Telling Memories Among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South

by Susan Tucker

Overview

In Telling Memories Among Southern Women, Susan Tucker presents a revealing collection of oral-history narratives that explore the complex, sometimes enigmatic bond between black female domestic workers and their white employers from the turn of the twentieth century to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Based on interviews with forty-two women of both races from the Deep South, these narratives express the full range of human emotions and successfully convey the ties that united—and the tensions and conflicts that separated—these two mutually dependent groups of women.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807127995
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Susan Tucker is curator of books and records at the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Preface	1
Part I	Complex Bonds	13
	Priscilla Butler	19
	Winnie Hefley	27
	Sallie Hutton	32
	Martha Calvert	37
	Gillian Kushner	43
	Leigh Campbell	46
	Mary Patricia Foley	52
	Sarah Kingsley	55
	Margaret McAllister	61
	Eugenia Bowden	64
Part II	Clear Divisions, Rigidly Prescribed Contacts	69
	Nancy Valley	75
	Cecelia Gaudet	79
	Ella Thomas	86
	Edith Whitney	90
	Hazel Lambert	94
	Corinne Cooke	99
Part III	From Country to City	103
	Augusta Swanson	111
	Essie Favrot	117
	Louvenia Walker	121
	Louise Webster	127
	Anne Robertson	132
	Ellen Owens	139
Part IV	Giving and Receiving	145
	Willie Mae Fitzgerald	152
	Melissa Howe	155
	Leila Parkerson	159
	Juliana Lincoln	166
	Frances Galvin	171
	Jane Stafford	175
	Marianne Polk	180
	Jill Janvier	183
Part V	Knowing the White Folks, Knowing the Black Folks	189
	Clelia Daly	198
	Zelda Greene	202
	Aletha Vaughn	206
	Eva James	211
	Voncille Sherard	215
	Helen Reed	222
	Eileen McLean	227
	Elinor Birney	231
	Sophie Stewart	237
	Cynthia Berg	242
	Epilogue: Looking Backward, Looking Forward	247
	Regina Manning	250
	Linda Barron	256
	Photographic Essay	263

Editorial Reviews

Susan Tucker makes a wonderful contribution to our understanding of the lives and feelings of black and white southern women. The voices that emerge from her interviews ring absolutely true, by turn loving and angry, compassionate and thoughtless, but always distinctly southern.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Thank you to Susan Tucker, author of the book Telling Memories Among Southern Women, whose beautiful oral accounts of domestics and their white employers took me back to a time and place that is long gone.” (in The Help)

Kathryn Stockett

A sensitive and passionate exploration of the way we have lived and what it has done to us. This is a splendid book.

Chicago Tribune - Ellen Douglas

Captures the strangeness and poignancy of the separate worlds of the segregated South.

Columbia (S.C.) State

This collection of oral history narratives explores the attitudes and experiences of black women who worked as domestics in the segregated South and their white women employers. Although the narratives cover 1900 to the beginning of the Civil Rights era, the interviews were conducted in the 1980s. The memories, therefore, are recounted in light of the changes wrought by the intervening years. Tucker analyzes the complex social patterns of the times, the women's lifestyles, and the effect of selective memory on their stories. A fascinating study of a hitherto neglected area of social history. Susan B. Hagloch, Tuscarawas Cty. P.L., New Philadelphia, Ohio

Library Journal

An exploration of a complex, sometimes enigmatic bond. Mostly oral history narratives gathered from black domestic workers and their employers. Includes a photographic essay. No index. No bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews