“The Servant Campaigns”: African American Women and the Politics of Economic Justice in Washington,D.C.,in the 1930s

Becoming a White House Servant

Elizabeth Hall was born in Newton County, Georgia, in 1881 to Sarah and George, both former slaves. ⁹ In 1887, the Hall family moved from rural Georgia to the New South city of Atlanta, where her father paved roads and hauled lumber, while her mother worked as a cook for a private family. ¹⁰ Elizabeth Hall graduated from high school and was briefly enrolled at Morris Brown College but had to leave because of financial circumstances. ¹¹ In the early 1900s, she labored as a live-in servant for several prominent families in Atlanta and witnessed the devastating race riot that erupted in the city in 1906, killing one of her best friends. ¹² In 1911, Elizabeth Hall married Irvin McDuffie, a successful barber in Atlanta who owned the McDuffie–Herndon Barber Shop on Marietta Street with Alonzo Herndon. Irvin and Elizabeth McDuffie lived in a modest house on Randolph Street and were active members of the Liberty Baptist Church. ¹³ In the late 1920s, Irvin McDuffie was injured in a fire in his barber shop, which badly scalded his legs, prompting him to seek other employment. In 1927, he met Franklin D. Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt was visiting Warm Springs to heal in the therapeutic waters and quickly hired Irvin McDuffie to serve as the politician’s personal valet. While Irvin McDuffie dutifully attended to Roosevelt during his years as governor of New York between 1928 and 1932, Elizabeth McDuffie remained behind in Georgia, where she labored as a live-in servant for Edward Inman, a wealthy cotton broker in Atlanta. ¹⁴ When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, Irvin McDuffie requested that his wife receive a job with the administration. ¹⁵

Shortly after FDR’s inauguration as the thirty-second President of the United States in March 1933, Elizabeth and Irvin McDuffie moved into the White House and became part of the full-time household staff. In her first years of service, Elizabeth McDuffie concentrated principally on her domestic duties in the White House, serving both the President and the First Lady in Washington, D.C., as well as accompanying them on trips throughout the United States. ¹⁶

The black press noted the arrival of Irvin and Elizabeth McDuffie to Washington, D.C., introducing them to readers living across the United States. For instance, an article in the Baltimore Afro-American celebrated the fact that African Americans numbered over half of the household staff in the Roosevelt White House, working as chauffeurs, cooks, servants, and messengers. The black press expressed excitement about what they viewed as an unprecedented number of black workers in the White House. ¹⁷ Not only did these reports help to add a human dimension to the new cohort of servants in the White House, but they especially singled out Irvin and Elizabeth McDuffie, whom they viewed as cultivating important ties with the Roosevelts, thereby positioning their jobs as more than personal service work but also positions from which they could exercise meaningful political influence in the White House. For instance, a story in the Washington Tribune credited Elizabeth McDuffie with arranging for the famed singers Etta Moten and Lillian Evanti to appear at the White House, making them the first black women to perform there. ¹⁸ And, when an organization dedicated to raising money for a Warm Springs, polio foundation held a birthday ball for President Roosevelt at the Masonic Temple in Northwest Washington, Elizabeth McDuffie attended as the official representative of the White House. ¹⁹ The narratives coming out of the White House led the New York Amsterdam News to suggest that both Irvin and Elizabeth McDuffie possessed a “helpful influence in many directions where the welfare of the Negro is concerned.” ²⁰ The articles in the black press, then, not only painted a portrait of Elizabeth and Irvin McDuffie as valuable members of the household staff but also relatively prominent figures in the Roosevelt White House. ²¹

African Americans and the Social Security Act

Two years after the McDuffies had settled into their White House duties, Congress began debating the Social Security Act, a broad piece of legislation that offered a government economic safety net for American citizens. ²² Two of its central programs included Old Age Insurance and Unemployment Insurance, which were funded jointly by employers and employees and offered workers compensation during periods of unemployment and a monthly pension upon retirement at the age of sixty-five. When the House of Representatives began to outline the specific details of the Social Security Act, they included provisions that excluded domestic servants and farmers from both Unemployment Insurance and Old Age Insurance. The rationale behind denying access to domestic servants was that their employment was short term, making it difficult to track down employers. With 1,600,298 African American women engaged in domestic and personal service and agriculture in the United States in 1930, the Social Security proposal threatened to exclude 87 percent of all black women workers and 55 percent of all black wage earners. ²³ The black press assiduously followed these political debates, educating readers about the potential consequences of this exclusionary legislation for a considerable sector of African Americans. At the hearings on Social Security in January 1935, both George E. Haynes, formerly Executive Secretary of the National Urban League and representative of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, and Charles Hamilton Houston, lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), testified about the importance of including black workers in this federal program. In his remarks, Houston pointed to the fragile status of black workers in the United States, arguing that they suffered higher rates of unemployment than white workers. ²⁴ But, their testimony fell on deaf ears, and Congress passed the Social Security Act with the provision that farmers and domestic servants would not be covered. ²⁵ For African Americans, especially black women, the Social Security Act created a dangerous precedent precisely because this federal legislation did not include a guarantee of economic citizenship for all Americans.

Leading black women activists—both in Washington, D.C., and across the country—were vocal critics of this proposed legislation. At the Nineteenth Biennial Convention of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in Cleveland, Ohio, the issue of Social Security was on the agenda and delegates passed a resolution vowing to “wipe from the statute books laws that discriminate against Negroes.” ²⁶ One month later, in August 1935, the Grand Order of the Elks held an educational conference in Washington, D.C. At this event, economist and lawyer Sadie Tanner Mossell termed the Social Security Act a “sieve through which the majority of colored persons fall through.” ²⁷ African American women were cognizant of and outspoken about the exclusion of such a substantial portion of the workforce in Social Security.

One of the most vehement critics of the Social Security Act was Nannie Helen Burroughs, a political activist who had labored for years to improve the status of working-class women, whether it was through education at the National Training School in Washington, D.C., or the founding of the National Association of Wage Earners, a labor organization for black women workers in the 1920s. ²⁸ Burroughs joined fellow delegates to denounce the Social Security Act as discriminatory at the Elks Conference. ²⁹ And in an article in the Baltimore Afro-American, Burroughs broadened her critique, arguing that the federal government had made “domestic workers the mudsill of the new social order” and terming the Social Security Act “unjust, and undemocratic.” ³⁰ Using the term mudsill, Burroughs evoked nineteenth-century justifications for slavery, which presumed an inherent hierarchy in society. She thus powerfully connected the past exploitations of African Americans in the nineteenth century to the contemporary circumstances in the 1930s. Even more, she pointed to the important role that domestic performed for society to run smoothly, arguing that domestic workers were as responsible for the “the health, happiness, and social welfare of the nation as any other group.” She ended her analysis by suggesting that “domestic workers and those who desire to build a new social order must address themselves to the task of training and organizing the grand army of workers who are engaged in personal service.” ³¹ Burroughs’s solution to the exclusion in the Social Security Act centered on opening training programs to improve wages, as well as organizing domestic servants to collectively press for rights.

“The Servant Campaigns”: Elizabeth McDuffie on the Campaign Trail in 1936

If Elizabeth McDuffie had any opinions about the limitations of Social Security in 1935, she did not disclose them publicly during the hearings and subsequent passage of the legislation. But, one year after the authorization of the Social Security Act, Elizabeth McDuffie marked her formal entrance into politics by campaigning for FDR in his reelection for the presidency against Republican Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas. This election was a test for FDR and the Democratic Party because most African American voters still identified as Republican. In the 1932 presidential election, 77 percent of African Americans had voted for incumbent President Herbert Hoover, while only 23 percent had cast ballots for FDR. ³² Black votes for the Democratic Party in the 1936 election were anything but certain. In the third week of October 1936, Elizabeth McDuffie traveled to the Midwest, stopping in Chicago, St. Louis, Gary, and several cities in Ohio, including Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, to deliver speeches in support of Roosevelt’s reelection. ³³ Elizabeth McDuffie was not the first African American woman to deliver speeches on behalf of a presidential candidate, but her tour was unusual because of her status as a maid in the White House and precisely for that reason, she attracted wide press coverage. ³⁴ Because of Jim Crow practices in the cities she visited, McDuffie lodged with prominent black Democrats, rather than spending her nights in a private hotel. ³⁵ Many of the cities that McDuffie visited, especially Chicago and Cleveland, were still black Republican strongholds. ³⁶ In her address before a crowd of four thousand at the Hibernian Hall in St. Louis, Missouri, Elizabeth McDuffie connected the achievements of President Roosevelt with the emancipation of slavery, arguing, “Throughout the nation today, colored men and women are playing the part in the government under President Roosevelt’s New Deal that we have awaited to, these seventy years which have passed since President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” ³⁷

McDuffie’s reference to President Lincoln was particularly important because she needed to convince African American voters to do two things. First, she needed to persuade black voters to break with their historical allegiances with the Party of Abraham Lincoln, emancipation of slavery, and black citizenship rights during Reconstruction. As the child of former slaves, Elizabeth McDuffie held personal connections to the Republican Party and still vividly recalled her parents’ stories about the significance of emancipation and Reconstruction. ³⁸ And next, McDuffie had to influence black voters to embrace a political party long associated with Jim Crow policies, including segregation and disfranchisement. When African Americans campaigned for Republican candidates in the 1930s, they often juxtaposed the Democratic Party’s record of racial injustice with the Republican Party’s historical achievements for black citizens. ³⁹ In fact, while Elizabeth McDuffie campaigned for FDR in the Midwest, four prominent African American women called the “Flying Squadron” toured East Coast cities speaking on behalf of Governor Landon and the Republican Party. ⁴⁰ McDuffie made her pitch without ever alluding to the Democratic Party’s reputation on race, which was weak, and instead focused her support for President Roosevelt from an economic perspective, pointing out that the New Deal allocated millions of dollars for education, construction projects, job training, and conservation without reference to race. ⁴¹

Elizabeth McDuffie’s occupation as a domestic servant helps to explain her popularity on the campaign trail. As a maid, McDuffie was a mirror to her audience. When African Americans migrated to Northern and Midwestern cities, the vast majority of black women found employment in domestic service. Seeing McDuffie, then, offered a familiar face. ⁴² And, precisely because of her unique location in the White House, McDuffie drew on the insights she gleaned from her work experiences, weaving them into a narrative that was both personal and political to convince black voters to cast ballots for FDR. In one speech, she charmed audiences by detailing FDR’s daily breakfast menu (milk, coffee, and orange juice) as well as Eleanor Roosevelt’s preferences for pansies over sunflowers. ⁴³ Disclosing that level of detail about the everyday habits of the First Family was a savvy strategy designed to create bonds of trust between McDuffie and her audience. It was precisely McDuffie’s knowledge about the quotidian characteristics of the First Family that imbued her with a unique level of authority to declare that Franklin Roosevelt was a serious champion of racial justice, in her words, the “Emancipator of the Colored Race.” ⁴⁴

Elizabeth McDuffie’s campaign tour strategically reached out to both men and women voters. Since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 granting woman suffrage, African American women had been an important constituency of voters in both Northern and Midwestern cities. ⁴⁵ In Cleveland, Ohio, McDuffie addressed a group of African American women at the Elks Hall on East 56th Street. An article in the Plain Dealer noted that McDuffie’s speech made Roosevelt “more of a political figure yesterday to an audience of Democratic Negro Women” as she urged them to vote a “straight Democratic ticket.” ⁴⁶

Whether it was through participation in a New Deal program, an acceptance of Roosevelt’s message, or weariness with the Republican Party, black voters caused a major political realignment in the 1936 election as 75 percent cast ballots for FDR, almost a direct reversal of black voting patterns in the 1932 election. ⁴⁷ McDuffie’s campaigning was particularly important because the Midwest had traditionally enjoyed an even larger percentage of black Republicans than the nation as a whole. In the 1932 election, the black voting record for Republicans stood at 75 percent in Chicago, 82 percent in Cleveland, and 71 percent in Cincinnati. ⁴⁸ But four years later, in 1936, FDR and the Democratic Party won a substantial number of black votes in the cities McDuffie had visited, including 49 percent in Chicago, 60 percent in Cleveland, and 65 percent in Cincinnati. In all of these cities, black votes for FDR doubled within only four years.

Local Democratic organizations valued McDuffie’s skills and influence as a campaign speaker. It is telling that two years later, the Ohio State Democratic League specifically requested McDuffie’s presence as a speaker to energize black voters to cast ballots for the Democrats in the Congressional midterm elections. In November 1938, McDuffie, along with three black men, traveled to Ohio to campaign in black communities for the reelection of Democratic Senator Robert J. Bulkley against his challenger, Robert A. Taft, a Republican. “Everywhere that Mrs. McDuffy went,” the president of the Ohio State Democratic League told FDR, “she was enthusiastically received and made a lasting and valuable impression with both her personality and sincerity in expressing the objectives and the humanitarian principles” of the New Deal. While Bulkley lost his reelection bid, African American voters cast 52 percent of the ballots for the Democratic Party, a testament to both the growing black political realignment and McDuffie’s talents as a campaigner. ⁴⁹

An article in the Baltimore Afro-American simply termed “The Servant Campaigns” offered a frank assessment of her status as a political campaigner, noting, “She went out to make one speech, did make three and could have made twenty-four more before returning to Washington in order to cook the President’s meals.” ⁵⁰ Elizabeth McDuffie’s location in the White House—and the visibility she received on the campaign trail—provided her with a unique opportunity to work on issues related to economic citizenship rights for African American women.

Elizabeth McDuffie and the United Government Employees, Incorporated (UGE)

Following her blitz on the campaign trail in November 1936, McDuffie returned to Washington, D.C., to resume her domestic duties in the White House, but she also assumed a more visible role in politics. Nine days after FDR was reelected president in a land-slide victory that claimed the majority of black voters, Elizabeth McDuffie was elected treasurer of the newly formed UGE, an advocacy organization designed to improve conditions for black government workers. Edgar Brown, a former tennis star, journalist, and employee in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, served as president. ⁵¹ Even though on the campaign trail McDuffie had lauded Roosevelt as the “emancipator of the colored race,” as a leader in the UGE, she seized on this position to push against the boundaries of his policies to focus more fully on economic citizenship rights for black women. ⁵² For instance, in February 1937, at a fund-raiser for Indiana Congresswoman Virginia E. Jenckes, Elizabeth McDuffie joined others on stage to advocate that all federal employees—including cleaners in government offices—should earn a living, minimum wage of $1,500. ⁵³ Also in 1937, four black women contacted Elizabeth McDuffie, informing her that, as laundresses in Fort Myer, Virginia, they earned only $600 a year. McDuffie politicized their case, and Edgar Brown testified before a Subcommittee on Appropriations in the United States Senate, where he relayed the plight of these workers who earned menial wages while washing the clothes and linens for members of the armed services. ⁵⁴ When the Senate voted to increase the laundress’ pay, the black press credited McDuffie and members of the UGE for their advocacy in seeking justice for service workers. ⁵⁵ The fact that the laundresses in Virginia personally reached out to McDuffie suggests that black women workers viewed her as an approachable figure who could tap her political connections to address their low wages.

Through her position in the UGE, McDuffie came into greater interaction with local residents and political activists in Washington, D.C. For instance, she appeared at a Democratic Victory Banquet with Julia West Hamilton, the president of the Phyllis Wheatley Young Women’s Christian Association who was a champion of economic justice for black women workers as well as a vocal critic of police brutality in the city. ⁵⁶ McDuffie also made appearances at storied political institutions in the Northwest section of Washington, including the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Whitelaw Hotel, and the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. ⁵⁷ In these political different spaces, McDuffie advocated for both the UGE and the Democratic Party even though their agendas are not always fully aligned.

As McDuffie advanced these causes, it is possible that she acquired a deeper understanding about some of the issues that concerned local black citizens in Washington, D.C. In the 1930s, African Americans composed 28 percent of the population in Washington, D.C., and lived in diverse neighborhoods throughout the city. ⁵⁸ Residency in Washington, D.C., offered black citizens some benefits over their peers in other cities, including the prospect of well-paying jobs in the federal government; an excellent, albeit separate, public school system; the prestigious Howard University; and a thriving institutional landscape of businesses, churches, and fraternal orders. However, black residents faced segregation or exclusion in many hotels, restaurants, theaters, and parks. Both the federal government and three-member Board of Commissioners governed the city of Washington, D.C., in the 1930s and no resident—regardless of race or sex—could vote.

In the 1930s, black residents of Washington, D.C., fully felt the effects of the Great Depression and began to experience mounting problems of police brutality in the city. The vast majority of African American women in Washington, D.C., labored in domestic and personal service, and faced low wages, long hours, and unemployment. ⁵⁹ As white families in Washington, D.C., coped with the circumstances of the Great Depression, they either fired their hired help or reduced their wages. ⁶⁰ In addition to these structural economic problems, black residents of Washington, D.C., had begun to suffer from escalating violence as white police officers shot at least forty-five men and assaulted at least twenty-one women. ⁶¹ In her journeys throughout black Washington—attending meetings, working alongside activists, forging political connections, and advocating the UGE and the Democratic Party—it is possible that Elizabeth McDuffie developed richer insights into some of the issues that black local residents of D.C. faced.

In February 1938, Elizabeth McDuffie expanded her activism in local causes by traveling two miles from her residence at the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue to 400 South Capitol Street in Southeast, where she celebrated the opening of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Demonstration Center for Household Workers. ⁶² This was the second training center in D.C. for black women and was located only a few blocks away from the U.S. Capitol. The training center offered classes in a range of domestic tasks, including cooking, setting a proper table, operating modern household appliances, and making a bed. It was designed to ameliorate some of the circumstances of black women’s employment in Washington, D.C., whether it was enabling women to earn relief wages, teaching important skills to make servants more attractive to employers, hiring other women to teach the art of domestic service, or establishing a standard of hours and wages for domestic servants in the city. The center received most of its funding from the WPA, but UGE members contributed $22 a month. A newspaper article celebrating the opening of the center noted McDuffie’s presence, remarking, “The first check was presented last week by Elizabeth McDuffie, who is one of the maids at the White House and whose husband is valet to the President.” ⁶³ The symbolism of having a White House maid endorse the training center suggested presidential validation of the program. As several historians have argued, these WPA training centers reinforced existing racial and sexual hierarchies in the United States by limiting black women’s relief opportunities to domestic service and sewing projects. ⁶⁴

Three months after the opening of the Training Center in D.C., a majority Democratic Congress debated a bill that would appropriate additional resources for these types of training programs. On Tuesday, May 17, Edgar G. Brown of the UGE testified before a Congressional hearing about the Work Relief and Public Works Appropriation Act of 1938 where he highlighted the importance of funding projects for African Americans, especially for black women. In his testimony, Brown argued that citizenship and democracy would not be fulfilled in the United States until economic justice for working-class black women was fulfilled.

Edgar Brown evoked Thomas Jefferson and his contributions to American democracy, challenging the senators on the committee to “emulate his [Jefferson’s] noble contribution to our glorious democracy by authorizing the training of idle hands and quickening the hopes of eager but frustrated American women?” ⁶⁵ After some debate in Congress, they ultimately passed the relief bill, earmarking $285,000,000 for “the appropriation for educational, professional, clerical, cultural, recreational, production, service to be made available for domestic service projects.” ⁶⁶ The passage of this legislation indicates that Congress was willing to fund training programs for domestic servants but was still resistant to including them in the Social Security Act.

After the passage of this legislation, leading black newspapers ran celebratory stories. Political activist and reformer Nannie Helen Burroughs lauded this landmark achievement in the pages of the Chicago Defender. In an article titled “A New Day Dawns for the Domestic Worker,” Burroughs argued, “For the first time in the history of America, the government of the United States has given domestic workers a break.” She contended,

A new day for the domestic worker will be ushered in if and when those who are concerned about the welfare of the most neglected labor group in the world will accept this educational opportunity as a definite challenge and cooperate in making our economic and social ideals for them real. ⁶⁷

Here Burroughs celebrated the fact that the federal government was willing to allocate resources for domestic training programs. Historically, middle-class African American women had orchestrated these programs and conducted both the fund-raising and implementation. Burroughs, like many middle-class black activists, strongly believed that training programs would not only improve the cleanliness of black homes but also elevate the economic status of domestic servants by professionalizing the work. ⁶⁸ Another article in the Cleveland Call rejoiced in the passage of the bill. Singling out the important contributions of Elizabeth McDuffie in setting a precedent for federal relief of domestic workers, the article celebrated her efforts to bring together the resources of the UGE and WPA. “The members of Congress,” the Cleveland Call and Post reported, “were impressed with the experimental Household Training Center sponsored by the United Government Employees’ organization and the WPA under the leadership of Mrs. Elizabeth McDuffie.” In identifying McDuffie, the newspaper tellingly noted that she bridged the worlds of the White House and the grassroots advocacy of the UGE as “an employee of the White House and treasurer of the UGE for the past three months at 400 South Capitol Street, just two blocks from the Senate and House Office Buildings on Capitol Hill.” ⁶⁹

While middle-class activists such as Nannie Helen Burroughs were pleased that Congress appropriated funding for training programs for domestic servants, it is more difficult to discern the reactions among working-class women. In 1938, several domestic servants wrote letters that were published in the Washington Post. These letters indicate that workers’ visions of democracy also reflected a quest for liberally guaranteed economic citizenship through inclusion in the Social Security Act. One woman, who signed her name, “A Self-Respecting Domestic Servant,” called on Congress to expand the existing Social Security Act because servants “need protection when unemployed and when they become too old to work, just as industrial workers do.” She concluded by noting that in the present circumstances, domestic servants rarely earned a “decent living” under “miserable working conditions.” ⁷⁰ And another woman who simply signed her name “A Domestic,” noted that she had been employed as a servant for the past twenty-eight years and argued, “In many of the wealthy homes servants are working 15-20 hours daily underpaid with no pay for extra work or extra hours given off and are given less consideration than the family’s pet dog.” ⁷¹ Dissatisfied with their work and lack of government protections, these two women demanded economic citizenship rights through fair wages and better treatment. The contrast between the language of middle-class women like Nannie Helen Burroughs and working-class women like these domestic servants reveals how class influenced black women’s perceptions of economic citizenship in the New Deal era. This diversity of political opinion underscores the many actors who were engaged around questions of economic citizenship rights in Washington, D.C., during the New Deal era.

The Charwomen Riot

Five months after the passage of the Relief Act of 1938, an episode occurred in Washington, D.C., that starkly illuminated the economic predicaments among black women in the city. At some point in 1938, the United States Civil Service announced that on Wednesday, October 12, it would accept applications for an estimated two thousand charwoman jobs. Charwomen were the workers who cleaned the offices of the government and, despite their menial status, were on the federal payroll, received holiday benefits, and earned an annual salary of $1,080. ⁷² Comparatively, wages for domestic servants in the District of Columbia ranged from $240 to $720, and included long hours and no holiday benefits or retirement. ⁷³ While not the same benefits promised by Social Security, these federal benefits acknowledged a measure of economic citizenship rights, which working-class women like McDuffie and the letter writers in the Washington Post had been demanding.

On Tuesday, October 11 by eight o’clock in the evening, prospective employees carrying milk crates, boxes, and newspapers began to line up outside the Fourth Police Precinct on E Street, Southwest between 6th and 4½ Streets, and prepared for a long night of waiting. The Fourth Precinct was located in a working-class black neighborhood in Southwest Washington where African Americans composed 57 percent of the population and suffered from higher rates of police brutality than their neighbors in other sections of the city. ⁷⁴ The Fourth Police Precinct was located less than one mile from the United States Capitol. As the hours went by, the Washington Post reported, “more and more women took their places.” The next morning, as an article in the Washington Post dramatically noted, “nearly 20,000 women stampeded the Fourth Precinct Police Station yesterday in an effort to obtain 2,000 applications for jobs as Federal Charwomen.” The article continued, remarking, “The avalanche of women forced officers of the Civil Service Commission to suspend distribution after 1,500 applications had been given out.” When it was clear that the applications were no longer being distributed, the hundreds of women grew impatient. An article noted that when the crowds grew “unruly . . . cops went to work on them with their billies, one woman was doused with a hose and others were trampled in the rush.” ⁷⁵ Other newspapers noted that police officers pushed, cursed, and drove motorcycles on the crowds of applicants. ⁷⁶ Two women—T. E. Ryan (white) and Carrie Fields (black)—were injured and sent to the hospital. And an ambulance was dispatched to treat victims at the scene. ⁷⁷ The large number of employees forced civil service officials to call on police reserves for backup assistance. The crowds also caused officers to redirect traffic on E Street Southwest between 4th and 7th Streets. And police officers arrested Edgar G. Brown, head of the UGE, charging him with “inciting the mob.” ⁷⁸ A columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American remarked, “That spectacle could hardly be duplicated in any other municipality because nowhere are jobs so attractive as in the Federal government, even for charwomen.” ⁷⁹

Black women throughout the city viewed the charwomen position as a tremendous opportunity to improve their economic circumstances. Essie Jackson, an unemployed widow who was thirty-eight years old, was one of the hundreds of mostly black women who had waited all night but did not receive a job application. “I waited a long time so I could be first in line, but I guess I lost my place in the rush,” she told reporters of the Baltimore Afro-American. She lamented that she had “no job in view now” and worried about her future. One year later, Jackson was employed as a maid for a private family. ⁸⁰ Another black woman, forty-year-old Alice Miller, had also spent the night at the station, curled up on a sheet of newspapers. She told reporters, “I could have gotten a chance at that blank and maybe went to work if that rush had not broken out.” ⁸¹ By camping out at the Fourth Police Precinct, Essie Jackson and Alice Miller registered their visions for economic citizenship in the 1930s by expressing a strong preference for charwomen jobs in the federal government.

News of the eager job applicants circulated to black and white newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, the Chicago Defender, the Los Angeles Times, and the Atlanta Daily Constitution. Many of the articles also featured dramatic photo essays, revealing the stark juxtaposition between eager job applicants spilling into the street and police officers containing the crowds.

Photographs showed black women of all ages at various stages of the day. In one photograph, three women dressed in dresses and coats stood on either side of an elderly woman seated on a barrel who was clutching a pair of crutches. The caption, “Some Came Crippled, Some Came Lame,” depicted the varying physical conditions among the job applicants.

The fact that women who struggled to walk sought applications for a physically taxing job as charwomen suggests their level of desperation for this particular employment. ⁸² Another photograph depicted three women seated on barrels, one cradling a child who appeared to be about five years old. Behind the seated women was a crowd of at least ten women, all whom looked eager for employment. A caption read, “After All-Night Vigil,” indicating that the women on barrels had spent the night at the Fourth Police Precinct. ⁸³

Headlines for the riot were equally sensational, announcing “25,000 Run over Police: All Want Charwomen Job,” “Twenty-Five Thousand Women Storm Jail to Apply for Charwomen Job,” and “Women Riot for Jobs.” These images and descriptions spoke for themselves; a substantial number of black women in Washington, D.C., were desperate for cleaning jobs in the federal government because they were federal jobs that carried unusual benefits of economic citizenship for service workers in a nation that excluded domestics from the Social Security Act, which was a key component of relief and recovery for Americans in the 1930s.

In this episode, ten thousand to twenty thousand black women in D.C. used their collective action to politically voice their discontent with the city’s employment prospects. The fact that hundreds of women camped outside of the police precinct hours before the distribution of job applications indicates their sheer desperation for employment that offered a decent salary and federal benefits. While this movement was initially unplanned and spontaneous, the evidence suggests that black women became increasingly politicized as police officers directed hoses and billie clubs at the crowd, shut down traffic, and arrested Edgar Brown. Police brutality against men and women was an issue of long-standing concern for African American residents in Washington, D.C., and this episode not only aggravated existing tensions in Southwest but also helped to broadcast this abuse to national audiences. ⁸⁴ While the individual identities of most of the participants are unknown, it is more than likely that many of these prospective job applicants were either unemployed women or domestic workers who sought to improve their economic standing through steady wages and government benefits. Even though their presence was unplanned, in pressing for jobs as charwomen, African American women in Washington, D.C., used their bodies to help register their collective visions of economic citizenship rights and justice for personal servants in the New Deal.

These calls for justice were not lost on Elizabeth McDuffie. In the aftermath of the charwomen riot, McDuffie attended a meeting of the UGE, where attendees cast votes on several resolutions that highlighted the abuse that the job applicants faced specifically, as well as their economic prospects more broadly. McDuffie asked meeting attendees to vote on a resolution that would allocate $10,000 to “make the Negro citizen’s rights in the nation’s capital and elsewhere something all men must recognize and respect, including police and civil service commissioners.” McDuffie’s resolution had overt, gendered language, casting black women as “citizens” who deserved “rights” and “respect,” while police officers and civil service commissioners were the “men” who violated them. McDuffie then passionately called for economic citizenship for black workers, arguing,

All those in high place who are responsible for the relief and employment opportunities throughout the country must heed the voice and feel the force the organization demands for jobs and social security for one-tenths of the population of the 48 states who are colored Americans. ⁸⁵

She and other meeting attendees passed a resolution calling for the removal of the superintendent of the police and condemned the “unnecessary roughness used by police in handling the women, who were standing in line to receive application blanks for jobs as federal charwomen.” ⁸⁶ In this episode, working-class women at the grassroots level articulated their desire for jobs as federal charwomen, and their actions struck a chord with Elizabeth McDuffie. She, in turn, used her location in the UGE and the White House to voice their plight to a larger audience, which demonstrates the ways that she was able to move in different political spaces throughout Washington, D.C.

After the charwomen riot, Elizabeth McDuffie continued to be an advocate for African Americans in the eight additional years that she remained in Washington, D.C. Through the UGE and other organizations, she lobbied to expand New Deal programs to benefit all citizens, especially working-class black women. ⁸⁷ She campaigned for President Roosevelt’s historic third term in 1940. ⁸⁸ In commemoration of her efforts to improve the status of African American women in the New Deal, the Baltimore Afro-American named her as one of the top women of 1940. ⁸⁹ And she became involved in the National Council of Negro Women, serving as a delegate for their conference in 1940 in Washington, D.C. ⁹⁰ Perhaps most symbolically, Elizabeth McDuffie, the real-life domestic to the president, even auditioned for the role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind that immortalized the stereotypical black servant for generations, but the part went to Hattie McDaniel. ⁹¹ Not being cast in the movie did not disappoint McDuffie because she recognized her unprecedented opportunity of working in the White House and wielding political influence, later writing that “I kept on playing my bit part on a real-life stage where history was being made.” ⁹²

Conclusion

By the time McDuffie moved back to Georgia in 1941, her political consciousness about economic justice for all had deepened considerably. In her years in Washington, D.C., she had witnessed the inner workings of a political administration and its efforts to lift America out of its greatest economic crisis in history. As a servant in the Roosevelt White House who commanded authority and respect, McDuffie literally symbolized not only the gains but also the limitations of the New Deal for African American women. Although McDuffie was no longer involved in federal politics, it is likely that she felt that justice had finally been achieved when Congress revised the Social Security Amendments to include domestic workers as beneficiaries in 1950. ⁹³

The story of Elizabeth McDuffie adds nuance to the ways that historians write about African American women and the New Deal. The exclusion of domestic servants from the Social Security Act marked a tremendous setback in terms of African Americans’ quest for economic citizenship. African American women in Washington, D.C., deployed several political strategies to address this exclusion. Middle-class activists, including Nannie Helen Burroughs, sought to improve conditions for domestic servants through training programs, which would, in theory, increase their wages and working conditions, and elevate the dignity of their labor. Working-class women participated in these training programs, but some also wrote letters to the newspaper advocating unemployment insurance and camped outside the Fourth Police Precinct in Southwest Washington, waiting with hundreds of other women to receive applications as federal charwomen. Their collective action helped to express their desire for service jobs in the federal government as opposed to the private sector. Elizabeth McDuffie straddled both approaches in her political activism. McDuffie seized upon her political influence to improve conditions for domestic servants by lobbying for increased wages and assisting in the creation of a WPA Training House in Washington, D.C. But the charwomen riot—including the violence against prospective job applicants—caused McDuffie to amplify her political stance and demand that all African Americans receive access to Social Security programs, dignity, and respect. As a maid herself, McDuffie was not very far removed from the everyday concerns of domestic servants in the United States, and these personal experiences influenced her political activism. African American women’s political activism in Washington, D.C., in the 1930s demonstrates their broad visions of citizenship in the United States, which made economic justice a central component to equality.

While the Trump Era has unleashed a torrent of alt-right politics, black women have been a vital force in the resistance, stretching from grassroots marches to the grassy lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Whether it is Senator Kamala Harris’s promising career in the Senate, Representative Maxine Waters’s sharp critiques of President Donald Trump, or the thousands of women of color who have marched with their feet against the current administration, all of these examples illustrate the persistence and visibility of black women in politics in the twentieth century.