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Black waitresses also may have lost food service jobs as black migration into the northern cities increased after World War I. Although an estimated half-million blacks headed north between 1916 and 1921, few moved into waitressing.30 In the South, black women were more acceptable in visible public…

By and large, employers preferred women in these new-style eateries. Few of the exotic “theme” restaurants called for men: women were more suited for the role of decorative object. One of New York's most popular restaurants hired young, attractive waitresses to match its elaborate color scheme: “se…

In seeking to compare the sensibility of waitresses with their male working-class counterparts as well as with their more elite sisters, I have thus far stressed the unanimity among this group of working-class women. Sisterhood and class solidarity had very real limits, however. The majority of wai…

They also sought a feminism that balanced the needs of the individual woman with the needs of the working-class community and the family of which she was a part. They argued that economic justice and fair treatment for the majority of women can only be provided through employee representation and c…

[...] Beginning in 1900 with the founding of the Seattle waitresses’ local, waitresses formed all-female unions in Chicago, San Francisco, and other communities across the country; they also joined mixed culinary locals of waiters, cooks, and bartenders. In contrast to the sporadic organizing among…