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Women In African American Women

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The Great Depression was a horrendous time, which disrupted the lives of many people. During this time many families fell apart from the strains of the Great Depression. Families suddenly started to rely and depend on their wives, mothers and sister, which pressured the females of the family and eventually led to conflicts within families. During this time many women had to leave school or put their education on pause to support their families. Other than white women, African American women were used to hard work. Even in the years of freedom African American women "have consistently worked outside their homes at rates far surpassing the labour force participation of white married women” (Helmbold, 634). However, during this time many African …show more content…

This last the product of centuries of adaptation to an environment that demanded humility as the price of survival." (Callis, …show more content…

African American women who choose this field of work were almost always undervalued, underpaid, overworked and in most cases unprotected. Some domestic workers also had to face abuse and maltreatment. The work was hard, but there was only little these employed women could do. Women depended on the low paid wages and most of the time had to accept these forms of treatment, since there were no laws for wages or working conditions in the domestic service. “It tends to be perceived as something other than regular employment, as not fitting the general framework of existing labour laws despite the fact that its origins go back to the "master-servant" relationship.” (ILO, 1). It was a hard time for women of African American descent. Even in the years of freedom they had to face extreme racial discrimination without any protection. Even though domestic service was almost always an all-day occupation, and domestic workers spent almost all of their time in the white family’s house, they worked isolated and had to dress in uniforms with black dresses and white caps so that no one would confuse them as part of the family. However, it was the desperation and the fear of starvation which forced African American women into these kind of employments, since they were still better than the problems that would come with

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Tera W. Hunter is a scholar of U. S. history, with specializations in African-Americans, gender, labor, and the South. She is particularly interested in the history of slavery and freedom. She is currently writing a book on African-American marriages in the nineteenth century. Her first book received several prizes including the H. L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association, the Letitia Brown Memorial Book Prize from the Association of Black Women’s Historians, and the Book of the Year Award from the International Labor History Association. She was a Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, 2005-2006.

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880 Words | 4 Pages

But most black women did as much work as black men, and “endured the brutal punishment meted out by slaveholders and their overseers,” they were also required to fulfill their jobs as mothers. As slaves, they struggled against the double discrimination having to take the maltreat given to all African-Americans as well as the one given to women in

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439 Words | 2 Pages

Compare and contrast the Depression experiences of Mexican- and African-Americans. In your opinion, which group fared better? Weathering the Great depression was not an easy task for any person or racial group in American. During this period time Whites “faired” the best comparatively speaking about this time period to their counter parts Africans-American and Mexican-American.

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1279 Words | 6 Pages

The Great Depression was a devastating period in United States History, the economy collapsed, and a staggering 25% of the population was unemployed. During this time, there were large wage disparity gaps that were very prevalent, there was no middle class, you were either wealthy or you were poor. It was hard for family life to continue, parents had to take up two and three jobs to make sure their kids were staying safe, and well. Most of these jobs were odd-jobs, and were temporary with no sense of security. It was a struggle to find work, and no job was too demeaning for you to do, because you may not find work again.

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2321 Words | 10 Pages

Cradling. Dignified. Get rid of scarf.” Unlike other American women, black women were sexually exploited by their employers and had to scrub floors in their homes and in white homes as

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1647 Words | 7 Pages

Early American social hierarchies differed markedly for women of color—whether free or enslaved—whose relationships to the white regimes of early America were manifold and complex. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women in the colonies of the English West Indies and Carolinas, particularly women of color, were seen as subordinate by white male slave owners because of race and shared oppression of the female gender. However, these women were a means of economic gain for white slave owners. Taken from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, white slave owners valued these women for their ability in domestic work and fieldwork where they performed primarily unskilled agricultural tasks, as well as their potential to bear children. White slave owners of the Early Americas, driven by greed and opportunism, used political laws, physical characteristics of women, and social constructs of gender roles to appropriate

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1695 Words | 7 Pages

The Work or Fight Law left Black women between a rock and a hard place, as the policy took away any free will they may have had prior to the law's implementation pertaining to their careers (ibid). Not only were they forced to leave behind the work they had fought so hard for and built from the ground up, but Black women found themselves in similar, if not identical positions to where they were prior to Emancipation. Just as decades prior to the proclamation, they were being forced into hard labour with little to no pay while attending to every beck and call of the white families they were forced to work for, out of fear of being beat or subject to worse forms of punishment (ibid). Instead of the physical punishment they were subjected to on plantations, Black women were now faced with the threat of group attacks and being arrested for not fulfilling every demand of their white counterparts. For Black folks, specifically Black women, the Work or Fight law was a component of Emancipation that acted as a dead end for African Americans, who even after forty years of Emancipation, have yet to truly experience what it

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616 Words | 3 Pages

The Great Depression was a time of large economic struggle that took a toll on the lives of many American people. The depression affected the people of the United States in many different forms such as the Dust Bowl, homelessness, and the failure of banks. Each of these aspects reflect how it was to experience the Great Depression in the 1930s. The collapse of the United States economy affected everyone farmer or businessman in different ways.

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502 Words | 3 Pages

The Great Depression The Great Depression was by far one of the worst times of America’s history, and the world’s history. The Depression affected everyone except for the politicians and the wealthy. During the depression a lot of people lost their jobs which caused the unemployment rate to sky rocket to 14% of America’s population was unemployed, and the number would stay their till World War 2, and the depression started in the 1920’s. Middle class workers were hit the hardest in the depression. Most of the middle class citizens lost their jobs.

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1500 Words | 6 Pages

Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.

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1236 Words | 5 Pages

African Americans face a struggle with racism which has been present in our country before the Civil War began in 1861. America still faces racism today however, around the 1920’s the daily life of an African American slowly began to improve. Thus, this time period was known by many, as the “Negro Fad” (O’Neill). The quality of life and freedom of African Americans that lived in the United States was constantly evolving and never completely considered ‘equal’. From being enslaved, to fighting for their freedom, African Americans were greatly changing the status quo and beginning to make their mark in the United States.

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1097 Words | 5 Pages

Family Life in the Midst of the Great Depression The Great Depression has greatly changed the way the world works as a whole, but how did it affect family life? Numerous families were broken apart during this time because of the lack of money and resources, making it very hard to live. During the Great Depression, families were mainly affected by changes in family roles, differences in food and play, and issues with marriages and abandonment. From Bible times to the start of the Great Depression, men led the family by making money, while women kept the home tidy. This stereotype was greatly changed in 1929 when men lost their jobs and women stepped into a higher role, causing the number of married women to greatly increase.

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413 Words | 2 Pages

The great depression was the worst economic recession in the history of the industrialized world. Majority of the population was homeless and starving. People were running out of food and there were very limited number of jobs. Whenever a job came available, people were forced to move to support their families. The struggles and adversities citizens were obligated to face was unreal.

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1136 Words | 5 Pages

The Great Depression was a challenging time for the American economy, society, and its citizens. In the early 1930s, the stock market crashed, leading to mass unemployment, poverty, and hardship. During this time, women faced particular challenges in the workforce, as they were often seen as secondary earners and excluded from many of the better-paying jobs. As a result of the economic crisis, many women were forced to find work outside of the home to help support their families.

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159 Words | 1 Pages

The Great Depression cause great despair and suffering for everyone; men left their families, woman were thought to have no right to work, and teenagers rode the rails to try and find a job. Many men had a hard time coping with being unemployed. Many tried to find jobs, but became discouraged and simply gave up, some even abandoning their family. Woman worked outside the home, but as the Depression wore on, many working women were the target of resentment. Many believed that woman, especially married woman, had no right to work.

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