, so I've seen the slow gradual.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: To me, it was like night and day. Well, yeah,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I guess when you don't go by there, I'm a
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: little offended that you didn't. You were that close and
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: you didn't come by and like throw a paperbag full
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: of poop on my doorstep and light it on fire. No,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: we were in and out. Momo wasn't with us, which
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: means we have three hours. We don't leave in a
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: crate for longer than three hours, so we had three
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: hours to get there and back, and um, we got
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: to see most of a violent fem show, which was
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: really really good. Um, and we just didn't have time.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: You mean, was like, should we And I was like,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: we just don't have time. Well, the only better in
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: was just like, we gotta missiencore through. This's exactly right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: So okay, back to it, Chuck, we understand where this
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: idea came from. Thank you, Emily, but let's tell everybody
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: about it, because this was a huge, um, a watershed moment,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: you could say, in um the history of labor in Atlanta,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: which sounds way more boring than it actually is. Yeah
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and big thanks to Washington Post is a great article
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: on this and a I can't remember the website, but
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: a very pro union website. I think it was the
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: nfl c i oh website for real. Okay, yeah, that
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: sounds about right. Uh So, to paint a picture of
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Atlanta in the eighties, it was a city trying to
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: be uh sort of the big thing in a South,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: which it ended up being, but at the time it
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: was still on its way and had unpaid streets and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't quite where it needed to be.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: But politicians wanted to sort of send message to the north, like, hey,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Atlanta's ripe for business down here. We got a lot
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: of labor down here that you don't have to pay much.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: It's not too far after the Civil war. Wink wink.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: If you know what I mean and bring your business
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: down here. Yeah, like this was a huge push at
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the time because the South was still you know, under
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: reconstruction and rebuilding um and at the time there was
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: something like nine percent of black working women because again
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: these were emancipated, enslaved people, but they weren't being paid
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: very much. They weren't being treated very well. And one
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  Speaker 1: of the most prominent UM occupations of black working women
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  Speaker 1: was to be a laundress or a washer woman. And
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  Speaker 1: the reason why is because it was not fun work
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  Speaker 1: at all and the washer women who were performing this
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: this work, this service were paid so little that even
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: like generally poor white families could afford to hire a
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: local black laundress to do the laundry for the family. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they didn't have up north. They already had um like
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: professional cleaning, industrialized cleaning businesses for clothing, but there were
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: you know, manufactured cloth had come along. There were just
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: a lot more clothes now. And like you said, if
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: you had if you had any extra money as a family,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: one of the first things you might do is to
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: pay for your clothes to be done because it was
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: you know that this didn't have washing machines. You had
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to like wash clothes by hand, you had to boil clothes,
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  Speaker 1: you had to iron them with irons that you uh
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: heat it up by fire and hang them up all
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: over the place to dry. So these uh, these young
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: women were you know, they started work anywhere from you know,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: ten to twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, and they basically
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: for the next fifty years doing this kind of work
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  Speaker 1: for four to eight dollars a month and that today's
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a hundred and sixteen to two thirty two dollars a month,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: which it doesn't matter what time you live in, that
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: is not enough to live on. And yet there are
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of black moms, especially a lot of black
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  Speaker 1: single moms, who managed to eke out a life for
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: them and their families from those wages just by working really,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: really hard. Because as you progressed and became better at it,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: it's not like you started making more money. The way
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to make more money was to work harder and harder
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and to take on more and more clients. Right. Um.
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  Speaker 1: So one of the things about this this profession, though,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I think attracted so many black women was it was
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: one of the most autonomous professions around. Like if you're
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: a washerwoman. You didn't answer to anybody but yourself. It
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: was one of the first ways that you could be
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: an independent business person in the South after the Civil War.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And um, that was that was really important to a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: lot of the workers, especially because they had just been
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: you know, freed from being slaves, like they had literally
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: been slaves just you know a couple of a couple
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: of years before. And now they're able to run their
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: own lives and run their own business as washer women. Yeah,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and notably, they did this work at their own homes,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: so they made their own uh, washing soap. They would
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: get the clothes dropped off on a Monday, and then
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: they would do everything all week long and then drop
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: the clothes back off on a Saturday. So there at
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: least they're at home. They're doing this work. Uh. It
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: is tough, backbreaking work, but like you said, it provided
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: some autonomy, but the wages weren't going anywhere, which set up,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: uh set the stage basically for the summer of one
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: and I think we should take a break'll talk about
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: what happened. M Alright, So now we're in the summer
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: of eight one, super hot in Atlanta hot doing this
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  Speaker 1: kind of work and twenty of these washer women. Uh,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: they met up and they said, all right, here's what
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: we need to do. Our money is going nowhere. The
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: only way to get more is to work harder and
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: to add more accounts. So let's form a trade organization. Uh.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: They called it the Washing Society, and let's see if
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: we can get a little more respect and a little
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: more autonomy and more than anything, let's see if we
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: can get some some sort of codified higher pay to
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: the tune of about a dollar per twelve pounds of wash. Yeah. So, um,
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  Speaker 1: this was enormous, Like, this is a huge deal. This
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: is eight eighty one in Atlanta, and black women were
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: meeting and saying, let's let's basically form a cartel, essentially
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a washer cartel. And um, they set up the Washing
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  Speaker 1: Society and started canvassing door to door because remember there
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: were a lot of laundresses working in the town at
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the time. And um, they managed to grow from that
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  Speaker 1: first twenty to three thousand members of this washing Society
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  Speaker 1: in three weeks, just from going door to door. And
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  Speaker 1: even more impressive, Chuck, they included white women too, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: which you know this is one that is not something
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: that you saw happening a lot, especially in the Deep South.
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  Speaker 1: So even though two percent of these laundresses were white,
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  Speaker 1: they included them. Got three thousand women together went on strike.
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  Speaker 1: I think about ten days into the strike, the cops
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  Speaker 1: got involved. Um. They arrested six of the leaders and
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: basically said, hey, you know you've been harassing people with
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: this door to door campaign, so we're going to charge
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: you with disorderly conduct and quarreling and charge you these
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: fines that are like I think one of these women,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Sarah A. Collier, was um and I wish I could
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: remember the name of the woman at the cemetery. I
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: looked it up, but they took all that down after Halloween,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: but uh, that rings a bell. It may have been her.
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  Speaker 1: But she was find twenty dollars, which was I mean,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: what like for like almost half a year's pay. Yeah,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: depending on how much she made, but definitely three to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: three to five months pay. Um and I could not
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: find out why she was find twenty and other ones
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: were find five dollars. But this this, the purpose that
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: these women had behind their movement was enough that that
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Sarah Collier said, I'm not paying that, and they said, well,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: you're gonna go work on a chain gang, forty nine
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: year old asthmatic mother of two, and she did for
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: forty days. And that's the kind of thing that other
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: people look at and find genuine inspiration from. And that
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: really helped, I think, kind of solidify this is if
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: even more than it was already. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, So
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the city council comes along, they say, all right, if
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you want to be a member of this washerwoman organization,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: then you have to pay the city a twenty annual fee.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: And also if you want to start a commercial laundry
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: like so we can put them out of business. We'll
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: give you a nonprofit tax exempt status even so we can. Yeah,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: so we can drive them out of their work. And
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: you know what these women did, as they said, so
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: twenty dollars is that's definitely half a year's wage. They
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: wrote a letter to the mayor and said, you know what, fine,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: we'll pay it. We're not going in, we're not going anywhere,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: we're not washing any more clothes. Will pay your organizational
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: fee and what do you think about that? And the
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: mayor his monocle pop right off his face as he
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: was reading that letter, right, and they said in his
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: dirty shirt, right, there's like flies buzzing around. So, um,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: it's not entirely clear what happened afterward. Um, but from
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: from what it seems is that the city council backed
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: down and they said, okay, well, we're not going to
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: try to run you out a bit business. We're not
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: going to arrest anybody anymore. And a few weeks went
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: by and there was this really big deal thing that
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: was coming along, the International Cotton Exposition, which sounds old
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: timing and backwards and it was, but it qualified essentially
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: as a world's fair that drew two hundred thousand visitors
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: to Atlanta, which only had forty people who lived there
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: at the time, So it was a big deal. And
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the city boosters, who were trying to lure northern companies
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: down south, we're really on edge about this. This had
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: to go really well because this is Atlanta's chance to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: show it was the capital of the new South. Now well,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and in this interim time period, the washerwoman organization word
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: gets around and all of a sudden, you have other domestics.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: You have cooks, and you have house cleaners and maids
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and even nurses that were like, wait a minute, you
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: know our wages aren't going up either. We want more money. Uh.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: There was an actual another strike. Hotel workers went on strike,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: which was a really big deal. If you have two
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: hundred thous and people coming to your small town and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: employers basically are like, we don't have replacement workers this time.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Like this is an entire workforce of people that are
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: saying they want more money, and we can't just say fine,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: we'll just hire someone else this time. So the city
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: council the next week got together, they struck down those
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: twenty five dollar fees, and they got their wages raised.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: They won. Yeah. I think they also gained control of
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: the washing industry in Atlanta so that they couldn't be
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: put out of business by commercial um companies laundries anymore.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Great story it is. It's really cool because these women
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: just basically said, hey, we're you can't treat us disrespectful anymore.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: We're not slaves anymore. We're businesswomen and we're washing your laundry,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: which you don't want to do, so you better treat
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: us better. And the South, at least Atlanta responded essentially,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: it's right, yeah, good for them. That was a good one.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks Emily. She's going to clothe about that. So yeah,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: well Chuck doesn't have anything. I don't have anything in
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Emily's gloating, which means short stuff is out. Stuff you
• 14:09
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