Publication supported by a grant from the
Howard D. and Marjorie I. Brooks Fund
for Progressive Thought.
2021 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Carson, Jenny, 1972 author.
Title: A matter of moral justice: Black women laundry workers and the fight for justice / Jenny Carson.
Description: Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [2021] | Series: The working class in American history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021005238 (print) | LCCN 2021005239 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252043901 (cloth) | ISBN 9780252085895 (paperback) | ISBN 9780252052804 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : African American laundressesUnited StatesSocial conditions20th century. | Laundry workersLabor unionsUnited StatesHistory20th century.
Classification: LCC HD 8039. L 32 U 593 2021 (print) | LCC HD 8039. L 32 (ebook) | DDC 331.4/78166713097309043dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005238
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005239
Acknowledgments
A book is indeed a labor of love, one that cannot be completed alone. My mother often says that this book is my fourth child. It began as my first child, but three little boys came along and decided that she would have to wait, and so she became my fourth child. She and I have been on a journey that began decades ago during graduate school when my first mentor, Margaret Kellow, suggested that I write about the Womens Trade Union League (WTUL). I eagerly dove into the WTUL records, where I soon encountered the laundry workers, a group about whom relatively little had been written but who have so much to tell us about the arc of the moral universe. In the first half of the twentieth century the African American women who grace the pages of this book led a militant battle to secure racial and economic justice, a battle that in many ways mirrors the one taking place today in 2021. The historical precedents of Black Lives Matter extend back to Jamestown, where white colonial settlers built an economy and society based on the forcible removal and genocide of Indigenous peoples and the labor of enslaved African peoples. Resistance began when slavery and displacement began and has continued ever since. The women in this book, including Charlotte Adelmond and Dollie Robinson, were inspired by the celebrated leaders of this resistance: Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., among others. But they too were leaders of movements, part of the continuum of resistance that stretches from Harriet Tubman to Alicia Garza and to all of those unrecognized women in between. As Black female unionists and activists they fought for economic justice at work, civil rights in their union, an end to police brutality and segregation (both de jure and de facto), the right to exercise political power when and how they deemed fit, and, finally, the right to live their lives with dignity and respect. The laundry workers then are the very obvious progenitors of Black Lives Matter.
These acknowledgments are dedicated first and foremost to the women who fought these struggles: Charlotte Adelmond, Dollie Robinson, and their coworkers. They inspired me to write this history, and they inspire me every day. I am grateful to Robinsons daughter, Jan Robinson, and to Jans husband, Melvin McCray, for generously sharing with me their excellent documentary on Dollie Robinson and patiently answering my questions.
Movements often have allies, and this was certainly the case for the laundry workers. In the 1930s and 1940s white Jewish radical workers Jessie Taft Smith and Beatrice Shapiro Lumpkin, deeply committed to worker power and racial justice, joined the laundry campaign. I have been fortunate enough to interview both women over a number of years. Their insights not only filled in important blanks in this story but also deepened my own knowledge of and commitment to social justice. I thank them deeply for opening their homes and minds to me. I would also like to thank Jessies son, Russell Smith, and partner, Jane LaTour, also a historian, for providing records, images, and support. Similarly, I would like to thank Beatrice Lumpkins beloved grandson Soren Kyale for providing images and for being a good friend.
The epilogue of this book briefly discusses a contemporary campaign to organize laundry workers employed at Cintas, the nations largest industrial launderer and uniform rental provider. My deep gratitude goes to the Cintas workers who kindly and courageously allowed me to interview them, despite their well-founded fears of employer retaliation. A very special thank you to my husband, Hugo Leal Neri, who joined me on this particular research trip to get a break from his labor law job but who spent the entire trip translating from Spanish to English and English to Spanish for me. Never once did he complain. I would also like to thank union organizers and officials Katie Unger, Doria Barrera, Jorge Deschamps, Carmen Western, and the late and much missed James Thindwa for talking to me about laundry workers and organizing.
I have been blessed to have wonderful mentors and academic supporters and friends, starting with Margaret Kellow, who introduced me to womens history. Her impact on my career cannot be underestimated. Jack Blocker and Ian Steele, also at Western University, London, Ontario, taught me how to do history: how to ask the right questions and assess evidence. At the University of Toronto my PhD supervisor, John Ingham, taught me how to tell the important story and provided unflagging support and intellectual rigor. Thank you also to his wonderful wife, Lynne Feldman, also a historian, who provided insights, support, and friendship then and now. Elspeth Brown came on board my dissertation committee immediately upon arriving at U of T as an assistant professor. Now that I have been an assistant professor I know how hard those first years are, and I am even more grateful and amazed that she found the time to bring so much insight to my work and to support me as I learned to navigate academic politics. Franca Iacovetta read much of my work and always believed in the project. I would also like to thank Rick Halpern for serving on my committee and especially for suggesting that I apply for a Fulbright at Columbia University, where I worked with indomitable Alice Kessler-Harris.
Despite being chair of Columbias history department and already a supervisor to a large number of graduate students, Alice graciously agreed to take me on as an exchange student. She critiqued all of my work, made available her vast networks, and invited me into her wonderful dissertation group, where new connections were forged. I left New York after a year, but Alice never left the project or me! She brought me onto panels at conferences, served as commentator on many of those panels, and helped me refine and sharpen my work. Most importantly, when I felt overwhelmed with being a full-time professor and full-time mother to three little boys she reminded me that the system was not built for working mothers and that it was the system, not me, that was at fault. (Her research tells us this, but it was a gift to hear it directly from her.) She was right, and one of these days we need to change the system.
