商品簡介
Drawing on personal letters, business and government documents, and numerous oral histories of older Richmonders - both black and white - O'Leary examines the parallel and divergent viewpoints of server and served in this Virginia version of "Upstairs/Downstairs."
Raised in slave-owning households before the Civil War, Maymont owners James H. and Sallie Dooley experienced the transformation of the master/mistress-slave relationship to that of employer-employee. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they relied on a full complement of domestic servants to maintain their lavish residences and lifestyle. In turn, numerous men and women - predominantly African American - labored to meet the day-to-day challenges of running an elaborate household. At the same time, they negotiated the era's increasing Jim Crow restrictions and, during precious hours off-duty, helped support families, churches, and the larger black community.
作者簡介
Elizabeth L. O'Leary is Guest Curator at Maymont Foundation and Associate Curator of American Arts at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.
