Byline: Marvel Cooke; 1950-01-08; pages 1, 15 (Compass Sunday Magazine)
Report: "I Was Part of the Bronx Slave Market" - Marvel Cooke - New York Compass Marvel Cooke
Tags: posed as domestic, worked as day-labor maid
Article LinksDescription:Marvel Cooke, the first black and only woman reporter at the New York Compass in 1950, reprised an earlier assignment she had taken on for The Crisis in 1935 with Ella Baker: posing as a day laborer for hire. The point was to highlight the larger economic realities that had reduced black women, once employed full time in white households, to working piecemeal for a pittance.
Rights: public domain