TDF Stages

While writing the history-inspired The Wash, veteran theatre journalist Kelundra Smith learned a lot about labor and herself

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Work is a loaded four-letter word. In our 21st century capitalist economy, entire industries have emerged to help us navigate work beyond just tackling the tasks of labor. As a Black woman from the American South, I am the descendant of people who spent their lives on their feet. They didn't have time to think about work. This may be why Atlanta's Washerwomen Strike of 1881 has lived in, with and around me the way that it has. I was spending a lot of time thinking about work when I started writing my play The Wash, inspired by this historical event when more than 3,000 African American women refused to do laundry for the planter class until wages and conditions improved. After runs in Atlanta, Serenbe and St. Louis, my play is having its New York debut courtesy of Woodie King's New Federal Theatre through June 29.

I first learned about Atlanta's Washerwomen Strike of 1881 eight years ago while on assignment at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, DC. I saw a panel in the Reconstruction section of the historical galleries about this major labor walkout that took place in my hometown that I never learned about in school, even though every eighth grader must take Georgia studies. I turned in my magazine article but there was something about the strike that I couldn't shake. I continued to do research about it, and then one day on a drive home from work, I heard what I can only call the voices of my ancestors speaking to me. I realized that understanding these women's struggles with work could help me grapple with my own.

From emancipation to the 1940s, the most available job to African American women was that of laundress. That shifted to maid after World War II and remained so until the 1970s, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and key court cases set women free. But in 1881, as America was transitioning from the Reconstruction Era to the Second Industrial Revolution, Black laundresses were supporting entire families on as little as $1 a week. Black men were vilified and characterized as brutes to keep them from taking white men's jobs after slavery ended, so their work was inconsistent. But dirty laundry always needed to be done. When these formerly enslaved washerwomen staged their strike, they completely disrupted Atlanta's civic and social order.

A work of historical fiction, The Wash is set inside a laundry co-op with six workers deciding to strike after being stiffed on their pay too many times. Some of the events in the script are real, others are imagined. One important fact is that the laundry women timed their strike to take advantage of the International Cotton Exposition, which Atlanta was set to host in October 1881. City officials were on a cleanup mission to showcase the New South and attract more commerce, trade and railroad expansion. On July 19, 1881, the laundresses started organizing in church basements. They went door-to-door and stopped other washerwomen on the sidewalk to get them to join the fight. They threw dirty clothes into the streets and returned laundry soaking wet, according to newspaper articles from the time.

They did today's equivalent of throwing their laptops out the window. Their resistance was met with fines by county recorders and threats to send them to the chain gang. They faced physical assaults. Some of their husbands were fired, but still they persisted. Nurses, cooks and maids started demanding higher wages. It was the planter class's worst nightmare.

In the 21st century, the dynamic between workers and bosses hasn't changed much—and neither have the methods of subjugation. In 2018 when I first started writing The Wash, there was grumbling about rideshare, warehouse and food service workers unionizing. Those murmurs turned to shouts during the COVID-19 pandemic, when overtaxed essential workers at grocery stores, assembly lines and warehouses picketed and tried to unionize across the country. Some of those activists later reported that they were fired or unable to find work at other companies in similar industries because of their organizing efforts.

In 2023, SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild held long labor contract negotiations with top studios, and production still has not returned to its previous boom. Just this year, the Union of Southern Service Workers organized a strike with Waffle House employees in Marietta, Georgia citing unsafe work conditions, unfair wage deductions and delays in raises.

Across industries, profits are being prioritized over people—I've felt it in my career as a freelance worker and in past full-time jobs. My relationship to work started in elementary school. My mom would say, "I go to work every day, and I get a paycheck every two weeks. You go to school every day and you get a report card. Your report card is your paycheck, and I expect all As." Her message was well-meaning, but for me, it set a burdensome expectation that I had to be exceptional to be considered adequate. This is "the talk" Black girls often get while Black boys are being warned about law enforcement and vigilante justice.

When I started writing The Wash, I was working a job where the pressure of code-switching was wearing on me. I recall that on a particularly rough day, I had a panic attack. I turned the lights off in my office and breathed until I stopped shaking enough to drive home. I spent a lot of time stressing, fretting, crying and whining to friends, family and my therapist about that gig. I also had challenges as a freelancer. I remember having a conversation with a fellow journalist about how much he got paid per word by a publication that we both wrote for, and he made triple what I did! Yet I never said anything.

I'm reminded of Zora Neale Hurston's words: "If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it." I was quiet about a lot, and I made a lot of mistakes in my twenties around work. Mainly, I looked for acceptance and affirmation in the form of paychecks and promotions, but they never came no matter how good my performance reviews were. I learned the hard way that merit isn't rewarded as much as likability and charisma. As sharecroppers, domestics and autoworkers, my elders were taught to bring as little of themselves as possible to work, and I internalized that perspective. "Never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing," one of my aunts used to say. However, the evolution of workplace politics requires a fine balance between vulnerability and presenting an acceptable version of what the dominant culture can accept of your authentic self.

Having the time to think about this in the 21st century is a privilege the washerwomen who fought for justice for themselves and future generations did not have. One of the many repeated phrases in Tricia Hersey's book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto is: "I will not give my body over to capitalism." She posits that rest is a birthright for all people. She talks about the "dream space" and for me, that is where my playwriting practice emerged. In Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, she calls ideas "invitations." I accepted the idea invitation for The Wash and then it became a Reconstruction trilogy. These works are an extension of my calling as a storyteller and most importantly, a reminder to myself that I have limitlessness within me.

The washerwomen had to know of their limitlessness in order to demand recognition. They had a sense of urgency around dignity and there was no room for compromise. Atlanta's Washerwomen Strike of 1881 made a mark in the women's suffrage timeline and set the precedent for labor movements in the early 1900s. These women weren't silent. They spoke out during a time when women were expected to be purely utilitarian and aesthetic. I have always believed that for each of us, our greatest strength is our will to act. When we work for justice, we always win.

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