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Photo sourced from: Claudia Jones' Feminist Vision of Emancipation

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Born in Trinidad in 1915, Claudia Jones was 8 years old when she immigrated to New York City, US to join her parents. When she was still young, her mother died from overwork in her job at a garment factory, which was one of many moments that caused her to advocate for the liberation of Black women. She understood and argued that domestic workers were the most oppressed labor sector and that the unifying and organizing of domestic workers could bring about the liberation of the entire working class. She used the term “super-exploitation” to describe the unique position of Black women facing multiple forms of oppression – as women, as workers, and as Black people. Her perspective and leadership were influential on other movement leaders of her time like Marvel Cooke, Ella Baker, and Angela Davis. She was influenced by colleagues and friends at the time such as Esther Cooper Jackson who wrote her master’s thesis about four domestic worker unions in the Northeast US and Alice Childress who used her platform as a playwright to uplift the everyday struggles of domestic workers. These leaders were living in a time of significant change and activism, with workers organizing at its height in the US, the creation and exclusion of domestic workers from the Fair Labor Standards Act (part of the New Deal), and the impacts of World War II. As with many other immigrants who spoke out against racism, imperialism, and capitalism, Claudia Jones was deported in 1955 for her activism. These leaders are powerful examples of how we can use our thoughts and words to impact movements and build power. Source: A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (Historical Figures, Activism)

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*This is the second post in a new blog series on Women, Gender and Pan-Africanism edited by Keisha N. Blain. Blog posts in this series will examine how women and gender have shaped Pan-Africanist movements and discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. In this post, historian Denise Lynn explores the feminist vision of Pan-Africanist intellectual Claudia Jones.
Claudia Jones's contributions to Pan-Africanist thought and Black Nationalism are well documented. Once lost to activists and academics, scholars are beginning to unearth Jones' contributions to both the American and British Left during the Cold War and the personal price she paid, including deportation from the United States and leadership conflicts within the British Communist Party.

Nevertheless, she persevered in pushing a largely white Communist Party to consider not just Black Nationalism, but the integration of Black women into Black Nationalist thought. She argued to Party leadership that its focus should not be on the white male industrial worker; rather the Party should focus on the most oppressed and most exploited-Black women.

Jones did this by constructing the most sophisticated understanding of Black women's triple oppression to date. She emphasized that in order to free all working people, the most oppressed had to be freed first. This did not go over well among many dogmatic Marxists in the Communist Party leadership, but it never stopped Jones from pushing for further acknowledgement that Black women's triple oppression preceded that of the male industrial worker's oppression.

What has been lost in studies about Jones is her contribution to feminist thought. While her understanding that Black women's triple oppression preceded all other forms of oppression may have been controversial, what she formulated was a universal emancipatory politics that would free all women and all workers and all humans from the shackles of capitalist, racist, and sexist oppression. She accomplished this by arguing that true freedom lay in the demolition of class, race, and gender oppression. What better way to do that than to focus on the emancipation of the group that suffered from all three. Thus by freeing black women, you would free all women, and by struggling to free the most downtrodden, all would be freed. Jones's theory of socialist feminism was a universal idea for global emancipation.

Jones' socialist feminist thought was grounded in the differences among women; this was essential in her understanding of how oppression operated. White women were certainly oppressed, especially white working-class women. However, they still garnered certain racial privileges that could be beneficial in the competitive workforce where women vied for low-wage jobs. Additionally, Jones believed that white women could never know true freedom until Black women were emancipated. Thus, they shared a common interest and investment in Black liberation and that white activists should embrace Black Nationalism.

Her most important and famous work is the 1949 text, " An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman." In this essay, she chastises the Party for its failure to recognize Black women's oppression and effectively organize against it. But as early as 1945 she made a name for herself in the Party during an internal struggle over whether Black Nationalism was contrary to Marxist-Leninist thought. Jones argued that rather than dividing the working-classes, Black Nationalism was a means to unify the masses. Race was a tool used to divide the working-class against itself and urging white workers to embrace Black Nationalist thought was one means of unifying the working-class against its oppressors. Jones, while a devoted communist, remained keenly aware of Marxism's shortcomings in integrating race and gender into its strict class analysis. This is precisely why Carole Boyce Davies describes her as left of Karl Marx-because she pushed Marxist dogma and its adherents to recognize social oppression.

In 1948, Jones insisted that the Party needed to find "new approaches" to address women's issues in her essay "For New Approaches on the Woman Question." It is this article where she most clearly articulated her understanding of difference feminism. While the Party was considering an "anti-monopoly and peace coalition against American Imperialism," she encouraged it to also address the "special" needs of women. She argued that women could play a "decisive role" in the "political life in the nation" and that the Party had to make organizing women a priority. While capitalists recognized the power of women as consumers, Jones argued that the Party needed to see women as producers as well.

She specifically attacked the notion that was propagated by "Wall Street Imperialism" that "women's place is in the home." This is used, she claimed, to obscure the "many" inequalities in the "social position of women." While she noted that women had "two strikes" against them in competing for jobs in the competitive postwar environment, the reality was that these "employment difficulties" were "falling most heavily on Negro women." Black women were the first to be fired from wartime jobs and forced back into low-paying domestic positions where they served white families rather than their own. Jones insisted the Party had to recognize that women faced the loss of wartime work and the continued neglect of labor unions-the very institutions the Party sought to influence. But Black women were forced back into menial positions in white homes, and their own families' needs were expected to take a lower priority.

Jones also pushed the Party to look beyond shop-floor politics toward the working-class home. In this way, women would be drawn to the Party around workplace and social issues. She expressed concern that, after the war, nursery programs had been "cut down to a minimum" if not altogether dismantled. Jones saw this as another attempt to push women into the home. Additionally, inadequate services to address the medical needs of their children and the poor state of many schools were "burning issues" for American women.

Jones encouraged the further establishment of programs to reach out to women including regional theoretical training schools, daytime classes, and "babysitter" funds. But the Party also had to recognize the unique role of Black women in the movement. While white cadres could be lured in with social programs, Black women were the leaders in the struggle for Black equality. Therefore "greater attention to the triple handicaps of Negro women" could help to build "Negro and white unity." The political demands of Black women went beyond simple babysitter funds.

It was in her famous article "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women!" that Jones offered a clear and concise analysis of what the differences among women meant for the liberation of all women. The most important difference to Jones was that Black women were historically the "guardian, the protector" of the Black family and thus when they seek to "undertake action" it has radicalized "the whole Negro people." Black women historically prevented the "wiping out of the Negro family"-a step far beyond the struggles of white working-class women who faced real struggles, but not from a violent and exclusionary state apparatus supported by social customs that sought the destruction of the Black family. While "Wall Street Imperialists" boasted that women's equality in the United States had no equal, Jones argued that when it came to "Negro and working-class women" that "boast stops at the water's edge." But the "degradation and super-exploitation of the black woman" especially highlighted the farce behind women's so-called equality.

Black women were more often in the workforce because of the low wages of Black men. They were "confined to the lowest-paying jobs" and made "less than half" of what white women made. They were also often the sole breadwinners in their families. Thus for Jones, in order to advance the "progressive women's movement," it was the Black woman "who combines in her status the worker, the Negro and the woman" that became the "vital link" to "heightened political consciousness." This was Jones' most important contribution to socialist thought, but more important, she offered an inclusive emancipatory politics for feminist thought as well. For women to gain true emancipation, it could not happen without the liberation of Black women. Though this made Jones controversial within the Communist Party, it was a contribution that would later be taken up by Black feminists like the Combahee River Collective. What would be truly revolutionary, however, would be for white feminists to embrace Jones' belief that black women's freedom meant freedom for all.

Denise Lynn is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Indiana. Her articles have appeared in American Communist History, Women's History Review, Journal for the Study of Radicalism, and The Journal of Cold War Studies. Follow her on Twitter at @DeniseLynn13 .

Copyright © AAIHS. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Claudia Jones' Feminist Vision of Emancipation

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This is the second post in a new blog series on Women, Gender and Pan-Africanism edited by Keisha N. Blain. Blog posts in this series will examine how women and gender have shaped Pan-Africanist movements and discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States, Europe, Africa,

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Photo of Cherokee woman and child. Cherokee society was a matriarchy. Photo from https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/historyculture/cherokee.htm

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BCE-Present, in some cases: Diverse, Non-patriarchal societies that value domestic labor

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BCE-Present, in some cases: Diverse, Non-patriarchal societies that value domestic labor

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Humans have not always followed male-dominated cultures and societies that believe men and their associated roles in families and community to be superior. With beliefs of superiority come boldness and entitlement. All societies had great diversity, and the timing of the shift to patriarchy differs between them. In Europe, it is associated with the move into feudalism, and again with the move toward capitalism. In the Americas, it is associated in large part with European colonization. In NC there were many thriving and very populous (current estimates are between hundreds of thousands to millions of people) Indigenous societies. (Many sources: National Geographic, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and more) (International Influences)

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The Bureau of Indian Affairs (formerly known as the Office of Indian Affairs) set out to assimilate American Indian people into dominant White culture. This included the cultural genocide caused by the boarding school movement.  (Mary Pauper: A Historical Exploration of early Education Compensation, Policy, and Trends) (Healing Voices Volume 1) (Federal Policy)(Federal Policy)

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The Montgomery Bus Boycotts are well known for when Rosa Parks refused to move when the driver told her to sit in the back of the bus. Less talked about is the critical role domestic workers played in the success of the 13-month boycott of the town’s public transportation system starting in 1955. Georgia Teresa Gilmore, a domestic worker herself and active leader in the civil rights movement, knew that the coordination and support of domestic workers would be critical, and got to organizing them in preparation for the boycott forming the “Club From Nowhere” which raised money to support the bus boycott by selling food. When her employer learned of her organizing activities, she was fired and blacklisted from domestic work, but that didn’t stop her. She started cooking and feeding people out of her house, regularly serving as a safe meeting place for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. She also hosted two presidents in her home, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is one of the most well-known organizing struggles in the early civil rights movement which brought national attention to the work of leaders fighting for equal rights for African Americans and an end to racial segregation in the United States. Gilmore shows us that every person has unique gifts, be it writing, singing, cooking or looking after kids, that can contribute and serve our collective work to fight for what we need and deserve. Source: A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (Historical Figures, Activism)

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Gilmore started the Club From Nowhere, a clandestine group that prepared and sold meals to raise money for the 381-day resistance action.

Georgia Gilmore in 1978 in Montgomery, Ala. She used her culinary skills to support the Montgomery bus boycott. Credit... The Montgomery Advertiser

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
It took all of Georgia Gilmore's willpower not to explode at the driver of the crowded bus in Montgomery, Ala., one Friday afternoon in October 1955.

She had just boarded and dropped her fare into the cash box when he shouted at her to get off and enter through the back door.

"I told him I was already on the bus and I couldn't see why I had to get off," she recounted a year later at the trial of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as quoted in the book " Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott " (1997).

But after collecting herself, she complied and stepped off the bus. Before she could get back on, however, the driver sped off. Right then she vowed never to ride the buses again.

Two months later, after another Montgomery bus rider, Rosa Parks, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white man - a pivotal moment in the civil rights struggle - Gilmore resolved to join a community meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church to talk about injustices toward African-Americans. She sensed that a movement was afoot.

She was right. About 5,000 people came to the meeting, on Dec. 5, 1955, including King. They vowed not to ride the buses until their rights as equal citizens were recognized.

Gilmore, who worked as a cook, decided she would use her culinary talents to feed and fund the resistance, which came to be known as the Montgomery bus boycott. She organized women to form the Club From Nowhere, a clandestine group that prepared savory meals (fried chicken sandwiches, fried fish, pork chops, greens, lima beans) and baked goods (peach pie, poundcakes) and sold them out of their homes, in local establishments and at protest meetings.

In a 1986 interview in "Eyes on the Prize," the award-winning PBS documentary about the civil rights movement, Gilmore elaborated on the club and its name: "We decided that the peoples on the South Side would get a club, and the peoples on the West Side would get a club, and so we decided that we wouldn't name the club anything, we'd just say it was the Club From Nowhere."

The resistance lasted381 days and involved weekly strategy sessions, protests and an improvised car pool system with 300 cars and dozens of pickup and drop-off locations - all of which utilized the hundreds of dollars that the club raised.

"You don't hear Miss Gilmore's name as often as Rosa Parks, but her actions were just as critical," said Julia Turshen, the author of the cookbook "Feed the Resistance" (2017). "She literally fed the movement. She sustained it."

Black women were vital to keeping the boycott going, Gilmore said in the documentary, "because, you see, they were maids, cooks."

"And they was the ones that really and truly kept the bus running," she added. "And after the maids and the cooks stopped riding the bus, well, the bus didn't have any need to run."

Later in life, Gilmore started a catering business and home restaurant. While black people and white people usually ate in separate spaces, "they elbowed together in Gilmore's kitchen," the food historian John T. Edge wrote in the book "The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South" (2017). Credit... The Montgomery Advertiser

Georgia Gilmore was born on Feb. 5, 1920, in Montgomery to Janie C. Gilmore and Taylor Burns. One of seven siblings, she grew up on a small family farm with hogs, cows and chickens, which she took care of as a child, the food historian John T. Edge wrote in the book "The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South" (2017).

Gilmore's incident on the bus was hardly the first time she faced racism. And it wasn't the only time she would take action, Edge wrote. In 1957 the police arrested her son Mark Gilmore when he was passing through the whites-only neighborhood of Oak Park. She fought the charges, which were eventually dropped. Mark went on to become a longtime Montgomery city councilman.

Another time, a white store clerk refused to sell her grandson a loaf of bread and a box of laundry detergent. So she marched to the counter, took the clerk's pistol from him and hit him with it.

"Gilmore was a big woman with a swaggering personality, who showed little fear in the face of white bigotry," Edge wrote.

Gilmore was working as a cook at the National Lunch Company when the boycott began. But in 1956, when a Montgomery County grand jury indicted King, she joined more than 80 people in testifying in his defense, and was fired.

Instead of searching for another job, she started a catering business and home restaurant. King, who lived a few blocks away, admired Gilmore's drive, not to mention her pork chops, and gave her some money to equip her kitchen, Edge wrote.

"All these years you've worked for somebody else," King told her, "now it's time you worked for yourself."

While black people and white people usually ate in separate spaces, "they elbowed together in Gilmore's kitchen," Edge wrote.

Guests at her counter included Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy.

On Nov. 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses, and on Dec. 20, 1956, King called for the end of the boycott.

"We felt that we had accomplished something that no one ever thought would ever happen in the city of Montgomery," Gilmore said in "Eyes on the Prize," "and being able to ride the bus and sit any place on the bus that you desire was something that hadn't ever happened before."

Gilmore's activism continued. In December 1958, she was part of a class-action lawsuit to desegregate Montgomery's public parks. Though segregation in the parks had been deemed unconstitutional by the district court, the practice had continued.Private segregated white schools, forinstance, had been allowed to use public recreational facilities for football and baseball games, meaning that taxpayers were subsidizing segregated schools.

She made that argument in Georgia Theresa Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, in which the United States Supreme Court, in 1974, ruled the practice unconstitutional.

Gilmore died on March 9, 1990, at 70. The cause was peritonitis, an inflammation of tissue in the abdomen. At her death she had been cooking food in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery; the food was served to her mourners.

Kia Damon, a chef in New York, said Gilmore was an inspiration for a project she started called the Supper Club From Nowhere, which focuses on food education and ancestral dishes.

"Even now she has such a big influence and impact on people like me," Damon said, "and she was just a woman baking and cooking and saw something that needed to be done, and that really, really resonated with me."

In a phone interview, Edge said a growing number of chefs of color are creating dishes that reflect their identities.

As he put it: "I think whether they're aware of Georgia Gilmore's story or not, that generation of people of color, of women of color, who do that work now and call themselves food activists - whether they are focused on food deserts, inequality, or no matter what it might be, environmental racism, whatever it might be - they are inheritors of the legacy and the boldness, and the best of them are the inheritors of the pragmatic boldness of Georgia Gilmore."

Klancy Miller is the author of "Cooking Solo: The Fun of Cooking For Yourself."

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Overlooked No More: Georgia Gilmore, Who Fed and Funded the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Published 2019)

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Gilmore started the Club From Nowhere, a clandestine group that prepared and sold meals to raise money for the 381-day resistance action. Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

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1400s-Present: Settler Colonization of the Americas

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1400s-Present: Settler Colonization of the Americas

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Early colonizers believed that they were divinely ordained to bring Indigenous peoples into submission and take over their land. In addition to warfare, Europeans brought epidemic diseases, forced labor, famine, and other traumas of colonization, leading to a devastating decline of the Indigenous population. Europeans enslaved Indigenous peoples, forcing them to work in mines, on plantations, and in their homes. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (National Policy)

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Using the search feature (magnifying glass at top of page), click the filter icon, then select "red" to filter the timeline to show National Policy events.

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Using the search feature (magnifying glass at top of page), click the filter icon, then select "yellow" to filter the timeline to show State Policy events.

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Capitalism is an economic and political system that is driven by profit. Capitalism divides society into two major classes: capitalists and workers. Capitalism requires workers to sell their labor to capitalists in exchange for a wage. This is called “wage labor.” Workers produce commodities (products or services) for the capitalist economy. Capitalism defines that work as “productive labor.” Capitalists exploit productive labor. Workers receive wages that do not reflect the total profits that capitalists have accumulated from the labor of that worker. Capitalists profit from the unpaid and underpaid domestic labor of women or “reproductive labor.” Capitalism does not include the cost of caring, cooking, and cleaning for workers (and the larger society) in the wage of workers. Instead, those costs are pushed onto families and mainly onto women. Domestic work is then presented as natural and normal and therefore is not valued. Colonizers relied on the enslavement of Native Americans and Africans because unfree labor guaranteed the highest profits. Keeping domestic labor unpaid or very low wage has been central to the system of capital accumulation (evidenced by the widely felt wealth disparities) that continues today. Despite this, capitalism needs reproductive labor, whether paid or unpaid, to function. This labor keeps workers alive and produces the next generation of workers. It is valuable. This is why revolutionary feminists and their resistance movements have been numerous and powerful. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (International Influences)

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Late 1800s to present: The “Mammy” Figure

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Late 1800s to present: The “Mammy” Figure

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Southern whites had imposed the name “Mammy” onto enslaved women who nursed white children. She projected an image of contented servitude wherein domestic workers were “like family.” This false representation masked truths about the real lives of enslaved women and, later, of exploited African American domestic workers. (The Mammy Caricature) (Social Perceptions)

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Late 1800s: Kindergarten method developed

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Late 1800s: Kindergarten method developed

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The method was developed by Frederick Froebel in Germany and was introduced to the United States by German immigrants. Kindergarten originally included 3- to 6-year-olds and showed that they have a “tremendous capacity to learn” even though formal schooling did not serve children until they were 6 or 7. (The Kindergarten Lessons We Never Learned) (International Influences)

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Photo by Philip Davies: 34 Albury Street, Deptford, 1911. Nursery in ground floor rear room.

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Kindergartens and day nurseries emerge when most believe a white mother’s place is in the home and schools are not necessary for children under 6. See this article for the case for daycare as a feminist goal. (The Kindergarten Lessons We Never Learned) (National Influences)

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In 1873, St. Louis became the first city in the US to include kindergarten in the public education system (advocates fought for kindergarten to serve 3-6 year olds). During a time of rampant racial discrimination and segregation, Haydee Campbell was living in St. Louis and working as a kindergarten teacher in a Black school. After several years in that work, she applied for the role as “principal or instructress” for the kindergarten department, receiving the highest score ever recorded (across race) in St. Louis on the exam that was part of the position application “to the surprise of the board of examiners, the white applicants and the city of St. Louis” (Majors, 1893). In 1889, she became the Superintendent of Black Kindergartens for the whole community of St. Louis. Haydee Campbell serves as an example to remind us that sometimes it is strategic to fight within a system for better representation and to have an impact from within. Also, as a well-respected educator and leader in her community, her work was helping to fight against and undo racial stereotypes that many people had about the role of Black women in caregiving for children, most often depicted in the false image of contented servitude that was portrayed in the “Mammy” figure. Source: Center for the Study of Childcare Employment, Berkeley (Historical Figures, Advocacy)

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Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

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Haydee B. Campbell - Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

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Part of Profiles in Early Education Leadership, a series spotlighting the contributions of teacher leaders, especially Black women, to the history of early

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1860s-1920s: Defining domestic work post-slavery

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1860s-1920s: Defining domestic work post-slavery

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After the abolition of slavery (post-1865), newly freed Black domestic workers created different sectors within household work to gain some bargaining power in the new wage economy. They divided the work into three different jobs, with different pay rates and expectations: the cook, the washerwoman (or laundress), and the housekeeper (or maid) who was often both house cleaner and nanny. In many cases these women were expected to live with their employer, separating them from their own families and children, who were cared for by relatives. The same was happening in the North and western expanding territories (Appalachia) where Scots Irish immigrant women were the predominant domestic workers. These workers in the North and South organized and fought for better work conditions. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Social Perceptions, Activism)

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Washerwomen, El Paso, Tex., circa 1897. From "A Tour Through the New World America", by Prof. Geo. R. Cromwell. [C. N. Greig & Co., London, circa 1897]. Artist Unknown. (The Print Collector/Getty Images)

This article was adapted from the forthcoming book "Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor," by Kim Kelly, to be published by One Signal Publishers/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc. Copyright © 2022 by Kim Kelly. Printed by permission.

There is no one location or event that can lay a definitive claim to the founding of the American labor movement, but what is certain is the enormous debt it owes to women.

During the Victorian era, in the words of Bowling Green University's Susan M. Cruea, "Upper- and middle-class women's choices were limited to marriage and motherhood, or spinsterhood." Waged labor was seen as the exclusive realm of men, and for most middle- and upper-class women, the thought of earning money for their toil was wholly foreign.

Of course, these standards were applied specifically to native-born White women, whose status as a protected class separated their experiences from those of working-class women of color in the United States - particularly Black women, whose relationship with work in this country began with enslavement, violence and forced labor. Following Emancipation, their lives were still often defined by exploitation, abuse and wage theft. Whether held in bondage or living freely, Black women were expected to work from the moment they were old enough to hold a broom.

These women were hardly alone. By the 1830s, the American genocide against Indigenous people had been well underway for decades, and the few Indigenous women allowed into the workforce were treated abominably. As immigration ramped up during the middle of the 19th century, female workers from other ethnic groups - including Irish immigrants fleeing a colonial famine and Russian Jews seeking to escape brutal repression - were also targeted by the ruling class's white-supremacist paternalism.

But that restrictive social fabric quickly began to fray as the Industrial Revolution took flight. Middle-class White women, seeking autonomy and a stronger hand in the economic outcomes of their lives, began to seek work outside the home. And that demand for autonomy required radical action. On a balmy spring 1824 day in Pawtucket, R.I., 102 young women launched the country's very first factory strike, and brought the city's humming textile industry to a standstill.

Jim Limber and the myth of the Confederate president's adopted Black son

The 19th-century Northern U.S. textile industry was almost entirely White. It wasn't until 1866, a year after Emancipation, that formerly enslaved Black female workers were able to launch a widespread work stoppage of their own - and by doing so, jump-start a wave of Black-led labor organizing that would spread through multiple industries and set the stage for decades of labor struggles to come.

On June 16, 1866, laundry workers in Jackson, Miss., called for a citywide meeting. The women - for they were all women, and all were Black - were tired of being paid next to nothing to spend their days hunched over steaming tubs of other (White) people's laundry, scrubbing out stains, smoothing the wrinkles with red-hot irons, and hauling the baskets of heavy cloth through the streets. At the time, nearly all Black female workers were employed as domestics by White families, to handle the cooking, cleaning and child care, hauling water, emptying chamber pots, and performing various and sundry other tasks that the lady of the house preferred to avoid.

Laundry, at the time a labor-intensive day-long process, topped that list in an era in which families were large, personal hygiene was negligible, and running water was scarce. The washerwomen's wages were kept so low that even poor White families could afford to send their laundry out for Black women to clean.

The work itself was onerous, but the relative flexibility and independence it afforded was attractive to Black female workers: They were able to work out of their own homes, which in turn allowed them to plan around their own familial and community obligations, and it was a trade that could be passed down to their own daughters. For the newly emancipated, having the freedom to create their own work schedules and get through their daily labors without a White employer breathing down their necks was - almost - worth all the soiled diapers in the world.

In modern terms, the washerwomen were independent contractors, with lists of clients who paid a set rate for weekly service. The trouble with that system, though, was that it was easily abused by racist White clients who were still unaccustomed to having to pay Black people for their labor, and who weren't altogether thrilled with the idea. White employers were shocked and appalled whenever Black workers exercised their rights as free wage-earning people or dared to engage in small acts of resistance against mistreatment. One of their most powerful weapons was, simply, to quit, and go looking for more desirable clients as their former employers scrambled to hire replacements.

This growing tension between employer and employee came to a head in 1866, when the washerwomen of Jackson presented Mayor D.N. Barrows with a petition decrying the low wages that plagued their industry and announcing their intention to "join in charging a uniform rate" for their labor. As their petition read: "Any washerwoman who charges less will be fined by our group. We do not want to charge high prices, we just want to be able to live comfortably from our work." The prices they'd agreed upon were far from exorbitant: $1.50 per day for washing, $15 a month for "family washing," and $10 a month for single people. They signed their letter "The Washerwomen of Jackson," and in doing so, gave a name to Mississippi's first trade union.

That time America almost had a 30-hour workweek

The media response to their action was withering, dismissing the women's intelligence and skills, predicting abject failure, and, in a move that would become common as more Black workers' organizing efforts spread, assuming that the strike had been planned by Northern White male agitators.

There is no record of the 1866 strike's outcome, but the action itself had an immediate ripple effect in Jackson and farther afield. Throughout the Reconstruction era of 1865 to 1877, Black workers rose up and struck in Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.

In 1869, the Colored National Labor Union was formed to represent the unique interests of Black workers who had been shut out of the larger National Labor Union. Its second president was Frederick Douglass, elected in 1872. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a series of often violent work stoppages in which more than 100,000 railroad workers struck over wages and dangerous working conditions, temporarily brought the railroad barons to their knees and unleashed a roving spirit of dissent that captured the imagination of workers across industries from coast to coast.

Those winds of change arrived in Galveston, Tex., in July and August, when hundreds of workers crossed the color line and struck together several times to protest their low wages. Meanwhile, the laborers' wives, daughters, sisters and neighbors in the laundry business had been busy planning an action of their own. At first, they published an open letter demanding a wage increase to $1.50 per day. A few days later, a group of Black washerwomen gathered in front of J.N. Harding's steam laundry, where he was known to be employing White women, and forcibly prevented those employees from entering unless they agreed to abide by the $1.50 daily rate.

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The stage was now set for the washerwomen's biggest moment yet - this time, in Atlanta.

In 1881, Atlanta was abuzz with promise and industry. A glittering International Cotton Exposition aimed to establish Atlanta's place as the belle of the New South and show off its purportedly pliable, happy workforce. But despite this veneer of progress, Atlanta's White power brokers had declined to invest any time and energy into improving the lot of working people or addressing the rampant racial discrimination that continued to relegate Black Atlantans to undesirable, labor-intensive jobs on society's bottom rung. Still denied the right to vote, Black women had to find other ways to build power.

Atlanta's laundresses made up a majority of the Black female workforce in a city where 98 percent of Black women worked as domestic laborers (and washerwomen alone outnumbered male laborers). They also made up a powerful collective organizing bloc.

In early July, 20 of them gathered in a church in Summerhill, one of Atlanta's first predominantly Black neighborhoods, and founded a trade association they dubbed the Washing Society. The organization's first order of business was setting a higher, standard wage rate for their labor, and they called a mass meeting to make their demands public. They told local Black clergymen to spread the word throughout their congregations, and less than a month later, on July 19, they called for a strike.

Over the next three weeks, the strike grew from those first 20 women to more than 3,000 thanks to the organizers' brilliantly effective tactic of doing daily rounds of home visits to laundresses around the city to persuade them to join in the fight. They held daily meetings to keep up momentum and brought in the city's White washerwomen (who made up only 2 percent of the workforce) to support their cause. Newspapers of the time declined to print the White women's names to protect their privacy (a courtesy not extended to the Black female strikers), but it is likely that they were poor Irish immigrants.

On the employers' side, the strike hit like a wrecking ball. As washerwomen began returning soiled or still-wet laundry to clients who refused to pay the higher wage, White employers scrambled to find workers to fill the laundry gap as they feared the strike would spread to other industries.

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And spread it did: Black waiters at the National Hotel in downtown Atlanta refused to work until their bosses raised their wages - and they won. That scene repeated itself in kitchens, nurseries and sculleries across the city.

"The Washerwomen's strike is assuming vast proportions and despite the apparent independence of the white people, is causing quite an inconvenience among our citizens," the Atlanta Constitution reported on July 26, a week into the strike. "There are some families in Atlanta who have been unable to have any washing done for more than two weeks. Not only the washerwomen, but the cooks, house servants and nurses are asking increases."

Ten days into the strike, police arrested six of its leaders. The women - Matilda Crawford, Sallie Bell, Carrie Jones, Dora Jones, Orphelia Turner and Sarah A. Collier - were delicately described in the press as "ebony-hued damsels," but found themselves slapped with charges of disorderly conduct and "quarrelling" as a result of their home-visit campaign. Five of the women were fined $5 apiece, but Collier was ordered to pay a $20 fine. She refused to pay, and as punishment, the 49-year-old asthmatic mother of two was sentenced to work on a chain gang for 40 days.

These workers had everything riding on this strike; the vast majority of the demonstrators were mothers who had to feed children and keep households afloat during the campaign, and couldn't count on regular relief checks or a strike fund to pay the rent.

As the strike stretched into August, the Atlanta City Council got involved. Its solution: a $25 annual business license fee on any member of a washerwomen association (more than $670 in 2021 dollars) - a proposition intended to economically hobble the workers at war for a mere $1 per dozen pounds of laundry.

But instead, the washerwomen wrote a letter to Atlanta Mayor Jim English expressing their willingness to pay the fees - so long as the city agreed to formally grant them control over the local hand-laundering industry. The strikers' letter ended with a warning: "Don't forget this. We hope to hear from your council on Tuesday morning. We mean business this week or no washing."

Atlanta's City Council backed down, and while history is murky on the resolution, it appears that the workers had successfully shifted the balance of power. Several weeks later, as the International Cotton Exposition neared, Black female workers took the opportunity to leverage their power against the ruling classes once again. The fair was intended to reassure respectable Yankee business folk that there was fun to be had and, more importantly to this contingent, money to be made in the postwar South. City boosters were well aware of the potential costs if their plan went awry - and so were the washerwomen.

As Tera W. Hunter writes in "To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War," "African-American women threatened to expose the tyranny in the New South by disrupting this celebration of new-found harmony at an early stage of its public relations campaign."

As the city prepared for an influx of fashionable visitors whose arrival would require spotless hotel rooms, hearty meals and quick laundry services, the domestic workers of Atlanta invoked labor's "nuclear option" and threatened a general strike. A cease-fire came through and the fair went on without a hitch, but Atlanta's Black female workers had prevailed in making their collective power felt. The city's white-supremacist employer class had come face-to-face with the reality of Emancipation: Black workers would tolerate injustice no more.

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How Black washerwomen in the South became pioneers of American labor

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In 1866, a year after Emancipation, formerly enslaved Black female workers launched a widespread work stoppage and jump-started a wave of Black-led labor organizing.

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1870s and on: Incarcerating Domestic Workers

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1870s and on: Incarcerating Domestic Workers

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For Black domestic workers, any expression of autonomy or resistance to white employers could result in arrest and imprisonment. When Black women acted in self-defense against violence, they were often subject to arrest and conviction. Often, they were accused of theft in cases where there was no evidence of it. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Social Perceptions)

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A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing

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This timeline on the history of domestic work and worker organizing in the U.S. is a resource to study history from the margins, learn from the courage and resilience of our movement ancestors, and continue to build a powerful, multiracial alliance grounded in a shared commitment to combating all fo…

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Early 1900s: Shift away from live-in work

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Early 1900s: Shift away from live-in work

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In the first few decades of the 1900s, Black domestic workers shifted from living with their employers to performing predominantly day work—completing assigned tasks within set hours and returning to their homes at night. This afforded workers more independence, but the transition did not come easily and often required finding new employers. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Activism)

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1903: 57 Mexican Domestic Workers Collectively Organize

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1903: 57 Mexican Domestic Workers Collectively Organize

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In 1903 in Loredo, Texas, an epidemic of yellow fever brought about a federal military quarantine on the town. In anticipation of the quarantine, many wealthy families who employed domestic workers fled town, leaving their employees suddenly unable to support their own families in the crisis. In response, 57 Mexican domestic workers wrote a petition demanding that the local city council provide relief, then published the petition in a local paper. Through this act of organizing, they continued the legacy of workers fighting for economic assistance during health crises and of using the tool of storytelling and the press to advance their agenda.

Source : A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance (Historical Figures, Activism)

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Samuel Harris, principal of the Athens Colored High School in Georgia, established the institute to “train young Blacks in domestic skills and moral attitudes that were generally associated with ‘old Black mammy’ in the south.” (Undervalued) (National Influences)

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Photo sourced from https://www.dwherstories.com/timeline/rebellion-in-the-outing-program; originally courtesy of "National Archives and Records Administration, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Carson Agency (Item identifier 296123)"

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1913: Minnie and Clara Refuse to Conform

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1913: Minnie and Clara Refuse to Conform

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Young indigenous women were removed from their communities, often by force, to join what was called the “Outing Program”, a type of boarding school program that offered domestic service apprenticeships. This program aimed to make young Indigenous women forget their cultural way of living and to instead accept white middle-class norms (assimilation). These workers were subject to unreasonable working conditions and wage theft, which they often reported to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. To rebel, many of the young women would seek control of their lives in any small ways they could, like sneaking out of employer’s homes to stay out late and have fun. For example, cousins Minnie and Clara entered domestic service work after attending the Phoenix Indian School. Their matron complained that they were insubordinate and rebellious and in 1913, the county judge committed Minnie and Clara to a state reformatory for their “disorderly behavior.” Black women in the South were often incarcerated for any expression of autonomy, self-defense, or when falsely accused of theft.

These women serve as a powerful example of how refusing to conform and assimilate into harmful cultures and their practices is itself an act of resistance.

Source: A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (Historical Figures, Activism)

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1919: Massive strike of over 4 million workers

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1919: Massive strike of over 4 million workers

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The first decades of the 1900s were marked by labor uprising. This culminated in a massive strike wave of over 4 million workers in 1919. One out of every five workers went on strike that year, including many domestic workers who had provided child care. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Activism)

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Ellis Island, first port of call of European migrants to America, c.1900. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis, Image from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/07/

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1910s-1920s: Immigration Laws Create New Restrictions

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1910s-1920s: Immigration Laws Create New Restrictions

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Many of the workers participating in the 1919 strike and surrounding labor organizing were immigrants inspired by movements in their countries of origin. The 1918 Alien Act granted the government the power to deport immigrant suspects without a trial. In 1921 and 1924, the Emergency Quota Law and the Immigration Act restricted the number of immigrants permitted to enter the country through quotas, which affected domestic work as well as other low-wage work in the United States. Asian immigration was explicitly banned beginning in 1875 with the Page Act, again in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act, and again in 1923 with the Alien Land Law. Exclusionary policies for Asian immigrants remained until 1952. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Federal Policy, International Influences)

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Famous violinist Maud Powell casts her vote in 1920. https://www.rd.com/list/first-women-voters-1920/

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Women won the right to vote (though in practice poor women and women of color would have to wait several more decades to actually gain access to the ballot). (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Federal Policy)

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Following the right to vote in 1920, white women now held key policy-making positions in state and federal departments of labor and became champions of labor protections, except when it came to domestic workers. Household workers enabled them to pursue careers, and they didn’t want to publicly concede the need for regulation for worker protections in that setting. Feminist organizations that had working-class women in positions of leadership joined the movement to pass legislation to protect domestic workers, often with staunch opposition from the majority of progressive women’s organizations. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (National Influences)

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First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visits a WPA nursery school in Des Moines, Iowa in 1936. Photo from https://livingnewdeal.org/the-crisis-of-childcare/

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The Works Progress Administration established the Emergency Nursery School Program to provide educational guidance, nutrition, and health care for children aged 3–5 while their families were on relief. Services were free to families, and teachers’ salaries were paid with federal funds. The program was designed as a crisis intervention and ended in 1942 when jobs became plentiful again. (History of Federal Funding for Child Care and Early Learning) (The Kindergarten Lessons We Never Learned) (Federal Policy)

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1935: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) Program

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1935: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) Program

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The AFDC program began as a state-administered program to support single white mothers by allowing them to stay home to care for their children. (Timeline of Federal Funding for Child Care Programs) (Federal Policy, Social Perceptions)

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The Social Security Act of 1935 excluded agricultural and domestic workers from coverage—about half the workers in the American economy. They could legally participate starting in 1951. These workers were also excluded from significant labor protections that were part of the New Deal such as establishing a minimum wage and 40-hour workweek, requiring overtime payment, being guaranteed the right to unionize/strike, and more. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Federal Policy)

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The Lanham Act authorized funding for child care facilities for children of mothers working in defense and defense-related industries. Subsidies were provided for all children regardless of family income, and the cost of care was close to $12/month in today’s value. This program, set to end in 1945, was extended by 1 year after an enormous outpouring of support for the program's continuation, officially ending in February 1946. (Timeline of Federal Funding for Child Care Programs) (Federal Policy, Activism)

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The Lanham Act and Universal Childcare During World War II

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On June 29, 1943, the U.S. Senate passed the first, and thus far only, national childcare program, voting $20,000,000 to provide for public care of children whose mothers were employed for the duration of World War II.

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The Nobel Prize in Literature 1945 was won by Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral

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More popularly known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral, Lucila Godoy Alcayaga is most well known how in 1945 she became the first Latin American and fifth woman author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature. This acclaim has made her so famous that her image is featured on the 5,000 Chilean peso banknote in her country of birth. It is less known that she had a long career in education, starting when she was an adolescent woman. She taught in many schools throughout Chile before moving to Mexico to support the Minister of Education with a national plan to reform libraries and establish a national education system. Throughout her life, she had received very little formal education, so it was a great honor when in 1923 she received the academic title of Spanish Professor from the University of Chile. She developed and nurtured her self-education and intellectual abilities through the vibrant culture of newspapers, magazines, and books in provincial Chile. This leader is a great example of how informal education can be just as powerful as formal education, both for children and educators alike. Source: Gabriela Mistral (Historical Figures, International Influences)

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G abriela Mistral (1889-1957), pseudonym for Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was born in Vicuña, Chile. The daughter of a dilettante poet, she began to write poetry as a village schoolteacher after a passionate romance with a railway employee who committed suicide. She taught elementary and secondary school for many years until her poetry made her famous. She played an important role in the educational systems of Mexico and Chile, was active in cultural committees of the League of Nations, and was Chilean consul in Naples, Madrid, and Lisbon. She held honorary degrees from the Universities of Florence and Guatemala and was an honorary member of various cultural societies in Chile as well as in the United States, Spain, and Cuba. She taught Spanish literature in the United States at Columbia University, Middlebury College, Vassar College, and at the University of Puerto Rico.

The love poems in memory of the dead, Sonetos de la muerte (1914), made her known throughout Latin America, but her first great collection of poems, Desolación [Despair], was not published until 1922. In 1924 appeared Ternura [Tenderness], a volume of poetry dominated by the theme of childhood; the same theme, linked with that of maternity, plays a significant role in Tala, poems published in 1938. Her complete poetry was published in 1958.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished inNobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Gabriela Mistral died on January 10, 1957.

To cite this section
MLA style: Gabriela Mistral - Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Sun. 15 May 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1945/mistral/biographical/>

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G abriela Mistral (1889-1957), pseudonym for Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was born in Vicuña, Chile. The daughter of a dilettante poet, she began to write poetry as a village schoolteacher after a passionate romance with a railway employee who committed suicide. She taught elementary and secondary school for many years until her poetry made her famous.

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1940s-1970s: From Maids to Housekeepers and Nannies

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1940s-1970s: From Maids to Housekeepers and Nannies

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As the conditions of domestic work changed, including the invention and widespread use of the automatic washing machine, domestic workers established new standards again. Many employers wanted to hire one person to do the job of two or three or four. But domestic workers organized to divide the work of the housekeeper/maid into two tasks: child care and cleaning. Either category could include cooking or it could be separate. They did this by building collective power through their own unions and similar organizations. From this point on, we see the “child care worker” as an explicit profession. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Activism, National Influences)

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Lady Bird Johnson attends the ceremony for National Head Start Day, June 30, 1965. Photo from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/05/18/day-history-c

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Lyndon B. Johnson established Head Start as part of his War on Poverty based on the belief that early education could have a substantial impact on low-income children’s success. (Timeline of Federal Funding for Child Care Programs) (Federal Policy)

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After decades of local and state-level organizing of domestic workers through unions, the first national conference and domestic worker organizations began to form and advocate collectively. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Activism)

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Geraldine Roberts was born in 1924 in Oklahoma where her mother worked seven days a week in domestic work. When she was five years old, both of her parents died so she and her sister moved to Arkansas to live with their grandmother. She was active in and loved school but often had to leave to help her grandmother with domestic work so when she was 12, she ran away from home to pursue an education, which she still struggled to access. Finally, while living in Cleveland and inspired by the Black Freedom Movement, she founded the Domestic Workers of America (DWA) in 1965. DWA advocated locally and nationally for fair pay and benefits. They provided domestic workers with legal services and scholarships to attend community college. They raised funds for impoverished families during the holidays, organized rallies to improve working conditions, supported other striking workers, and joined protests against U.S. imperialist wars in Latin America and Asia. Organizing finally answered Roberts’s prayers and provided a way for her to achieve an education through community organizing by being exposed to new people, ideas, and concerns which gave her space to learn about histories of injustice and struggles for freedom with others. Source: A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (Historical Figures, Activism)

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President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, a congressionally initiated bill to establish a national system of comprehensive child development and daycare, because it was characterized by “fiscal irresponsibility, administrative unworkability and family-weakening implications.” As this was during the Cold War, the Red Scare rhetoric of communal programs being anti-family and anti-American was a prominent argument among anti–child care activists. (President Vetoes Child Care Plan) (Federal Policy, Social Perceptions)

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PRESIDENT VETOES CHILD CARE PLAN AS IRRESPONSIBLE (Published 1971)

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Nixon vetoes child care plan as irresponsible and unworkable; voices fear it would weaken role of family; says he objects to committing, without natl debate, Govt authority ‘to side of communal approaches to child-rearing’; stinging message draws sharp reaction from Cong; bill’s advocates vow fight…

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1971: Child Care Facility Regulations Codified in NC Law

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1971: Child Care Facility Regulations Codified in NC Law

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The basis for the child care facility regulations that are in place today was passed into law, defining “day-care” as “a child less than 13 years of age receives care away from his own home by persons other than his parents, grandparents, guardians or full-time custodians on a regular basis for more than four hours per day where a payment, fee or grant is made for care.” The penalty for violating the law was defined as a general misdemeanor. See the original law passed in 1971 here. (State Policy)

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1974: Finally included in basic labor protections

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1974: Finally included in basic labor protections

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Congress amended the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA; aka New Deal) to extend domestic workers the right to a minimum wage and overtime. This victory was largely due to the growing national movement among domestic workers. For 2 years the bill was debated in Congress. Delegations of domestic workers lobbied congressional leaders. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Federal Policy, Activism)

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Born in 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, Shirley Chisholm is well known for being the first African American woman to serve in the United States Congress where she was first elected in 1968. She actually began her adult career in early childhood education, first as a nursey schoolteacher, then a child care center director, before going to Columba University to earn a master’s degree in early childhood education. Following that, in 1960, she was a consultant to the New York City Division of Day Care where we can presume, given her political record, that she advocated for a better child care system that offered high quality care but more importantly supported the educators. She helped to introduce the bill in the House that would become the 1971 Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 which passed legislation with bipartisan support and would have established a national system of comprehensive child development and daycare, if it hadn’t been vetoed by then President Nixon. In her time in Congress, she also helped to expand the food stamp program and create the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). In 1972, she campaigned to become President of the United States, becoming the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Source: National Women's History Museum (Historical Figures, Activism)

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Dorothy Lee Bolden was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1924 and was involved in domestic work from a very early age, helping deliver the laundry that her mother washed for other families. When she was only nine years old, Dorothy took an after-school job with a local family watching their baby, washing diapers, and cleaning the house. She tried to find other work over the years but always came back to domestic work, given a vision impairment that impacted her in other types of work. She was politically activated when hearing about the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and got involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee working on issues of school desegregation, voter registration, and housing. She approached Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with the idea of forming a domestic workers’ union, which he encouraged her to pursue. Dorothy knew the only time domestic workers had to themselves was when they were traveling between jobs and home and chose this as her place to organize and formed the National Domestic Workers Union of America (NDWUA). They began by building a formal training program so members could feel authority and respect for the skills they often already had. NDWUA also trained members to advocate for themselves, like how to bargain for better pay, better hours, and other requirements. Members were required to vote in government elections so much so that NDWUA became a powerful voting bloc in Georgia. Dorothy was highly influential throughout her career, providing counsel to presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Source: Women & The American Story, NY History (Historical Figures, Activism)

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Life Story: Dorothy Bolden Dorothy Bolden Lewis Boyd (photographer), Dorothy Bolden, 1971. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

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An imaginary figure used during Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign to stir up anti-Black and anti-poor sentiment to support austerity economics, the Welfare Queen embodied the idea that poor people are having lots of children on purpose and lying about their needs to accumulate massive wealth by taking advantage of the welfare system. Watch this powerful mini-documentary that discusses this narrative while showing popular media examples of how it is still carried out today. (New America) (Social Perceptions)

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1971: Evelyn Moore founds National Black Child Development Institute

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1971: Evelyn Moore founds National Black Child Development Institute

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Evelyn Moore began her career as a special education teacher where she quickly noticed and questioned inequities such as the high rates of Black children in special education classes. In 1962, she joined a research project called the Perry Preschool Project that aimed to answer whether high-quality educational experiences in a child’s early years could raise their IQ scores in children considered high risk for failure in school. The project was a success and Moore claims one of the greatest strengths of the program was the freedom for teachers to teach to the children’s strengths, balancing between teacher and child-directed activities. Following this, she served as a child care center director in Minnesota in a government funded program. Moore played a key role in the creation of the Child Development Associate credential and advocated for the role of formal education in attaining the credential. In 1971, amidst many states including NC passing child care regulation laws, Moore Founded the National Black Child Development Institute which she led for 38 years and in that role, she advocated at the national level for universal childcare and many other laws affecting children’s health and welfare. Source: Council for Professional Recognition (Historical Figures, Activism)

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Evelyn K. Moore: Overcoming Limitations for Young Learners - CDA Council

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"We need to give kids a chance to develop before we decide what their limitations are," Evelyn Moore staunchly maintains. "Many children are very talented, can ...

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1970s-1980s: US Imperialism in Central America

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1970s-1980s: US Imperialism in Central America

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Since the 1800s, the United States has intervened countless times in Central America to protect corporate profits, maintain control over markets and canal routes, support big landowners, and crush progressive and revolutionary movements. U.S. intervention became bloodier in the 1970s and 1980s, including training and financing military dictatorships and death squads. Migrants now flee to escape the conditions that U.S. and Latin American elites created, leading to increased Latinx people needing and providing childcare in NC. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (International Influences; see “1400s–Present: Settler colonization of the Americas”)

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1981: Child Care Employee Project (CCEP)

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1981: Child Care Employee Project (CCEP)

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Activist teachers came together and created the CCEP, which eventually became known as the Center for the Child Care Workforce. They organized around better pay and working conditions, including the Worthy Wage Campaign of 1990. (Early Educator Compensation Movement) (Activism)

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1986: Further NC regulation defined by new division

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1986: Further NC regulation defined by new division

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The Division of Child Development and Early Education, created from the 1971 law codifying child care regulation, further defined the rules and regulations that licensed child care providers must follow. This includes the procedures for obtaining a license, requirements for schedules and activities, health and safety standards, nutrition and transportation standards, staff qualifications and continuing education, and more. See Chapter 9 of Section 10A of the NC Administrative Codes here. In 1991, NCDHHS added to its administrative code (NCAC) regulations related to sanitation of child care centers (any licensed provider).(State Policy)

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1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)

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1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)

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This policy provided amnesty to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants but also criminalized hiring undocumented immigrants and increased border militarization. While the United States has only made it harder for Latin American migrants to enter, the demand for their labor continues as domestic service has become necessary for the caretaking of dual-career families. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Workers Alliance) (Federal Policy)

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1990: Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program

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1990: Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program

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The CCDBG program was created to provide child care subsidies to working families whose incomes were too high to receive AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) support. CCDBG required states to spend a portion of their funds on quality-improvement activities. These funds were used in NC to create the state’s first Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) Network, which was organized as a collaborative network of many organizations coordinating CCR&R-type services at the local level. (History of Federal Funding for Child Care and Early Learning) (Federal Policy, State Policy)

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1991: NC State Health and Sanitation Department regulates child care

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1991: NC State Health and Sanitation Department regulates child care

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NCDHHS added to its administrative code (NCAC) regulations related to sanitation of child care centers (any licensed provider). These rules dictate the necessary thickness and material of a mattress, spacing of cribs, frequency of washing linens, and more. The full rules can be found here. (State Policy)

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1993: NC launches Smart Start Partnership for Children

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1993: NC launches Smart Start Partnership for Children

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The public-private initiative provides funding to local nonprofit organizations. The initiative was serving all 100 counties by 2000. There is some overlap between CCR&R and Smart Start lead agencies today. (Smart Start & NC Partnership for Children) (State Policy)

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1993: Cost Quality and Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers Study

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1993: Cost Quality and Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers Study

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A four-state longitudinal study began in 1993 that was designed to examine the influence of center-based child care on children’s development during their preschool years and formal elementary education. The results from this study helped influence the development of the Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) in many states, including North Carolina. (State Policy)

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EHS was created to support low-income pregnant women, infants, and toddlers up to age 3. (Timeline of Federal Funding for Child Care Programs) (Federal Policy)

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A follow-up to the 1993 CQO study provided further evidence that there is a positive relationship between child care quality and children’s cognitive and socioeconomic outcomes. View the paper here. (State Policy)

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CQO Peisner and Burchinal 1997 paper Relations_between_preschool_ch

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2000s: States step up for HBCC and specifically FFN providers

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2000s: States step up for HBCC and specifically FFN providers

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Several states have been exploring and offering more support to HBCC and especially FFN providers in recent years. For example, in California FFN caregivers can serve children receiving subsidies without participating in the QRIS, are included in the statewide child care provider union, received stabilization funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021, receive support for pursuing licensing, and have access to quality-improving supports if they do not want to become licensed. Other states with several known supports for FFN providers include Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Learn more here. (National Influences)

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2000: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute FCC study

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2000: Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute FCC study

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The institute completed an observational study of FCC homes as part of an overall Smart Start evaluation. The report prompted North Carolina to pay more attention to FCC home quality. (State Influences)

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2000 - Present: Decline of Family Child Care Homes

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2000 - Present: Decline of Family Child Care Homes

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According to the National Association for Regulatory Administration’s Child Care Licensing Programs and Policies Survey, from 2005 to 2017, over 90,000 licensed FCC homes closed in the past decade. Reported reasons for the decline in small FCC homes include changing demographics, lower enrollment, increased regulations often required for access to subsidies and public funding, and changes in the economy. Most recently, retiring and the aging of the workforce have been identified as reasons for the decline in FCC homes. Another reason providers leave the field is a lack of respect and a lack of acknowledgment for juggling multiple roles as business owners, teachers, and directors. In North Carolina, more than 1,100 licensed FCC homes have closed between 2014 and 2023, with most FCC homes having closed before the COVID pandemic of 2020. (SWCDC Family Child Care Home Report) (National Influences, State Influences)

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2001: Accountability measures shift practices of NC Partnership for Children / Smart Start

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2001: Accountability measures shift practices of NC Partnership for Children / Smart Start

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The NC legislature passed a law requiring the development of a standardized impact measurement system (Performance-Based Incentive Standards; PBIS) for all Smart Start agencies in NC. The goal was to be able to better demonstrate the value and impact Smart Start was having on young children in NC. This led many Smart Start agencies to use PBIS measurement goals as guidelines for deciding how to develop their programs, but it also created conditions that made it more challenging to collaborate with the local community on investments and programmatic strategy. (State Policy)

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Another follow-up to the original CQO Study from 1993, this paper positively relates quality to outcomes in early grades (elementary school). (State Influences)

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2003: Significant increase in criminal penalties in child care regulation

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2003: Significant increase in criminal penalties in child care regulation

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After 32 years of NC law stating that illegally operating a child care facility (per the legal definition of more than 2 unrelated children for more than 4 hours a day) was a misdemeanor charge, the law was changed to make this offense a Class I Felony, significantly increasing the legal repercussions for not following this law. This law also introduced language that the offense must be done “willfully” – theoretically leaving room for people who break the law without knowing it to be found innocent. See these changes on the passed law here. (State Policy)

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2003: NC Child Care Resource and Referral Council reorganizes

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2003: NC Child Care Resource and Referral Council reorganizes

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The NC Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE), which had been using Child Care Development and Block Grant funds to support organizations in the CCR&R Network, began dividing NC’s CCR&R services into 18 service-delivery regions and issued a request for applications to choose regional lead agencies to work with all local CCR&R agencies (of which there are 62 in NC today) in their region. Thus, today’s CCR&R Council was formed, and the previously operated CCR&R Network disbanded. This change allowed NC DCDEE to simplify their accounting for distributing the Child Care Development and Block Grant money by introducing the three “council management agencies,” each of which oversaw a subsection of the state’s regions and disbursed the money to the organizations in their region. This change centralized resource flows and governance into a small number of organizations, shifting away from the previous network model. In July 2010, the state was reorganized again into the 14 regions that are used today. (About the NC CCR&R System) (State Influences)

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About the North Carolina Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) System - CCR&R Council

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Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) programs have provided essential services in North Carolina for more than 40 years. The North Carolina CCR&R Council has organized the CCR&R system into 14 regional lead agencies and 62 local agencies to provide consistency to these essential services across th…

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Legislation was enacted that revised the star rated license program so that only two components are used to determine the number of stars earned: program standards and education standards. (NC Division of Child Development) (State Policy)

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2007: Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act

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2007: Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act

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Signed by President George W. Bush, the new law changed the Head Start program, including moving away from the previous practice of giving Head Start grantees awards with no end dates and instituting a 5-year designation period. After 5 years, grantees must show that they are delivering high-quality, comprehensive services. (Timeline of Federal Funding for Child Care Programs) (Federal Policy)

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2011: Change in legislative leadership in NC

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2011: Change in legislative leadership in NC

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After nearly 12 years of a Democratic Party majority in both the NC House and Senate, the Republican Party took control of both legislative houses and has maintained them until today, including having supermajority (veto-proof) power from 2013 to 2018 and once again in 2023. Starting in 2011 and continually since, the state budgets approved by the general assembly have included cuts to state-funded early education programs like Smart Start. (State Influences)

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Republicans have controlled North Carolina's legislature for nearly a decade. Here's what they got done.

When Republicans swept North Carolina's legislature in 2010, clinching a majority in both the House and Senate for the first time in more than a century, they vowed to accomplish an ambitious agenda in their first 100 days.

In that time frame, Republicans made good on more than half of their promises. Led by Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican from Eden, and then-House speaker Thom Tillis, now a U.S. senator, Republicans ushered through legislation that lowered tax rates, slashed regulations and ended caps on charter schools.

"It's like anything else, you have to be focused on where you're trying to go," said Rep. Julia Howard, a Republican from Mocksville who has served in the legislature since 1988. "We just decided that we were all in and we were going to try and do everything we could to win. And more importantly, once we were elected, to do those things that we had said we were going to do."

Without enough votes to override gubernatorial vetoes, the GOP majority didn't accomplish every item on their 10-point agenda in the first 100 days. In the months and years that followed, though, Republicans made up for nearly every mark they missed.

"They tried to exercise their power and position to the max while they had the advantage," said Ferrel Guillory, founder of the Program on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill. "Republicans thought that this was their time to do as much as they could do to embed their agenda on state government."

The last decade of GOP control has meant a shift in North Carolina's policies - sometimes at a break-neck pace - away from where they were under Democratic control.

Tuesday's election will decide whether the state shifts back.

Every legislative seat in North Carolina's General Assembly is up for grabs, and Democrats have their sights set on winning a majority ahead of the next round of redistricting. Beyond that, some of Democrats' first priorities would likely be undoing the legacy Republicans leave behind.

"Republicans that have taken over the last 10 years have been committed to a regressive ideology rooted in classicism and racism that is detrimental to the very people they swore to uphold, to help," said Rev. William Barber II, who led the protest movement when Republicans won a supermajority in 2013. "They used their power in every way to retrogress the state of our public policies in North Carolina and to hurt the least of these."

For six of the past 10 years under Republican legislative control, a Democrat has been in the governor's mansion, creating a barrier for Republicans in their attempts to pass particularly partisan bills into law.

The courts have served as another hurdle. Republicans have faced court challenges in particular over their redistricting efforts and changes to voter ID laws.

And in protest of a wide range of Republican policies, from anti-abortion laws to corporate tax cuts, Barber led the Moral Monday movement at the legislature.

Yet Republicans successfully ushered through changes to policies ranging from unemployment insurance benefits and tax cuts to school vouchers.

"I don't think people appreciate just how dramatically state fiscal, education and transportation policy in particular have changed in the last decade," said Jim Blaine, who served as Berger's chief of staff until 2018. "People always ask me, 'How did y'all do that?'"

Republicans work together, sweep statehouse

In 2008, North Carolinians elected Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue, helped elect President Barack Obama, and voted to keep Democrats in the majority in the state legislature.

The midterm elections, held two years later, were another story.

"It was a cataclysmic year for Democrats across the nation," said Morgan Jackson, Gov. Roy Cooper's senior adviser. "I tip my hat to them from an operative standpoint for what they pulled off in 2010, but the state has suffered the consequences."

With Democrats in charge and the state still reeling from the recession, Republicans had a leg up in 2010.

"It was the Republican economy of 2008 that brought Barack Obama into the White House, and it was the Obama economy of 2010 that built the Republican legislative majority," said longtime Republican consultant Paul Shumaker, who has worked for Tillis' campaign.

When Republican legislators complained about Obama, Shumaker shot back.

"I don't understand what problem you have with him," Shumaker told them. "You made him. Secondly, he made you."

By August 2010, Shumaker said, Republicans were confident they'd win a majority in the Senate, so they shifted their focus to winning a majority in the House.

"Quite frankly, it was probably the first time in a decade that Republicans across the board had worked together," Shumaker said. "Our goal was to win a majority in the Senate and try and make the House competitive."

By October, Republicans believed they'd seize control of the House, too.

And they did. Appealing to suburban swing voters in particular, the GOP won control over both legislative chambers.

Both Democrats and Republicans upped their fundraising efforts in 2010, but the GOP was more well-funded than it had been in recent years.

North Carolina businessman and philanthropist Art Pope, and the conservative organizations he has founded, funded or led, contributed more than $2 million to Republicans in 22 legislative races that year, The News & Observer reported.

Pope said his company, Variety Stores, only donated $200,000 that year.

"The issues and the quality candidates allowed Republicans to win," Pope said in a recent interview with The N&O. "It was not because Republicans spent the most money."

'Off to a running start'

When they got to work on Jan. 26, 2011, Republicans' first task was balancing a projected $3.7 billion budget deficit.

They "got off to a running start," Pope said.

Though Senate leader Berger and House Speaker Tillis said repeatedly that "everything is on the table," there was one thing that wasn't: tax increases.

Perdue vetoed 19 bills between 2011 and 2012, including a $19.7 billion budget the legislature passed in June 2011.

"I cannot support a budget that sends the message that North Carolina is moving backwards, when we have always been a state that led the nation," the N&O reported Perdue said.

It was the first time a North Carolina governor had vetoed a budget bill.

Perdue's budget proposal extended a temporary sales tax increase implemented by Democrats, but Republicans' version of the budget did not include that extension, The N&O reported.

The final version of the budget also spent some $37 million less on K-12 education than Perdue proposed.

Five Democrats broke with their party, and the legislature successfully overrode the governor's veto.

"With unemployment at frightening levels and tens of thousands of families struggling, state legislative leaders slashed funding for the services and programs that help North Carolinians through tough times," wrote two co-chairs of the board of directors of the NC Justice Center, which advocates for low-income North Carolinians, in the group's annual report. "These battles will continue - and possibly escalate - in 2012."

That year, the male-dominated General Assembly also required women seeking an abortion to wait 24 hours, receive counseling and be shown an ultrasound and, with Democratic support, passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which the state's voters would later ratify but was canceled by court rulings nationally.

The legislature failed in its attempts to override Perdue's veto of a voter ID bill

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A step further

Also in 2011, the legislature drew new maps for North Carolina's state and congressional districts, consolidating Republican power. The courts, just as they often did during the era of Democratic control, would later find those maps to be unconstitutional.

But before they were overturned, Republicans ran in the districts they had drawn and won a supermajority in 2012 - gaining enough votes to override any gubernatorial vetoes.

That same year, North Carolinians voted to elect the state's first Republican governor in two decades, Pat McCrory. Critics say the Republican-majority legislature set the agenda even with one of their own in the governor's mansion.

"They decided that they wanted to undo 100 years of policy and legislation in almost the first two weeks of when they were sworn in," Jackson said. "They led Pat McCrory, as a Republican governor, around by the nose. He essentially was a rubber stamp for them."

In its 2013 session, with no need to cooperate with the other side of the aisle, Republicans took the changes they enacted in the first two years of their tenure a step further.

"I would just remind you of one thing," said then-House Republican leader Edgar Starnes, according to an N&O story from 2013. "The Republicans won the election. We are in control."

The Republican supermajority, with McCrory's support, repealed the Racial Justice Act, which allowed defendants on death row to challenge their sentences if they proved race played a significant role in their case, and ended the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor while slashing personal and corporate income taxes.

"They've prioritized these corporate tax giveaways at the expense of public education," Jackson said. "When the governor talks to CEOs about coming to North Carolina, the first question they ask is not about what the corporate tax rate is, it's about the workforce."

Legislators also passed legislation requiring specific types of photo identification at the polls, reducing early voting and ending same-day registration.

Three years later, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said the General Assembly "rushed through the legislative process" and called the move "the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow."

Republicans are particularly proud of one thing they accomplished in the 2013 session.

"There was just this one piece of legislation that always stands out to me," said former N.C. GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse. "And that is when they reformed the unemployment insurance system."

After borrowing more than $2 billion from the federal government to cover state-funded unemployment benefits in response to the 2008 recession, the N&O reported, Republicans sought to overhaul the unemployment system to pay that money back.

Businesses had to pay higher federal unemployment taxes until the debt was paid off.

In 2013, North Carolina's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 9.2% - down from the 11.4% peak during the recession but still the fifth highest in the nation, the N&O reported.

And that year, Republicans successfully reduced the maximum duration an unemployed person could collect benefits - from 26 weeks to no more than 20 and as few as 10 - and the maximum amount of those weekly benefits - from $506 to $350 - with the support of McCrory.

"It came with a difficult political price at a difficult political time," Woodhouse said. "Having the courage to do that meant something."

Also among the list of other notable legislation that became law under McCrory and the Republican supermajority: The law making removal of historical monuments or statues, like Confederate war memorials, more difficult; the Opportunity Scholarship program, which gave low-income North Carolina families $4,200 to pay for private schools; and a budget bill eliminating master's degree pay for future teachers.

For Democrats, the most memorable issue Republicans took on is House Bill 2, also known as the "bathroom bill."

In March 2016, the legislature passed a law reversing a Charlotte ordinance that had extended some LGBTQ rights. McCrory signed the bill into law that same day, just months before the election.

The Charlotte ordinance had protected transgender people who used bathrooms based on their gender identity. The new law banned local ordinances from expanding protections to the LGBTQ community, The Charlotte Observer reported, and required people in schools and other government buildings to use the bathroom matching the gender on their birth certificate.

The blowback was fierce, with the NBA pulling the 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte. The bill also became a talking point in the governor's race that year.

"It cost Pat McCrory his election," Jackson said. "It was incredibly damaging (to North Carolina's reputation)."

Erosion of power

Republicans' advantage in North Carolina began to erode in 2016, when McCrory lost to Cooper.

Republicans held onto their control in the legislature that year. They passed a series of bills limiting Cooper's powers, but without a Republican governor, accomplishing their agenda became more difficult.

Cooper and Republicans struck a deal to partly repeal HB2 just months into his term.

The biggest hit to GOP control came in the 2018 elections, when Democrats broke the Republicans' supermajority.

Without the votes to override Cooper's vetoes, Republicans failed to get much of their agenda passed. In 2019, the legislature did not have the votes to override Cooper's veto of their budget, which lacked the Medicaid expansion and higher teacher raises the governor had called for.

In the latest legislative session, Republicans attempted to reopen businesses shuttered by Cooper to slow the spread of the coronavirus, only to be met with gubernatorial vetoes.

And while Republicans have kept North Carolina as one of a dozen states that have not agreed to expand Medicaid health insurance coverage, Cooper has championed Medicaid expansion.

Despite Democrats' critiques of the last decade of a GOP majority in North Carolina's legislature, Republicans maintain that they've served the state well.

"North Carolina is a small 'd' democracy," Pope said. "The party with the best candidates who have had the best policies can win when they're outspent. When you look at all the accomplishments with the Republican majority, often with Democratic support... We came into this coronavirus recession better prepared than any time in state history."

To shift the balance of power in North Carolina, Democrats will need to pick up five additional seats in the Senate and six in the House. If they do win, they'll get to lead the process of redrawing congressional and state legislative districts meant to last the next 10 years.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published October 30, 2020, 11:09 AM.

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'We are in control': How a decade of Republican majorities reshaped North Carolina

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Republicans have held a majority in North Carolina's legislature for 10 years. Here are things they got done.

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2011-2013: Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge

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2011-2013: Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge

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RTT provided competitive grants to 20 states, including NC, to improve the quality and integration of early learning programs by creating a tiered quality rating and improvement system (TQRIS) and to increase the number of low-income children in high-quality settings. State reform efforts also focused on ensuring that assessments met recommendations of the National Research Council’s reports on early childhood education. (History of Federal Funding for Child Care and Early Learning) (Federal Policy, State Policy)

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The Child Care and Block Development Grant program was reauthorized and included new requirements to improve the health and safety of child care programs and better support for families and child care providers. (Timeline of Federal Funding for Child Care Programs) (Federal Policy)

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2014: Early Head Start Child Care Partnership Program

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2014: Early Head Start Child Care Partnership Program

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Congress appropriated funds for a partnership program that provides grants to EHS programs and child care providers who work together to improve the quality of care for infants and toddlers. (History of Federal Funding for Child Care and Early Learning) (Federal Policy)

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2015: Preschool Development Block Grant Birth through 5 (PDG B-5)

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2015: Preschool Development Block Grant Birth through 5 (PDG B-5)

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The PDG B-5 is a competitive federal grant that supports states and territories as they work to improve their existing early childhood system. This program marks the first time that Congress dedicated funds to promote high-quality early childhood education in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). (First Five Years Fund) (Federal Policy, State Policy)

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Throughout the pandemic, child care providers adapted to a new environment with different training requirements, safety protocols, and staffing. National data indicate a 47% increase in operating costs, which caused many facilities to close temporarily or permanently. Child care enrollment dropped by 40% across NC. Pre-COVID issues of child care availability and affordability were exacerbated by the pandemic, especially for families with young children and families with low socioeconomic status—particularly women and those who do not work standard hours. (The Center for American Progress) (International Influences)

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2020: The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act

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2020: The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act

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Passed by Congress in March 2020, the CARES Act provided states with $3.5 billion through Child Care and Development Block Grants. These funds were a critical investment into communities during a time of international turmoil. (First Five Years Fund) (Federal Policy)

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The COVID-19 economic crisis has had a devastating impact on child care providers, causing widespread layoffs and closures nationwide. Significant declines in enrollment paired with steep increases in operating expenses have created an unsustainable financial situation for an industry that traditionally relies on razor-thin margins. Recognizing the essential role of child care for children, working families, and the economy, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have sought to prioritize funding and other relief opportunities for child care providers as part of ongoing COVID-19 recovery efforts, culminating in the American Rescue Plan, which provided $39 billion in dedicated relief to the child care industry.

The following is a high-level overview of the major COVID-19 recovery proposals and the provisions aimed at supporting child care providers, along with Congressional letters and resolutions calling for significant child care relief funding.
Updated as of March 11, 2021

CARES Act Provides $3.5 Billion in Child Care Relief

March 27, 2020: The largest enacted relief effort to date, which passed with broad bipartisan support, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, was signed into law. The CARES Act provided the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) with $3.5 billion and Head Start programs with $750 million. States have leveraged these flexible funds to meet their unique needs. For instance, many states chose to pay providers based on enrollment rather than attendance and ensure providers have the necessary personal protective equipment to safely care for children. Along with the child care-specific funds, the CARES Act also included general relief for small businesses through numerous programs including the new Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), though a reportedly small number of child care programs received PPP loans. As the pandemic persists, states have largely exhausted these resources and providers continue to struggle to remain open or reopen.

Letters Call for Immediate and Long-term Investments for Child Care Industry

April 28, 2020: Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tina Smith (D-MN), and 29 of their colleagues wrote to Senate leadership urging the prioritization of the child care industry in future relief efforts. Specifically, the letter called an additional $50 billion in funding to stabilize the industry while also providing child care for essential workers and investing in necessary recovery efforts.

May 6, 2020: Representative Katherine Clark (D-MA) and more than 80 of her colleagues wrote to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Leader Kevin McCarthy calling for $50 billion for immediate relief for child care providers to stabilize the industry and $50 billion to ensure adequate long-term recovery funding.

Bipartisan Letter Led by Sens. Ernst, Sinema Calls for Child Care Support

May 11, 2020: A bipartisan group of 23 Senators, led by Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) penned a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling for significant federal support for child care in the upcoming COVID-19 recovery package in Congress.

House-passed HEROES Act Includes $7 Billion in CCDBG Funding

May 15, 2020: Amid partisan gridlock in Washington, House Democrats passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act. The $3 trillion economic stimulus package included $7 billion in emergency funding for states through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program as well as $850 million to the Social Services Block Grant to support child and family care for essential workers.

Sens. Ernst, Loeffler Introduce Resolution Calling for $25 Billion in Child Care Relief

May 21, 2020: Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) introduced a resolution calling for the next COVID-19 relief package to include $25 billion in assistance for the child care industry.

House Introduces Bill with $50 Billion in Child Care Relief

May 27, 2020: Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Bobby Scott (D-VA), and Nita Lowey (D-NY), along with 32 additional original cosponsors, introduced the Child Care is Essential Act, which creates a $50 billion child care stabilization fund that would provide relief to child care providers struggling during the pandemic. The bill creates a fund that provides direct grants to help pay for personnel, sanitation, training, and other costs associated with reopening and running a child care facility amid the pandemic.

June 3, 2020: A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and 31 of her colleagues as original cosponsors.

House Works to Expand the Availability of Quality Child Care with the Child Care for Economic Recovery Act

June 25, 2020: Understanding that providers face rising costs related to the pandemic, Representatives Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Richard Neal (D-MA) introduced the Child Care for Economic Recovery Act, which would provide enhanced tax credits and $10 billion for infrastructure grants to construct, renovate or improve child care facilities, through the Child Care Development Fund. The proposal also included an increase of $7.1 billion in the mandatory portion of the Child Care Development Fund and $850 million for the Social Services Block Grant to fund child and family care of essential workers.

Republican Lawmakers Urge Leaders to Include Dedicated Federal Child Care Relief

July 14, 2020: 41 Republican lawmakers, led by Representatives Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Tom Emmer (R-MN), sent a letter to Congressional leaders calling for dedicated federal relief for child care providers and businesses to stabilize an industry that has been devastated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Republicans Prioritize Child Care, Introduce the Back to Work Child Care Grants Act

July 21, 2020: Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), joined by eight Republican Senators, introduced the Back to Work Child Care Grants Act of 2020, which would create a child care stabilization fund to provide critical relief to our nation's child care providers.

July 27, 2020: The House's bipartisan companion to the Senate's Back to Work Child Care Grants Act was introduced by Representative Tom Reed (R-NY).

Senate Majority Leader Introduces $15 Billion in Child Care Relief

July 27, 2020: Highlighting the critical role child care plays in our nation's economic recovery and the unanimous agreement on Capitol Hill that something must be done to support working families and providers, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the HEALS Act, a $1 trillion economic relief bill. The legislation, based largely on the Back to Work Child Care Grants Act, included $15 billion in emergency funding for the child care industry - $10 billion through a child care stabilization fund to states and $5 billion through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program.

In Bipartisan Vote, the House Passes Measures with Additional Relief for Child Care

July 29, 2020: In two bipartisan votes, the House of Representatives passed theChild Care is Essential Act and the Child Care for Economic Recovery Act, taking one step closer to providing significant federal relief. Underscoring the importance of stabilizing the child care industry, and demonstrating strong bipartisan support, 18 Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to pass the Child Care is Essential Act and 20 Republicans voted to pass the Child Care for Economic Recovery Act.

Rep. Stevens Leads Dozens of House Members in Calling for Child Care Stabilization Fund

August 6, 2020: Representative Haley Stevens (D-MI) and dozens of members wrote a letter urging Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to prioritize significant funding for a Child Care Stabilization Fund in the next COVID relief package.

Senate "Skinny" Bill Includes $15 billion in Emergency Child Care Relief

September 8, 2020: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced a pared-down economic relief package, which includes $15 billion in emergency funding for the child care industry. The inclusion of child care in this "skinny" bill is evidence of the universal recognition of the need to provide stabilization funding for child care among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus Calls for $15 Billion in Child Care Relief

September 18, 2020: The bipartisan Congressional Problem Solvers Caucus, comprised of 25 Democrats and 25 Republicans, and led by Representatives Tom Reed (NY-23) and Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5), released its March to Common Ground: Bipartisan COVID Relief Framework, which it bills as a "comprehensive, bipartisan framework to meet the nation's needs for the next 6-12 months." Included in this proposal is $15 billion in emergency funding aimed at stabilizing the child care industry for 6 months.

In Negotiations, White House Proposes $25 Billion in Child Care Relief

September 30, 2020: As Congressional leaders and White House officials continued to work out differences in their priorities for the next economic recovery package, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced President Trump's support for $25 billion in federal relief for child care providers - considerably higher than the $15 billion in relief offered by Senate Republicans.

House Passes $57 Billion in Relief for Child Care Industry, Working Families

October 1, 2020: The U.S. House of Representatives passed an updated HEROES Act, an economic relief package that included $57 billion in emergency funding for the child care industry - $50 billion for child care stabilization grants to providers and $7 billion in emergency funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program (CCDBG). The bill also includes $1.7 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start.
Bipartisan Stimulus Package Includes $10 Billion in Child Care Relief
December 1, 2020: A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers announced a $908 billion pandemic relief package that includes $10 billion in emergency funding for the child care industry.
Senate Majority Leader Proposes $15 Billion in Child Care Relief
December 1, 2020: On the same day as a bipartisan, bicameral COVID-19 relief proposal was introduced including $10 billion in child care relief, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced his own stimulus package including $15 billion for the child care industry.
Congress Passes $10 Billion in Child Care Relief in Year-End COVID-19 Package
December 21, 2020: In bipartisan votes, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate approved a year-end pandemic relief bill, the first since the early days of the crisis. The legislation, which was signed into law shortly after passage, included $10 billion in funding to stabilize the child care industry and an additional $250 million for the Head Start program.
President-Elect Joe Biden Puts Child Care at Center of His Economic Recovery Proposal
January 14, 2021: Ahead of the Presidential Inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden released the details of his COVID-19 relief proposal. To address the economic crisis created by the pandemic, Biden proposed $40 billion in dedicated relief for child care - $25 billion for a child care stabilization fund and $15 billion through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program. The proposal also included temporary expansions of important tax credits, including the Child Tax Credit and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit.
Republicans Include $20 Billion for Child Care in COVID-19 Relief Proposal
February 1, 2021: A group of 10 Republican senators released the details of an economic relief package that includes $20 billion in funding for the child care industry.
American Rescue Plan Introduced in the House Includes $39 Billion in Child Care Relief
February 8, 2021: Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced the American Rescue Plan. This sweeping pandemic relief legislation includes a number of elements designed to support families with young children and the child care providers they rely on, including $14 billion in emergency funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program and $24 billion for a child care stabilization fund. In addition, the legislation would provide $1 billion in funding for Head Start programs, and includes temporary increases to important tax credits many families rely on.
House Passes American Rescue Plan
February 27, 2021: The House of Representatives passed the American Rescue Plan, a sweeping pandemic relief package with $39 billion in child care relief funding, including $15 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program and $24 billion for a child care stabilization fund.
Senate Amends, Passes American Rescue Plan
March 6, 2021: Following the passage of the American Rescue Plan in the House of Representatives, the Senate amended and passed the bill. Key relief provisions for the child care industry were protected and approved in the final package.
Congress Passes American Rescue Plan with $39 Billion in Child Care Relief
March 10, 2021: The House voted to pass the American Rescue Plan after it was amended and passed by the Senate over the weekend. The sweeping pandemic relief package includes $39 billion in child care relief funding: $15 billion in emergency funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program and $24 billion for a child care stabilization fund. The bill will now go to President Biden to be signed into law.
American Rescue Plan Signed into Law, Sending $39 Billion in Relief to Child Care Providers
March 11, 2021: President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law, ensuring that child care providers and millions of working families will soon receive essential relief. The final bill includes $39 billion in dedicated relief for the child care industry, including $15 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program and $24 billion for a child care stabilization fund.

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Timeline of COVID-19 Relief for the Child Care Industry and Working Families

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The COVID-19 economic crisis has had a devastating impact on child care providers, causing widespread layoffs and closures nationwide. Significant declines in enrollment paired with steep increases in operating expenses have created an unsustainable financial situation for an industry that traditionally relies on razor-thin margins.

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Passed in March 2021, ARPA provided $1.5 billion in Child Care and Development Block Grants and $24 billion for child care stabilization funding. Many child care providers relied heavily on these funds in order to keep operating their businesses. (First Five Years Fund) (Federal Policy)

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Child Care Funding Released in American Rescue Plan

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Today, President Joe Biden announced the release of $39 billion in child care relief funds to provide relief for child care providers and provide support for families that need help affording child care.

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2021: NC Child Care Stabilization Grants

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2021: NC Child Care Stabilization Grants

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Governor Cooper announced $805 million in new funding for early care and learning programs. Licensed FCC homes were eligible for the funding. In each of these recent investment opportunities, HBCC providers had a harder time accessing these funds because of barriers related to applying and reporting how the funds were spent. (NC Governor Roy Cooper) (State Policy)

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Using the search feature (magnifying glass at top of page), click the filter icon, then select "green" to filter the timeline to show International Influence events.

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Using the search feature (magnifying glass at top of page), click the filter icon, then select "white" to filter the timeline to show State or National Influence events.

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Using the search feature (magnifying glass at top of page), click the filter icon, then select "blue" to filter the timeline to show Activism events.

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Using the search feature (magnifying glass at top of page), click the filter icon, then select "purple" to filter the timeline to show Social Perception events.

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North Carolina became an early adopter of the QRIS star rating system developed by a partnership of the BUILD Initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Collaborative, and Child Trends. The rating system was revised in 2005. Child care providers are evaluated in two main areas: staff education and program standards. Many HBCC providers are frustrated with the measures of QRIS for being most applicable to center-based care. This introduction of staff education as a measure of child care quality was intended to make the role more respected but has yet to correlate with a meaningful increase in social value and wages paid for these positions. (NC Division of Child Development) (State Policy, Social Perceptions)

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1619–1870s: US slavery; Enslaved Black women did domestic work—cooking, cleaning, sewing, and rearing their slave master’s children including nursing. The unpaid and underpaid labor of Black women is the cornerstone of the early child care and education system. (Mary Pauper: A Historical Exploration of Early Education Compensation, Policy, and Trends) (National Policy)

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1760-1840: The Cult of Domesticity/Cementing Traditional Family Structure

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1760-1840: The Cult of Domesticity/Cementing Traditional Family Structure

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The Industrial Revolution entrenched the male breadwinner / female caregiver model of the home as more men went to work outside the home. This was never true for women of color, who had been represented in the labor market as slaves and as freed persons. (Undervalued) (Social Perceptions)

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Sophia Packard and Harriet Giles, two white missionaries from New England, believed in “true womanhood’ and designed a curriculum that would prepare Black women to enter domestic service. (Undervalued)  (National Influence)

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Between 1890 and 1895, Black women’s clubs emerged to address racism during Jim Crow. Black women’s clubs exceeded the priorities of white women’s clubs; they raised funds for day nurseries and kindergartens and launched training programs for Black women teachers. (The Role of Early Childhood in Black Women’s Clubs Work) (Activism)

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Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

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Between 1890 and 1895, Black women's clubs emerged to address the oppressive realities facing Black people in the Age of Jim Crow. The first national, secular Black women's organization - the National Association of Club Women (NACW) - formed in 1895 to amplify Black women's collective power and coordinate the efforts of local clubs to eradicate anti-Black oppression and advance racial and gender justice across the United States. Black club women's commitment to early care and education (ECE) in the form of kindergartens and day nurseries was a key component of the NACW's overall strategy that encompassed a range of broader activities, including anti-lynching, temperance, adult education, and women's business exchange efforts (Roberts, 2004).

However, Black women's contributions go mostly unacknowledged in histories of ECE development, with few exceptions (Cunningham & Osborn, 1979; Rose, 1999). When mentioned, they are limited to a long list of activities and names with no in-depth exploration of how club women drew upon their distinctive views and experiences as Black women to shape their approach to ECE. Many White kindergarten activists assumed mothers' dependence on a male breadwinner and discouraged the establishment of day nurseries, but Black club women understood the necessity of mothers' paid labor from their own daily lives. Black women were more than twice as likely to be employed as their White counterparts (Boustan & Collins, 2013), yet the day nurseries established for the children of working mothers were less likely to accept Black children (Rose, 1999).

These disparities in access extended to kindergartens, as well. Most Black children resided in the South at the time, where kindergartens and nurseries were extremely rare or served only White children. In other parts of the country, Black children had less access to private, "free" or "charity" kindergartens that mostly served White European immigrant families (Rose, 1999). Public kindergarten opportunities for Black children were delayed or outright denied and were almost always segregated and more poorly funded.

Black club women's activism at the turn of the century provides a window into how Black women tapped into a tradition of mutual aid, self-determination, and Black-led schools (Shaw, 1991; Anderson 1998), while also expanding the focus of that tradition to include the youngest learners and address child care needs for working Black women.

The day nursery and kindergarten movements led by various women's organizations, including women's clubs, were segregated. The efforts of Black women's clubs both paralleled and exceeded the priorities of White women's clubs. Additionally, Black club women were working in a tradition of formerly enslaved Black people who established, funded, and led hundreds of schools for Black children across the South between 1860 and 1876 (Anderson, 1998). Similarly, Black club women raised funds to start and run day nurseries and kindergartens for Black children in their local communities across the country and launched training programs for Black women teachers. They also advocated for kindergartens to become a part of public school systems, shifting early learning programs to the realm of public funding.

Black club women were drawn to the focus on learning through play in kindergarten and infused it with their own teaching philosophies to prepare Black children to create a more just world (Yates, 1905b). Kindergartens were a critical strategy to confront post-emancipation challenges facing Black communities (Robbins, 2011). Black women's clubs viewed the educational philosophy of kindergarten - educating both mother and child - as an opportunity to address the lack of education for both children and their mothers (Yates, 1905a; Robbins, 2011). The relative privilege of Black club women in terms of education, profession, and wealth shaped their faith in education as a critical part of a broader strategy for racial uplift. However, they still utilized educational initiatives like mothers' clubs to organize around labor issues (Jones, 1982) and to address Black oppression through anti-lynching and anti-convict-leasing campaigns (Roberts, 2004; Haley, 2016).

Black club women's activism at the turn of the century provides a window into how Black women tapped into a tradition of mutual aid, self-determination, and Black-led schools (Shaw, 1991; Anderson 1998), while also expanding the focus of that tradition to include the youngest learners and address child care needs for working Black women. Their experiences at the intersections of race, class, and gender shaped their commitments to racial and gender justice and led them to situate early learning in a broader project to address anti-Black oppression, while more fully embracing an agenda inclusive of care and education still lacking today by advocating for both day nurseries and kindergartens.

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Uncovering the Role of Early Childhood in Black Women's Clubs Work Towards Racial and Gender Justice - Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

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Between 1890 and 1895, Black women's clubs emerged to address the oppressive realities facing Black people in the Age of Jim Crow . The first national, secular

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1870s-1930s: Outing Programs Assimilate and Control

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1870s-1930s: Outing Programs Assimilate and Control

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Young indigenous women were removed from their communities, often by force, to join what was called the “Outing Program”, a type of boarding school program that offered domestic service apprenticeships to assimilate them into white, Protestant society. These programs were operated by “Outing Matrons,” middle- and upper-class white women who learned and taught domestic work employers to assert their authority over the young indigenous women by constantly controlling their lives, even leisure. (A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing by National Domestic Worker Alliance) (National Influences)

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"Native American children from the Hoopa Valley Tribe attending government-funded kindergarten"- image from "The Kindergarten Lessons We Never Learned"

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Beginning in the 1890s, the federal government funded more than 40 kindergartens, operated by missionaries and churches, both on reservations and in boarding schools, meaning children as young as 4 were separated from their families and sent to boarding schools. (Healing Voices Volume 1) (Federal Policy)

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Photo sourced from https://www.dwherstories.com/timeline/irish-domestic-workers-in-the-northeast. “I Should Like to Make My Own Living” published in the essay “Hybrid Roses” by Sarah Barnwell Elliott, Harper’s magazine, 113:443 (Aug. 1906).William Thomas Smedley, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

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In the mid-1800s to early 1900s, most domestic workers in Northern cities and Appalachia were Irish immigrants. In those years, Irish immigrants were discriminated against due to their assertiveness and cultural practice to question authority. Media often described them as “ill-mannered” for not knowing their place, instead being belligerent, demanding, and rebellious. In cartoons, they were illustrated with facial features that resembled apes to convey their savagery. One strategy that is used to fight against discrimination is through telling a person’s story through their lens. One such project was the writing of a book called The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, which interviewed roughly 15 Irish domestic workers, including Hannah Collins. On July 22, 1899, she wrote to her friend Nora, also an Irish immigrant serving as a domestic worker, that “I am so tired and almost dead. Nora, I am sorry your place is so hard. Nothing but work all the time for us all.” Over decades, the Irish fought to be considered a valuable part of American society and to do so aligned themselves with “whiteness” through antagonizing Black people, clearly articulated by the book How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev. This betrayal by Irish immigrants of working-class Black people is a critical moment in the formation of modern-day racism and white supremacy which are still so deeply rooted in our society. Source: The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America 1840-1930(Historical Figures, Social Influences)