Definition of "mammies" [mammies]

• Plural form of mammy. (noun)

Wiktionary.org : Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• "Thus, with major exceptions for black "mammies" suckling white babies and female house slaves placing their coarse black skin on the food they prepared for white households, whites decided when the touching of white skin to black skin was permissible."
• "In the American segregated South nannies (called "mammies" or, more commonly, "maids") were passed among the members of an extended family with a casualness surely born of slaveholding traditions."
• "In the very last pew, on the aisle, sat an eager old colored woman -- one of those typical "mammies" now so seldom seen -- in an old-fashioned bonnet and shawl."