Hi Linda,
I am a native Southerner, and I am continually amazed at the past effort
at segregation even in the midst of intensive black/white interaction.
In the oral history and archeology we did at the site of the detached
kitchen at the Sanders urban farmstead in Washington, Arkansas, we
discovered that in 1910 there were two privies, one for the white family
then living there, and one for the two orphaned African-American girls
the family had "adopted" (their phrase) who were working as house
servants and who were living in the kitchen building.  The kitchen
building itself was no longer used as a kitchen since a kitchen room had
been added to the main house.  I (and others) have argued that the
reason the kitchens were separate to begin with was to segregate the
African-American cooks/servants, who were obviously an intimate part of
the white household nonetheless.  At Sanders, with the house and kitchen
dating to the early 1840s, antebellum spatial segregation was clear, but
have no idea about the segregation of human waste at the time because we
haven't found any (certain) privies in Washington that old.  By 1910 at
Sanders, cooking was no longer segregated, but residence still was, and
apparently so was excrement.  "Colored Only", indeed.  Bye.
 
 
Leslie C. Stewart-Abernathy
Arkansas Archeological Survey
Arkansas Tech University
Russellville, AR