What if you were a black woman in the 1960’s and your options were few and you had a family to feed? What if you were a white woman, wealthy or not, working or at home raising young children and trying to keep the household together? Thrown together because of need – one to earn money, one for help or companionship – these two women often spent long hours each day under one roof in an inherently unequal but oddly intimate relationship. The result was a dynamic that included shared secrets and shared parenting, and a range of emotions from genuine affection to resentment, from devotion and dependency to isolation and loss.
Under One Roof is a documentary film that will capture the stories of and give voice to the people whose lives were bound up in these complex relationships in the cities and suburbs of the North, after the Great Migration, and in the midst of the Civil Rights and Women’s movements.
We will hear from the women, whose roles were not simply defined as that of employer and employee, but as mothers as well. And, we will hear from the children – those whose lives were touched, shaped or changed by these surrogate mothers, and those whose lives were impacted by their own mother’s necessary absence.
Below are the first of many interviews that have been conducted between January 2010 and October 2010.
“Emily was the one person in my life who gave me unconditional love. “
“It was a normal thing to have someone come in to help in those days . . . .”
“I liked them and they liked me, but they never asked me, you know, about my life or nothing.”
“Yeah, Judy would take us for walks and take us to the park. She would just play with us. She would
drop us off at the pool. (Pause) I just realized now, see? I never realized that. The only place she didn’t
take us was the pool.”
Cindy, Jeanette & Kathe -- 1964
Under One Roof: A Documentary Film Website © 2010 by Endless Obsession Productions, LLC