"The story of Blue Jenkins, an African American who grew up in Depression-era Racine. Blue experienced, both personally and as a part of the black community near Milwaukee, the exodus of former farm laborers from the South seeking jobs in Northern manufacturing. He attended pre-civil rights movement public schools, and experienced racism: the Ku Klux Klan hung a black figure in effigy from a tree in the Jenkins family's yard. Jenkins played semi-pro...

"Premilla Nadasen recounts in this powerful book a little-known history of organizing among African American household workers. She uses the stories of a handful of women to illuminate the broader politics of labor, organizing, race, and gender in late 20th-century America. At the crossroads of the emerging civil rights movement, a deindustrializing economy, a burgeoning women's movement, and increasing immigration, household worker activists, who...