Just as relationships are multifaceted, Under One Roof will weave together a variety of poignant experiences and feelings, filtered through the lens of reminiscence.  We will showcase relationships that evolved from both short-lived and long-term employment situations such as that of Judy and the two related families she worked for over 59 years in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.  To this day she is considered so much a part of their family that at 82 and retired, she sees or speaks to at least one of the large clan weekly.  She says, “I started with that family when I was 18 years old, and I’m still with them.”


The stories will be portrayed using present-day interviews interwoven with reunions and day-in-the-life of actuality footage.  Personal photographs and film footage will be used to convey the personal settings in contrast to the stirring footage of demonstrations and activities of the Civil Rights and Women’s movements in the North.


The stories will be grouped thematically by segments, allowing for the sharing of many voices.  Possible themes and participants include:


Crossing Race, Cultures and Class

While their differences were visible, many housekeepers and their employers grew to respect and appreciate the strengths and value of their differences. Shirley, a devout Christian, worked for the Gordons, an agnostic, culturally Jewish family.  The family’s level of respect for and trust of Shirley extended beyond her housekeeping duties.  As she recounted:  


Mr. Gordon had trouble with his back. He asked me one day, ‘Shirley, when you pray, will you pray for my back?’ And I said, ‘You?’  He said, ‘Yeah, pray for my back.  When you be praying on Sunday, pray for my back.’


Nate’s involvement with his white tennis coach led to the coach’s hiring of Nate’s mother as the housekeeper for his two daughters and working wife.  Nate credits the coach and his wife for expanding his teenage world:


Gertrude and Don both were like pistons on an engine pumping the brain.  My parents were very good at allowing me to be exposed, but they knew they did not have the materials or the things that I needed to grow in order to move into the world I was moving in. 


When asked whether she felt self-conscious about having help as a child, Gwen, a 49-year-old white woman living in a suburb of Chicago, explained the role of her housekeeper, Sara, in her life this way:


I always wanted to make the distinction between having help and having Sara because I never really . . . I knew it on some level, but I always wanted to make a distinction:  Other people have ‘help,’ but you don’t get it -- it’s Sara.  She’s not hired help, she’s one of us.


Two Women, One House

Two women of different races, class and cultures often spent long hours each day under one roof in an inherently unequal, but often oddly intimate relationship. How did they maneuver in one household?  How were their roles defined?


For Shirley, a turning point for her was her employer’s admonishment to her children that Shirley was in control and to be minded:


I remember the father would invite me to sit down and eat with them and I wouldn’t do it.  Because that’s not the way I was raised. You didn’t sit down with the white people and eat. And I didn’t. But I’ll never forget working on the floor and the daughter walks on it before it got dry. And I told her, ‘Don’t walk on my floor.’  And she said, ‘It’s not your floor, it’s my mother’s floor.’ And I said, ‘As long as I am doing it, it is my floor.’  I told her mom about the experience and she said, ‘She’s right. Until that floor is dry, you don’t walk on it.’ That was really nice. That’s when I learned that all white people weren’t alike. They were not alike. And I finally sat down and ate with them.


For some employers, it is in looking back now that they realize there was a gap between their perceived closeness with the housekeeper and the truth.  Esther, a white employer, explained that Delores, the family’s beloved housekeeper, stayed with the children when Esther and her husband travelled. 


Interviewer:  “Did she have any children of her own?


Esther: “Yes, she did.”


Interviewer:  “And who stayed with her children while she was with yours?”


For others, acknowledging the nature of the relationship was complicated by the pre-assigned roles and the times as Reva suggests in talking about her mother and Louise, who was the family’s housekeeper for close to 50 years:


‘I wish my mother could have said, “She was my best friend,” but she wouldn’t.   It was too much of a power differential . . . because she was the boss.’



Bonding with the Children

Outside of ironing, vacuuming, dusting, and, perhaps cooking, the housekeeper’s role often extended to minding the children.  Whether once a week or live-in, the housekeeper was not only a physically available presence in the household, but oftentimes connected on a deep emotional level with the children as well.  For many white children, she became a surrogate mother:  She didn’t judge, but she commanded respect; she offered love and devotion, and she enjoyed reciprocated love and loyalty, all of which contributed to relationships that have in some cases lasted a lifetime. 


(My favorite memory is) the love I got from them (the children), and they treated me so good.  If I said ‘don’t do it,’ they didn’t. I’ve never been a mean person, but I think they made me more loving,” says Ethel, regarding the three children she co-raised during the 1960s and 70s.


Even today, she considers them “her babies,” and they look to her, still, as a mother figure:


Adam went to buy some shoes and I come ride with him.  And I went inside the store with him, but I stopped at the front. He went up there and he got the shoes. He told the man, ‘I want to let my mother see them,’ so he comes with the man.  When they got up there to me, the man, his eyes, he bugged his eyes.  Adam said ‘They O.K.?’  I had him walk around and then I say ‘yeah.’ And so they (the salesman) look so funny, but that’s just the way they do.


Diane, a 51-year-old woman, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs, reflects on her relationship with her family’s housekeeper, Annie, in this way:


        She was just a fixture of our life for the entire time I am aware of being alive.


And although Kim only enjoyed the company of Mrs. King for four years - four years when her parents were going through a very contentious divorce - Mrs. King had a profound effect on Kim’s life:


My mom is tough and ambitious and she’s not a cook or a baker. So I got the luxury of having this super ambitious super–role model mom, architect mom, professional, and then I had this sweet and good and kind Mrs. King, or this more domestic experience. Whatever sweetness I have in my life is from Mrs. King.  ‘Cause she was all good; she represents all good to me.


Turbulent Times

Workplace and neighborhood integration, school desegregation, white flight, Black pride, women’s rights, and affirmative action policies were some of the many social and civil rights changes that were discussed in the media, on the streets and in homes in the 1960s and 70s.


As Shirley, an African American now in her 70’s, told her employers when they moved into an apartment building in Chicago and explained the building’s rules regarding black employees:


I ain’t comin’ through no backdoor. Haven’t gone through the backdoor since leaving Mississippi.


In some households, the changing times were neither discussed nor acknowledged.  In others, employer and housekeeper openly and honestly discussed current events and their personal points of view – like Shirley and the Mr. Braun:


They asked my opinion on it. We would sit and we would talk about politics. That’s what I miss about them now.  Mr. Braun would say, ‘Shirley, how could you love the Lord when you are constantly being harmed and disrespected. And also with what happened to the Jews. Do you really believe in that?’ And I said, ‘Well what do you believe in?’


She also remembers the rioting that occurred near her home on the West Side of Chicago after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and how her black neighbors rallied to protect another one of her employers, a white woman who worked as the principal of the neighborhood childcare center on Chicago’s South Side:


You could almost see the fire (from the school).  When she would come into the city to the school, some of the fathers of the school would meet her and follow her in and follow her out. And when they closed the schools and went on strike, the church opened their doors and let her in. 


Then there is the other side -- Diane reflects back on her relationship with her housekeeper’s eldest daughter, Colleen, who seemed to be very uncomfortable about her mother’s employment situation:


I think she was angry that her mother worked for a white family.  I always got that sense.  Colleen didn’t come over very often.  It was very clear that she wasn’t happy about it; her body language showed it.  She would never engage with me, and, as a child I never understood that.


Audience

Under One Roof is intended to appeal to a wide audience of adults and children of all ages, races, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.  While anyone who lived through the 1960s and 1970s can relate to the social issues addressed, those thirty and under will appreciate this personal aspect of American history.  And anyone who grew up with an aunt, uncle, teacher, sibling or family friend who reached into their lives at critical times to provide love and support can especially appreciate these unique relationships.