Rosa Rayside and Domestic Workers in the Fight against War and Fascism

This article explores connections between domestic worker activism and anti-fascism in the United States-two topics that historians have usually considered separately. Through the lens of Black domestic worker and organizer Rosa Rayside, we see the strong links between the two political movements. In 1934, after co-founding the New York Domestic Workers Union (DWU), Rayside attended the World Congress of Women against War and Fascism in Paris. That congress defined fascism broadly, around nationalism, racism, repression of radicals, denial of civil liberties, capitalist and imperialist greed and warmongering, and threats to women. Notably, the congress specifically identified challenging U.S. racism and defending labor rights for domestic workers as part of a global anti-fascist fight. Influenced by this congress, and by communist organizing in Harlem during the Great Depression, Rayside and the DWU drew on anti-fascism ideologically and organizationally in the years that followed. Rayside worked to include domestic workers in labor and social security legislation, testifying before U. S. Congress in 1935 and helping to form the anti-fascist National Negro Congress (NNC) in 1936. Although their immediate legislative achievements were limited, the strategies that Rayside and the DWU pioneered-collaborating with community and political organizations, spearheading legislation, and shaping understandings of Black women's "triple oppression" based on race, class, and gender-were vital to the Black anti-fascist movement in the United States and shaped gains by domestic workers in later decades. KEYWORDS Rosa Rayside, anti-fascism, New York Domestic Workers Union (DWU), domestic workers, New Deal