The Venerable Saint

Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Madame C. J. Walker, W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Benjamin Bannecker, George Liele are all noteworthy selections to present during Black History Month. Their accomplishments were stellar in the history of Americans of
African descent. Their stories were inspiring. Their commitment and fortitude to success shine brightly as noteworthy armor for future struggles against injustice.

Notwithstanding these noble contributions, this writing focuses on a sisterhood that spanned 100 years. Its members are linked by their common choice to give up the little joy life may have offered, in order to enhance the lives of their family members. They were the washwomen of the Negro race in America. The time was the early days of the Negro's struggle for dignity and freedom in the United States of America.

Carter Woodson called attention to them in The Negro Washwoman, a Vanishing Figure. Venerable saints - he called them. Saints they were; seldom venerated; more often forgotten. This note retells their story and it calls for an annual remembrance of their life-struggles, especially by their progenies and disciples of compassion.

Their Story: Pre-Emancipation
In the South, their story began during the ante bellum era. They were in service to an often-truculent plantation mistress. Their job was to keep their mistress' lives free of drudgery. They left their hut at dawn and toiled with their mistress' children. Their household duties were washing and ironing clothes, cooking meals, and cleaning the mistress' house. Meanwhile, their home went unattended until they return at dusk.

Upon their return, they found their children craving love and attention and, their tired husband resting from the drudgeries of fieldwork and the indignities of his life-status. Without regard for self, they launch into the second half of their toil for the day. But this time they cook and care for their loved ones; thereby stoking the flame that keeps alive their raison d'etre.

The final task of their day they devote to their home enterprise; washing clothes for pay. From whence sprang the term, washwomen. With this income, the washwoman purchased presents and clothes for her family and household items that turned the hut into a home. Amidst servitude, to become a washwoman is to surrender self for the good of others. For it revealed a perpetual sacrifice to elevate her loved one's lives from mere existence to a life with occasional joy. She ended her day with less than a six-hours rest with her life demanding a replay on the next weekday.

The ante bellum system was taxing to the slaves, but to the female slave it was most agonizing. Slave marriages were prohibited by law, so masters often encouraged their female slaves "to take up" with a man. Absent love, she refused, but the master's will prevailed. Some of these "unions" were lasting. But others were encouraged only to bring more slaves into the master's ownership to be sold at auction or to maintain his supply of slave labor. Birthing a child into slavery was tortuous, but separating from that child in order to support such an economic system was an agonizing abomination.

In the North the freed colored women fared better. She did not have to contend with the problems of slavery. But her economic plight was not different. If her husband did not have a trade, he worked menial jobs for low pay. A wife without artist artistic talent, was likely to "take in wash" to supplement his husband's low wages.

Post-Emancipation
Emancipation changed everything. Black men withdrew their wives and daughters from the fields to work in their homes. Many former slaves migrated to the North to seek a better life. The defeated South was in economic disarray. Returning soldiers were favored for the skilled jobs, leaving the menial jobs with less-than subsistence pay to the emancipated. This prevalent scenario forced emancipated females to supplement the family's income. Without education or artistic skills, washing clothes in her home was the choice of many: the washwoman.

To many newly emancipated, the North promised more than it delivered. Recently freed males were skilled from their trade experiences on the plantation. To protect their members from these skilled competitors, unions closed their rolls, leaving only menial jobs with very low pay to the newly emancipated. Freedom in the North had changed the slave's social status, but it did not impact his economic viability.

In the North, the emancipated female did not have to respond to the command to " take up with a man" nor to see her child sold. But for her family, economic hardship did not abate. It merely changed its face from that of the demanding mistress or the dictating master to the face of family survival.

After emancipation, the washwomen continued their sacrifices for approximately 90 years. Demand for their services gave way to modern wash machinery, modern laundries, and a more educated black race. Their sacrifices were more than a financial stimulus to the family. They fortified the Negro family spiritually, civically and educationally. Through the experience the washwoman gained from her home business, she encouraged and ushered the Negro race into business enterprises. And from the wisdom she gained of the American society, she upheld the primacy of her husband's authority as the key to a strong family unit, thereby strengthening the Black family for the onslaught of the Civil Rights Battles of the '60s.

Call to Remember
Throughout history, sacrifices have always been made. Why a call to immortalize the Negro washwoman?
The washwoman's sacrifice was a collective action spanning generations that bridged her loved ones to a better life - one into which she could never enter. This was a uniquely selfless act of love and devotion. Further, American history points to no other group that made such a sacrifice without the hope of enjoying its fruits. Equally important, the effect of washwoman's sacrifice was extensive. Few black families, rooted in American slavery, can boast its successful emergence into American life free of her sacrifice. Thus the washwoman's life-struggles and its effect merit telling through the ages.

C. G. Woodson, The Negro Washwoman: A Vanishing Figure Vol. XV July 1930 No. 3.