Tales from the Reuther Library
Stories on labor history, Detroit, and Wayne State University
In celebration of the Reuther Library’s 50th anniversary, AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Elissa McBride reflects on the role the union’s history and archives play in current and future labor actions and organizing campaigns.
Related Resources:
AFSCME History
Related Collections:
AFSCME collections at the Reuther Library
Episode Credits
Interviewee: Elissa McBride
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Dr. Nick Juravich discusses the experiences of the first-generation of paraprofessional educators in New York City in the 1960s-1980s and their impact on the city’s educational system, community relations, and public sector unions. Juravich is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education.
Related Resources:
Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education
Related Collections:
AFT President’s Office: Albert Shanker Records
AFT Massachusetts Federation of Teachers Records (LR001071)
Kansas City Federation of Teachers, Local 691 Records (LR000624)
United Educators of San Francisco Local 61 Records (LR000524)
Episode Credits
Interviewee: Nick Juravich
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Roger Biles and Mark Rose discuss the legacy of Eddie Sadlowski, a charismatic and progressive Chicago steelworker who, unhappy with the United Steelworker of America’s closed-rank authoritarian leadership and tepid support for rank-and-file members, led a highly visible yet unsuccessful dissident campaign in the contentious election for the USWA’s presidency in 1977.
Dr. Biles is a Professor Emeritus of history at Illinois State University. Dr. Rose is a professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. Their article, “’Oil Can Eddie’ and the Battle for the Steelworkers’ Union,” was published in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.
Related Resources:
“’Oil Can Eddie’ and the Battle for the Steelworkers’ Union”
Related Collections:
Edward Sadlowski Papers (LP000754)
Episode Credits
Interviewee: Roger Biles and Mark Rose
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Dr. Justine Modica discusses the Worthy Wages movement centered in Seattle from the 1980s through the 2000s. Affiliated with SEIU, daycare directors and childcare workers in childcare centers and home-based daycares joined together to raise public awareness of the underfunding of daycare and lobby for increased state childcare subsidies, hoping to increase the wages and retention of skilled workers in a lowly-paid but critical field.
Modica is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Cornell University. She authored the article, “Worthy Wages in the Emerald City: Worker- and Director-Led Childcare Movements in Seattle, 1984–2006,” and is writing a book examining how the government, employers, and families have shaped childcare as wage labor.
Related Resources:
“Worthy Wages in the Emerald City: Worker- and Director-Led Childcare Movements in Seattle, 1984–2006”
Related Collections:
Center for the Child Care Workforce Records
Episode Credits
Interviewee: Justine Modica
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Dr. Lori Flores discusses food systems in the US and Northeast region specifically, illuminating how the nation has developed a growing appetite for both Latinx food and Latinx food laborers, who are often underpaid and under-nourished as they help grow, process, transport, prepare, and serve food across the country. Flores is an associate professor of history at Stony Brook University and author of Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19..
Related Resources:
Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19
Related Collections:
UFW New York Boycott Records
UFW Massachusetts Boycott: Boston Office Records
UFW New Jersey Boycott: Jersey City Office Records
UFW Maryland Boycott Records
UFW Administration Department Records
UFW Boycott Central Records
UFW Central Administration Records
Other United Farm Workers collections at the Reuther
Episode Credits
Interviewee: Lori Flores
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Dr. Jesse Chanin describes how the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) gained power and influence in a region hostile to unions from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s by building trust in the community with transparent and democratic decision-making and a focus on racial and economic justice to improve the lives of the New Orleans community. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, however, politicians and charter school advocates fired 7,500 educators in New Orleans, dismantling the city’s public education system and decimating the union.
Dr. Chanin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Coalition for Compassionate Schools and the author of Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008.
Related Resources:
Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008
Related Collections:
AFT Inventory Part II Records
AFT Organizing Department Records
AFT Office of the President Records
AFT President’s Office: Albert Shanker Records
AFT Secretary-Treasurer’s Office Records
AFT Southern Regional Office Records
Episode Credits
Interviewee: Jesse Chanin
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals, commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson’s 1937 untitled mural, which originally hung in the UAW Local 174 union hall and now hangs behind the reference desk at the Reuther Library, champions the progress those industrial workers made laboring for their own welfare via union action.
Dr. Cephas is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. His essay “Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’: Representing Labor and Reappropriating Care in the Museum and in the Union Hall,” was published in the 2023 volume, Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common.
Related Resources:
“Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’: Representing Labor and Reappropriating Care in the Museum and in the Union Hall”
Collection Spotlight: UAW Local 174 Mural
Detroit Industry, North Wall
Detroit Industry, South Wall
Detroit Industry, West Wall
Detroit Industry, East Wall
Episode Credits
Interviewee: Jay Cephas
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Dr. Max Fraser shares the often overlooked story of the “hillbilly highway,” the route nearly eight million poor, rural, white Americans took in the 20th century from economically depressed areas in the Southeastern and Southern United States toward higher paying factory jobs in the Upper South and Midwest. He explains how the social advancement and marginalization they experienced transformed American culture, the labor movement, and today’s political landscape.
Dr. Fraser is an assistant professor of History at the University of Miami. His book Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class received an Honorable Mention for the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.
Related Resources:
Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class
Related Collections:
Detroit Commission on Community Relations (DCCR) / Human Rights Department Records (UR000267)
George Roberts Papers (LP000038)
Lewis B. Larkin Papers (WSP000122)
Michael Manning Papers (LP000018)
UAW Local 78 Records (LR000645)
UAW Local 174 Records (LR000006)
UAW Oral Histories (LOH002229)
UAW President’s Office: Homer Martin Records (LR000063)
UAW President’s Office: Walter P. Reuther Records (LR000261)
UAW Secretary Treasurer’s Office: George Addes Records (LR000052_Addes)
Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Max Fraser
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Rachel Shteir shares how Betty Friedan’s early experience as a labor reporter for the Federated Press informed her later work as a famed women’s rights activist, author of The Feminine Mystique, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Although Friedan’s activism shaped the American women’s movement in the latter half of the 20th century, Shteir also notes that her pugilistic attitude ignored or antagonized would-be allies, including non-white women and lesbians. Shteir is head of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism in the Theatre School at DePaul University and is the author of Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter, a finalist in the biography category for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Related Resources:
Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter
Related Collections:
UAW Women’s Department Records (LR00446)
UAW Women’s Department: Dorothy Haener Records (LR000848)
Toni Swanger Papers (UP001777)
Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Rachel Shteir
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Dr. Stephen Silvia explains how the UAW built a cooperative relationship with workers’ councils and unions at foreign automotive companies, but has nevertheless struggled to organize those companies’ vehicle factories in the southern United States since the 1990s due to anti-labor politics and the companies’ shared anti-union playbooks. Silvia is a professor in the School of International Service at American University and author of The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.
Related Resources:
The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants
Related Collections:
UAW President’s Office: Douglas Fraser Records (LR001116)
UAW Vice-President’s Office: Donald Ephlin Records (LR001404)
UAW President’s Office: Howard Young Records (LR001400)
UAW President’s Office: Owen Bieber Records (LR001270)
UAW President’s Office: Stephen P. Yokich Records (LR001626)
Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Stephen J. Silvia
Music: Bart Bealmear
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed