Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Brad Watson recalls his youth in impoverished Mississippi and the differences between the lives of poor whites and Black Southerners. Watson’s mother went to work when he was a child and needed childcare. In the South, it was common for white families to employ Black women as maids, whose jobs included food preparation, cleaning, and looking after children. The term “maid” has a demeaning and insulting connotation: “[…] when you apply it to a fully grown, usually married woman with children of her own, the word takes on a particularly onerous quality” (265). There were few employment opportunities available to Black women, even those who had college degrees, so women settled for work as maids in white households, where their wages were exceptionally low.

Watson learned of the exploitative nature of this employment when he was still relatively young. One day he observed his mother writing a weekly paycheck for the home’s maid and was shocked by how low the amount was. He explains, “I knew that I could make that much money mowing three yards, and I could make it in one day. I could make, mowing yards, in one day what our maid was paid for a forty-plus-hour week” (266).