A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life

Eliza Potter

• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781805230977
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Potter was a freeborn black woman who, as a hairdresser, was in a unique position to hear about, receive confidences from, and observe wealthy white women—and she recorded it all in a revelatory book that delighted Cincinnati's gossip columnists at the time. But more important is Potter's portrait of herself as a wage-earning woman, proud of her work, who earned high pay and accumulated quite a bit of money as one of the nation's earliest "beauticians" at a time when most black women worked at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Because her work offered insights into the private lives of elite white women, Potter carved out a literary space that featured a black working woman at the center, rather than at the margins, of the era's transformations in gender, race, and class structure.-Print ed.

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• THE AUTHOR’S APPEAL.
• CHAPTER I.-MY DEBUT.
• CHAPTER II.-ENGLAND.
• CHAPTER III.-AMERICA.
• CHAPTER III.-SARATOGA.
• CHAPTER IV.-LEAVING SARATOGA-BURNING OF THE BAGGAGE CAR-VISIT TO NEW YORK.
• CHAPTER V.-NEWPORT-THE MAID’S STORY.
• CHAPTER VI.-MINNIE.
• CHAPTER VII.-NATCHEZ-NEW ORLEANS.
• CHAPTER VII.-CINCINNATI.