Kelundra Smith’s debut play, The Wash, looks at the 1881 strike that stunned Atlanta.

Photography by Lynsey Weatherspoon

In 2017, Kelundra Smith visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, to write an article for a now-defunct magazine. In the historic galleries, she saw a section on post-Civil War Reconstruction and an exhibit documenting the Atlanta washerwomen’s strike of 1881, an event she had never heard of despite growing up in the city . Smith completed her assignment, but the events of the strike stayed with her and eventually led her to pursue the subject further, with what was then a new venue for her: playwriting.

As a prolific writer on arts and culture for Atlanta review, ArtsATLand other publications, as well as editor-in-chief of American theater magazine, Smith had no ambition to be a playwright. She was content to be a journalist and critic. “Drama writing wasn’t even one of my skills,” she says. “But there were stories that I wanted to tell as a journalist that I knew I wouldn’t have a mission to tell.”

What really solidified Smith’s interest in the event was a satirical article she read as part of her research. “It was a funny, sarcastic article about how these washerwomen had left white people in Atlanta completely incompetent,” says Smith. “The tone was: How will these white people survive without these black women washing their clothes? The town smelled bad, there was a ball going on and people were wearing dirty clothes trying to hide the funk on their ball gowns. This made me laugh and I thought there was something here.

One evening, during a storm after a long drive home from an old job, the first scene from the play came to her mind. Smith sat down and wrote the first 34 pages by hand, then wrote intermittently until the pandemic began. She held a virtual reading with actor friends in 2020, tweaked further, and was ready for the first official reading in 2022.

Two years later, Washing is scheduled to have its world premiere June 7-30 at the Synchronicity Theater and then July 10-28 at Hapeville’s Academy Theater, a co-production of Synchronicity and Impact Theater Atlanta. Smith’s play follows the lives of several fictional black laundresses in Atlanta in 1881, all at crossroads in their personal lives and ready to fight for higher wages.

Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress

One of the largest labor actions of the post-Civil War era, the Atlanta washerwomen’s strike of 1881 began with 20 black women, then ballooned to 3,000 women in three weeks. It means a lot to Smith that this play is being performed at a time in our country when unions are under attack and workers trying to unionize are fighting for their rights.

“The conversation is so similar in 2024 to what it was in 1881 that it’s scary,” she says. “The term “essential workers” is not new: Laundresses, in letters to the mayor, described themselves as essential workers, saying: “We provide an essential service for the sanitation of this city and we should be allowed to establish our own services. ” rates.'”

Working as a laundress in 1881 was backbreaking work. “There was no electricity in most homes, especially in the South, and after the Civil War, Atlanta was still a wasteland after being burned down,” Smith says. Most houses did not have running water, so washerwomen had to use wells and pumping stations. The process of doing their job involved collecting laundry from customers (either by walking there or using a tram); soak clothes in warm water; using paddles and washboards to remove dirt and stains; hang, dry, iron and fold clothes; then deliver them – and do it all again the next day.

Photography by Lynsey Weatherspoon

Smith has now written five plays. A, Youngeran imagined prequel to A grape in the sundid a reading at Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theater Company in 2022, but Washing is his first to receive a full production. This is part of a trilogy she is writing about the triumphs of black people in Georgia during the Reconstruction period. Washing was a finalist in the National New Play Network’s 2024 National New Plays Showcase, one of three plays by Southern playwrights on the list. Following its world premieres in Atlanta and Hapeville, the play will be produced at Black Rep in St. Louis and Perceptions Theater in Chicago.

Smith now considers herself more of a storyteller, regardless of the format she uses. “The story chooses its medium,” she says. “For me, seeing this piece find its place (on stage) is the icing on the cake. I wrote it so I could sleep at night and see it hopefully resonate positively with people and inspire them to fight for their own rights. I want the audience to imagine possibilities for themselves and know that where you are is not where you are stuck.

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