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Winner of the 2020 Sarah A. Whaley Book Prize from the National Women's Studies Association Putting Their Hands on Race offers an important labor history of 19th and early 20th century Irish immigrant and US southern Black migrant domestic workers. Drawing on a range of archival sources, this intersectional study explores how these women were significant to the racial labor and citizenship politics of their time. Their migrations to northeastern cities challenged racial hierarchies and formations. Southern Black migrant women resisted the gendered racism of domestic service, and Irish immigrant women strove to expand whiteness to position themselves as deserving of labor rights. On the racially fractious terrain of labor, Black women and Irish immigrant women, including Victoria Earle Matthews, the “Irish Rambler”, Leonora Barry, and Anna Julia Cooper, gathered data, wrote letters and speeches, marched, protested, engaged in private acts of resistance in the workplace, and created women’s institutions and organizations to assert domestic workers’ right to living wages and protection.

Women household employees --- History --- 1850-1940. --- Anna Julia Cooper. --- Irish immigrant women. --- Irish immigrants. --- Irish. --- Leonara Barry. --- Race. --- Southern black domestic workers. --- United States. --- Victoria Earle Matthews. --- acts of resistance. --- citizenship politics. --- domestic workers. --- gendered racism. --- immigrants. --- intersectionality. --- labor history. --- labor rights. --- nineteenth century. --- racial hierarchies. --- racial labor. --- southern African Americans. --- the “Irish Rambler”. --- twentieth century. --- whiteness. --- women and work.