It's set in the 1920s. And even with historical settings, there were educated, professional, middle-to-upper class free blacks in the U.S. long before the end of the Civil War, and if Disney wanted to go for that accessible New Orleans setting, gens de couleur libre were a big part of Louisiana society. So there's quite a range of social classes and professions they could have used that would have been a lot less skeevy than the initial "chambermaid working for a white family" version.