I discovered a superb old gem from the 1990s: the Blanche White mystery series by Barbara Neely. Blanche, a feisty feminist African-American domestic, subtly gets the upper hand over the haughty hoity-toity she works for and usually solves a murder or two. Suspense and quirky characters mingle with tart insights into how minority housekeepers, smarter than their (northern as well as southern) employers, must act as dumb and invisible as the rich think they are.
In Blanche among the Talented Tenth, the second of the four novels, Blanche, who happens to be ‘the color of the night’ must deal with the light black community at a fancy Maine resort who treat her as miserably as their white counterparts. Wonderful social commentary about prejudice within the African American population.