Stories from the Street Corner: Newspaper Articles on the Bronx Slave Markets from the 1930s to the 1950s

Before the sun touched the concrete sidewalk each morning, black women lined the streets corners of the Bronx, New York, waiting for day labor.  With one in three black women unemployed during the Great Depression, sidewalk intersections in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens transformed into self-made hiring posts for black domestics struggling from unemployment and underemployment.  Intersections became colloquially known as the “Bronx Slave Markets,” since domestics often experienced exploitation at the hands of employers who underpaid, turned back clocks or charged for skimpy lunches.  In November 1935, The Crisis published its first article titled, “The Bronx Slave Markets” by Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke, shedding light on the markets and humanizing the plight of domestic workers. Although the daily presence of black domestics presented a visible display of the economic struggles black women workers faced, newspaper reporting became a catalyst for exposing the slave markets and calling for reform. 

This poster presentation visually analyzes a diversity of articles reporting on the evolution of the Bronx slave markets, including sources from The New York Amsterdam News, The Crisis, PM, The Daily Worker, The Compass, and other newspapers.  Reports on the markets encompass the nexus of black women’s experiences and the transformation of urban spaces.  Each article holds a unique perspective on the exploitation of black domestic workers and offers an explicit or implied point of solution.  In this presentation I explore how journalists use the stories of black domestics to critique race relations, employment discrimination, and wage conditions.  Moreover, I examine how reports of the markets redefine the meaning of “slavery” within the context of American household labor.