ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the work of black and poor white women who lived in the tobacco and cotton-growing regions of the South between 1865 and 1940. Economic deprivation and insecurity profoundly influenced family relationships. Despite the rapid development of a national industrial economy, the work of rural southern black and white women did not change dramatically over the years. If black and poor white women shared a great deal in terms of physical deprivation, backbreaking work, and constant childbearing, there is little evidence that they were conscious of similar patterns of womanhood. Black women had higher rates of illiteracy and worked as wage earners to a greater extent compared to poor white women in the rural South. The social context of rural southern society reveals how black and poor white women could engage in the same household chores while not sharing the experiences of family life in precisely the same way.
