Overview

This towering personage in the life of the Negro cannot be appreciated today for the reason that her task is almost done. Because of the rise of the race from drudgery and the mechanization of the industrial world the washerwoman is rapidly passing out. Confusing those women employed in laundries with those washing at homes, the Bureau of the Census in 1890 reported 151,540 washerwomen, 218,227 in 1900, and 373,819 in 1910. In 1920, however, there were actually 283,557, but this number has comparatively declined.

—Carter G. Woodson. The Negro Washerwoman, a Vanishing Figure

At the end of the Civil War newly emancipated women moved to Atlanta to find employment as household labourers and washerwomen

—International Review of Social History

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