In Branch's Opportunity Denied what struck a chord with me was the degree in which black female domestic workers were limited to solely domestic work. Although I knew that sharecropping was almost a gridlocked form of labor for blacks following slavery, domestic work was not by any means an independent enterprise.
The fact that many non-black women were actively prohibiting black women from pursuing other forms of labor beyond domestic work was disturbing. For instance, when a woman pursued a government job through the WPA program, and was told to return back to domestic work, it revealed how many boundaries black women, both at a local, personal level and the national level, encountered (Branch 62). The only way national programs such as Roosevelt's WPA programs would've wholly benefitted black women was if those who established the programs made sure that they were carried out. Although the text mentioned that domestic work was a lifelong job, I would've liked to have known the average age that most black women retired, or could no longer work.
Even when Black women found work outside of domestic spaces, the conditions weren't much better. Branch's discussion of factory life shows how black women, like in domestic work, were always pushed to the backburner (i.e. employers not telling customers that their product was prepared by black workers out of fear of losing customers) (86-87).
The factory setting reinforced the white vs. black workplace separation, and also shows that equality of any kind in almost any workplace was nonexistent. "It is ironic that while Black women were prized as cooks in White homes, public concern kept them from handling finished food products in the course of work outside the home," Branch said (86). Branch's text demonstrated how occupational mobility was actively prohibitied by several forces, both in the private, domestic spaces and publicly in factory work. Due to the obsession with keeping black women's roles hidden, mobility was virtually nonexistent no matter the job.
