The first interview in Maid in New Jersey echoes the well-worn theme of how much the African American caretaker loved the white children they raised—a phenomenon that dominates the discussions in Just Like Family. “When Tyrone Doyle’s mother died, he discovered a box of children’s mementoes she’d saved: costumes from a play, birthday cards, old snapshots. But they were not from his childhood. Rather, they were from the four children his mother ‘watched’ in her many years as a housekeeper to the Mayer family of Colonia [New Jersey].” Tyrone insists that “She was just like a family member to the white family.”

Mitch Mayer, one of the white children, says, “Oh my God, did Mae have a negative feeling about my family and we didn’t know it? I wondered what was her take on it. Was it just a job for her? Or was it more than a job, with love for us.” Doyle reassured Mayer that Mae’s affection was genuine.

In contrast, Lloyd Earle’s memories were not so positive. His mother, who was also “in service,” would tell him stories about the way she was treated that “had us hating white people for years….” Earle’s mother found it degrading to clean homes of white women half her age and told her daughters “she would rather have them dead (than) do what she did for a living.”

University of Rutgers University history professor Clement Price recounts that his mother became a housekeeper after she was unable to find work as a teacher when she moved to Washington, D.C. “My mother was a fully fleshed out woman who did not comport herself as a victim, or as someone not completely self-sufficient” he said.

These interviews provide four different points of view and glimpses of diverse experiences that remind us of the complexity of relationships between African American maids and the white children they raised. These complexities from the past remain vivid into the present for these individual adults.

The worker describes the varied roles that must be taken on by “two-thirds of negro-women” compelled to domestic work “…as wet nurses, cooks, washerwomen, chambermaids, seamstresses, hucksters, janitresses, and the like.” She says that “the condition of this vast host of poor colored people is just as bad as, if not worse than, it was during the days of slavery.” One of the chief concerns of this African-American woman was that she would be fired and dispatched to “the ‘State Farm,’ where we would surely have to work for nothing or be beaten with many stripes.”

Particularly vexing was the requirement that she had to sleep in the house and was only allowed to go home to see her own children every other week on Sunday afternoons. One of her several complaints were the unwelcome attention of “madam’s husband.” She learned early on that “a colored woman’s virtue in that part of the country has no protection. “I know at least fifty places in my small town where white men are positively raising two families—a white family in the ‘Big House’ in front, and a colored family in a ‘Little House’ in the backyard.”

At the end of the article, she suggests that Southern white women should be allies of their black domestic workers. “If none others will help us, it would seem that the Southern white women themselves might do so in their own defense, because we are rearing their children—we feed them, we bathe them, we teach them to speak the English language, and in numberless instances we sleep with them—and it is inevitable that the lives of their children will in some measure be pure or impure according as they are affected by contact with the colored nurses.” What a reasonable but naïve proposal!

This article made wonder why whites surrendered the raising of their children to people they saw as inferior, people whom they felt no need to treat fairly? Other questions the article suggests to me are: Can love and affection ever really exist in the presence of inequality and exploitation? (Certainly not in the case above.) What were the lessons learned by the white children who were raised by someone their parents considered inferior? Did they simply adopt the racism of their parents or did the connection with their black caretaker change their view of African-Americans and the illogic of segregation? How might the dichotomy between a child’s affection for a loving caretaker and parental attitudes towards that same woman form the personality and beliefs of a child raised in these highly-charged circumstances? (See post on Epigenetics.)

Early in her career, she acknowledged racism and its rituals of segregation as a “symptom of grave illness.” She found connections and similarities between racial and sexual oppression. She recognized that the “passionless white woman on a pedestal and the black woman with a child by the white man” exemplified related and attendant evils of white supremacy.

She explains that “We were as involved with it [segregation] as a child who cannot be happy at home and cannot bear to tear himself away, or as a grownup who has fallen in love with his own disease. We southerners had identified with a long sorrowful past on such deep levels of love and hate and guilt that we did not know how to break old bonds without pulling our lives down.”

Smith wrote passionately about the compromises African Americans had to make when in relationship with white children. She explores the paradoxes of those connections. For example, these caretakers were often the only affectionate person in a child’s life and the bonds continued into adulthood. She writes:

I knew that my old nurse had cared for me through long months of illness, who had given me refuge when a little sister took my place as the baby of the family. She soothed and fed me. Delighted me with her stories and games. Let me fall asleep on her deep warm breast, [but] was not worthy of the passionate love I felt for her but must be given instead a half-smiled-at affection similar to that which one feels for one’s dog. I knew but I never believed it, that the deep respect I felt for her, the tender love, was a childish thing which every normal child outgrows, that such love begins with one’s toys and is discarded with them, and that somehow—though it seemed impossible to my agonized heart—I, too, must outgrow these feelings. I learned to cheapen [the relationship]…with tears and sentimental talk of “my old mammy” one of the profound relationships of my life. I learned the bitterest thing a child can learn: that the human relations I valued most were held cheap by the world I lived in.

Smith was trained as a sociologist, but she is not always on mark with her observations. Her writing sometimes veers away into drama, righteousness, delusion and misperception. And ironically, Smith creates her own particular “mammy” stereotype—the sainted mammy—in Killers of the Dream. There is much lacking in Smith’s exposition. In addition to her own mammy mythology, Smith does not explore the lives of black women who were not caretakers; but her willingness to examine difficult emotionally-charged psychological terrain was remarkable for her day.

Still, many of her statements make me very uncomfortable. Some of her theories are not supported by current research and understanding. Here is an example of some of her writing that disquiets me.

In the old days, a white child who had loved his colored nurse, his “mammy,” with that passionate devotion which only small children feel, who had grown used to dark velvety skin, warm deep breasts, rich soothing voice and the ease of personality [this statement makes me a little uncomfortable] whose religion was centered in heaven not hell, we had felt when the mind is tender to the touch of a spirit almost free of sex anxiety, found it natural to seek in adolescence and as an adult a return of this profoundly pleasing experience. His [a white male] memory was full of echoes…he could not rid himself of them. And he followed these echoes to back-yard cabins, to colored town, hoping to find there the substance of shadowy memories. Sometimes he found what he sought and formed a tender, passionate, deeply satisfying relation which he was often faithful to, despite cultural barriers. [This makes me really uncomfortable! Smith fails to mention rape as the primary outcome of this “relationship.”] But always it was a relationship with honor in his own mind [this seems contradictory to her own thesis] and region, and the source of profound anxiety which seeped through his personality. Yet the old longing persisted, the old desire for something he could not find in his white life.

Smith argues, as I do in Just Like Family, that these “memories full of echoes” are significant to the development and understanding of US culture—that we are who we are because of each other. The many deep and hidden facets of personal experience associated with old intimate contacts still thrive unexplored in US society today. Smith writes

I stifled, sometimes forced into the unconscious, though betrayed ingenuously by the bathos of the “my old mammy,” this tender and tragic relationship of childhood—the white child and his colored nurse—has powerfully influenced the character of many southerners of the dominant class. The class is small, numerically, but out of it have come politicians, newspaper editors and journalists, college professors and presidents, doctor, preachers, industrialists, bankers, writers, governors and their wives, and in our national government many of the prominent officials who are today determining the future of the world. It therefore seems important for us to understand this primal experience which so many leaders in world affairs and creators of American opinion have undergone in childhood.

It is important that we understand this primal experience and not just as it impacted the elite members of the dominant class who hired black maid and caretakers but how our day-to-day encounters, interactions and behaviors influence all of us on many different levels. How do we talk about these uncomfortable subjects? How do we get past our stereotypes and animosities to celebrate the African American woman’s influence on US culture?

It is obvious that the presense of African American caretakers in the homes of whites would sociologically and psychologically transmit cultural and behavioral information between the caretaker and child. However, this impact may be deeper and more persistent than we have previously thought. The scientific theory of epigenisis hypothesizes that behaviors, actions and thoughts can trigger changes in the functioning of a gene without affecting the inherited qualities of the DNA genome.

This theory is contrary to Darwinian science, which concludes that our genetic structure is fixed—that we are born with an immutable set of genes. Epigentics expands the concept of evolution. Through epigenisis, genes are turned on or off, in part through compounds that hitch on top or jump off of DNA. It’s a little like hardware and software. DNA is the fixed hardware of the genome. Epigensis is like software. It tells the hardware what to do.

This theory has huge implications for us today and may explain why it is so difficult to have conversations about race and reconciliation between blacks and whites. This explanation is further explored by author and educator Dr. Joy Degruy.

Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome

Dr. Joy Degruy believes that prejudice is a function of the process of epigenetics. In her seminal work, Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, she explains that the imprints of slavery and the continued abuses suffered by African-Americans after emancipation have handicapped many blacks.

Dr. Degruy states that “The systematic dehumanization of African slaves was the initial trauma, and generations of their descendants have borne the scars. Since that time, Americans of all ethnic backgrounds have been inculcated and immersed in a fabricated (but effective) system of race ‘hierarchy,’ where light-skin privilege still dramatically affects the likelihood of succeeding in American society.”

Degruy also explains that many whites biologically carry their ancestors’ negative beliefs and perceptions about African-Americans. Likewise, African Americans carry ill-feelings, even hate, for whites, which have been passed down since slavery. Even unconsciously, blacks and whites pass down viserally and genetically the burdens of the past within their neurological patterns. These feelings create an impasse for healing and reconciliation.

The descendants of slave owners, in particular, carry the impacts of their ancestors’ systematic abuse of enslaved African-Americans. Knowing your ancestors owned other human beings and treated them as chattel could certainly create conditions of psychic confusion, wrenching guilt, and conflicts of the soul—even if unacknowledged today. Or maybe not. The arrogance and unconscious expousal of racial hatred and the continued degrading attitudes toward African American may also be determined by epigenetics.

Within the context of Just Like Family, you can imagine that the intimate relationships between African American women caretakers and the white children they took care of were complex, conflicted, and fraught with confusions and contradictions, feelings that remain with us today.

Now, with the knowledge of epigenetics, how do we change this genetic destiny.

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In 1994, I conducted an interview with my first cousin, Simms Oliphant, about Llewellyn Rowe Hopkins—an African American woman who worked for our grandmother for 50 years.  The interview was done as part of my early research for the documentary film, Shared History.  Shared History is a PBS film about the connection of the descendants of the enslaved families at Woodlands Plantation and my family, who were the slave owners.

Llewellyn, spelled in the British way, was a member of a family that stayed on at Woodlands after the Civil War.  She was “sent up” from Woodlands to Greenville, SC to work for my grandmother.  Llewellyn was a descendant in the line of the Rowe family, who were slaves on property my family owned before the Revolutionary War.  Rowe was also the name of one of our 18^th century ancestors.

Our grandmother, Mary Chevillette Simms Oliphant, was an historian and author and very much focused on her career.  Llewellyn practically raised Simms’s father, the baby of the family.  I remember Llewellyn doted on him even as an adult.  In the interview, Simms calls Llewellyn his second grandmother.   My mother told me that she overheard my grandmother once say, “Mother [my great grandmother] gave Llewellyn to me as a wedding present,” a statement revealing my families early 20^th century view that slavery was not quite over at Woodlands.

The arrangement between my grandmother and Llewellyn’s father, who was sharecropping on the Woodlands property, was that my grandmother would send part of Llewellyn’s salary back to Bamberg to help take care of Llewellyn’s children, who were raised by Llewellyn’s parents.  Her children were conceived in Greenville, when Llewellyn visited Greenville to work for my grandmother in the summers.  In the interview, Simms refers to our grandmother as “Miss May,” a name given to her by Llewellyn and used by family and friends alike.

Although Llewellyn was considered “just like family,” she didn’t have the privileges and opportunities available to my family.  She couldn’t read and write.  (My mother told me that my grandmother had hired a tutor to teach her but that she couldn’t learn.)  She wore a lace apron over a black dress and a little starched lace “crown.”  We all got along because Llewellyn stayed in her place, which allowed us to maintain our love and affection for her; it was a flawed but valued connection—at least to us. It seemed to me that one of her outlets was to gripe and nag sotto voce to anyone within hearing distance.  She used to say with pride, “I’ve been with the Simms family for 300 years,” a statement that still haunts me today.

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My sister and I were born in South Carolina into a socially prominent family with very little money. My father was away as a pilot in the Army Air Corps when we were born (my sister in 1942 and I in late 1943). My mother had moved with him to various army postings in St Louis and Memphis where he was a flight instructor. She moved to his small home town with his parents where my sister was born. As the war continued she started working as a bookkeeper and eventually built a nice small house. Since she worked long hours she employed a lovely African American Miriam Gibson to take care of us. Miriam had a younger sister Carrie Lee who would come to our house to play with us. They were both very sweet and we loved them. My mother was very generous and thoughtful and was never rude or condescending to them. Miriam got married and moved to Baltimore and my mother then hired Louise Weeks who was like a second mother. She was a marvelous cook and made the best banana cream pie and fried chicken ever. She also cleaned and did our laundry. Louise did not have a car so my mother would pick her up from her home and drive her home at night. Many white families in our town expected the “help” to walk to work — even in the rain. My father never came back from the war. He met someone else and abandoned my mother and us. My mother had to totally support us, and on her small salary was able to take care of Louise and her family as well. My mother shared our food and our outgrown clothes with Louise’s family. Louise worked for my mother for more than 20 years, and after my sister and I left for college out of state, we always visited her at her home when we returned for vacations. She was loved by all of us, and I know she loved us. My sister and I went to public school which was segregated. I graduated from high school in 1962. During my school years I was totally unaware that the Brown vs. the Board of Education law suit was — filed in our County. It was never discussed among our family, and I never heard any of my mother’s friends discuss the suit. It was as if it never happened. Eventually the white public school closed in our town and all the white children went to a new private school. After our dear Louise died, her niece Dorothy Huggins came to work for my mother several days a week–and eventually five days. Dorothy was educated an had worked as a certified nurses aide. She took excellent care of our mother (for about 20 years) until our mother died…Since my sister and I lived in other states, Dorothy became our African American sister. We love her trusted her completely, she cooked, cleaned and drove our mother to various doctor appointments — handled her expenses, car maintenance, etc. After our mother died several years ago, my sister and I gave Dorothy her car and many pieces of nice furniture. We still talk to Dorothy by telephone at least several times a month, and consider her “just like family”. (as I was writing this, I got a call from Dorothy) I’ve also seen Carrie Lee on several visits “home”. We were both happy to reminisce about our playing as children.

It is past time to bring up the issue of “mammy”—the cultural icon created in the antebellum South by slave owners looking to soften the image of slavery and give authority to their paternalistic ideal. Mammy flourished during Reconstruction and has persisted through the present. In the late19th century, she was portrayed as a faithful beloved slave—a loving, trusted, and self-sacrificing servant who took care of both black and white children on the plantation—hardly a slave at all. In the 20th century, mammy evolved into a large, soft, dark-skinned woman, often good natured, sometimes firm. She was viewed as safe and un-sexual and was often described as one of the family. Amongst other duties of housekeeping and childcare, she was likely a valued cook.

Author Micki McElya in her book Clinging to Mammy observes that the mammy image continues to be popular because it helps whites feel less guilty about slavery—mammy as a neutral figure, a bridge between black and white. In the midst of this stereotype, many whites insist that their caretakers loved them. There were indeed some black caretakers who were warm, loving and empathic caretakers of their white families even though the relationships had to be highly charged, perplexing, confusing, complicated and full of contradictions.

Here, in Just Like Family, the mammy image often appears in the tributes, descriptions, and photographs of African American women who raised white children and specifically, in this post, through my mother’s comments in the video in the next post. In this 2006 interview, she provides a classic description of the 20th century mammy. Although her feelings of esteem seem genuine, they are at the expense of the realities of the women who were paid to nurture her.

Most of the portrayals thus far in Just Like Family are from my contemporaries, people who grew up in the 1950s and experienced these relationships through the landscape of segregation and discrimination. Some posts from white people describe their African American caretaker in terms of the mammy stereotype. Many use Just Like Family as a forum to thank the African American woman who raised them and describe how she affected them. In viewing the video oral histories, looking at the photographs and reading the narratives in the blog, it is often hard to sort out what comes out of mammy mythology and what are the real experiences of the white people who were raised by these women—some of whom do happen to have some of the characteristics of the stereotype. One wonders how the stereotype affected both blacks and whites and how often black women took on these characteristics simply because they appealed to their white employers and, thus, helped assure job security.

We know the mammy stereotypes are not universal. Photographs from my family’s archive show a number of black women, who are not “large, soft, and dark-skinned,” holding white babies. But the stereotype continues. An interesting perspective of the physicality of mammy and its continued impact on the image of blacks in this country is provided by scholar Kimberly Wallace-Sanders in her book, Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory. She writes “…when we reimagine the antebellum plantation as the body…we see how the mammy’s body serves as a tendon between the races, connecting the muscle of African American slave labor with the skeletal power structure of white southern aristocracy. Her body nurtured both African American slave children and their future owners—sometimes simultaneously. Focusing on the mammy’s body… [we see her] as a transition object for a nation moving from one developmental stage to another. This emphasis pushes us to better understand why sentimental representations of black corporeality, like the mammy, continue to be both provocative and evocative.”

In Just Like Family we can read and listen to descriptions of African American caretakers by both whites and blacks. We can’t question someone’s feelings about another human being and what they meant to them;  but we can look through an historical lens at the image of mammy and how it continues to shape  our ideas about African Americans today.  Can we tease out the truth and reevaluate our understanding from these stories?  So we listen for truth and accept the experience, giving each a place for their story to exist and comments to be made.

There will be additional posts about the idea of mammy in future.

These are the words my mother, Mary Simms Furman, spoke in this short segment shot for the Shared History documentary. The footage, which references the descendants of the enslaved people at Woodlands Plantation who took care of my mother as a child and helped her as an adult, was not used in the final film. It was deemed too inflammatory without the proper context. The Just Like Family blog will attempt to provide this context by looking at the stereotype and mythology of the “mammy” figure that was developed during slavery but magnified in the 20th century. Many of the profiles featured in Just Like Family were written by whites who describe their caretaker in stereotypical ways: a large, older black woman, full-bosomed, patient, sometimes sassy, asexual, faithful and unthreatening. I will address some of the theories and realities of this stereotypical image in the hopes of better understanding the relationship between the adult white children and their African American caretakers.

From the internet, “In 1956 LIFE magazine dispatched reporters and photographers to the American South to explore how the emotionally and politically charged issue of segregation manifested itself at a time when the Civil Rights movement was barely in its infancy. Here, LIFE presents rare and previously unpublished pictures by the legendary Margaret Bourke-White, who shot in Greenville, South Carolina, for one segment of a monumental five-part series, “The Background of Segregation” — a segment focusing on Greenville citizens from different walks of life who wholeheartedly supported segregation.”

An African-American maid prepares a white family’s supper in Greenville, SC, 1956.

“In photographs that, at times, convey an unsettling intimacy, Bourke-White’s work opens a window on an era that, for better and for worse, helped define 20th century America. There is courage to be found in these images, and dignity, and weakness, and a cruelty that — in the guise of a patronizing benevolence — shaped the destinies of black and white America for decades to come, and echoes in our national conversation even today.”

One of the things that strikes me about the photograph is that the white family’s kitchen is quite modest.  I remember just about everyone of any economic class in Greenville had a maid.  The salaries of the black housekeepers were sinfully low .