Part Three: BHM SERIES – Dorothy Bolden Activist, Union Founder

Dorothy Lee Bolden, born October 13, 1924 in Atlanta, Ga., began working as a domestic worker at the age of nine. She would eventually utilize her past experiences to form the Domestic Worker’s Union in Atlanta, and to fight for women’s rights.

As a young woman, Bolden traveled to Chicago to go to a school for dress designers, but her poor eyesight hindered her education. During World War II, Bolden also worked at Sears and the National Linen Service, where she recognized the early efforts for unionization and labor rights.  Martin Luther King Jr. was an early influence in Bolden’s life, who was her neighbor at the time of the Civil Rights Movement.

Bolden was a life-long domestic worker and extremely proud of her profession. She often spoke highly of this labor and was quoted in a supplement to The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution in 1983 as saying “A domestic worker is a counselor, a doctor, a nurse. She cares about the family she works for as she cares about her own.” But domestic workers “have never been recognized as part of the labor force.”

Bolden became an activist well before the re-emergence of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. In the late 1940s, Bolden refused a request from her boss, a white woman, to stay late and wash the dishes. Her boss alerted local police, who responded by taking her to a county jail for a psychiatric evaluation.

In an oral history interview from 1995, Bolden recalled the severity of the incident. “They told me I was crazy because I had talked back to a white woman, and called in some psychiatrists to prove it,” said Bolden. “A white woman’s word was gospel, and two psychiatrists actually thought I was crazy … This was the way you got locked up … This was the system.”

During the 1960s, domestic workers endured 13 hour workdays and received as little as $3.50. However, in 1968, Bolden started discussions with other unions about beginning to organize a national union for domestic workers. The union helped improve the wages and working conditions of domestic workers in Atlanta and served as an example for other domestic workers all across the country.

Bolden eventually gathered 13,000 women from 10 different cities. The union helped to increase wages and working conditions for domestic workers.

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Bolden was also responsible for registering thousands of African-Americans to vote. Bolden’s efforts gained the attention of the Nixon Administration and she was appointed to an advisory committee on social services and welfare.

Bolden died in Atlanta on July 14, 2005.

Source: Wikipedia