"The Negro Working Woman"
Essay
By: Mary Louise Williams
Date: 1923
Source: Williams, Mary Louise. "The Negro Working Woman: What She Faces in Making a Living." The Messenger, 5, July 1923, 763. Reprinted in Foner, Philip S., and Ronald L. Lewis. Black Workers: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989, 389–391.
About the Author: Little is known about Mary Louise Williams except what she reveals about herself in the excerpt below. An educated, light-skinned, African American woman, she was probably born in upstate New York in the late 1890s. Williams traveled throughout the urban North, writing about her experiences with work and racism. The Messenger, the journal in which Williams's essay appeared, was founded by the socialist and African American labor activist A. Philip Randolph. Published in Harlem from 1917 to 1928,...
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1920's Business and the Economy Primary Sources
The 1920's: Primary Sources
