Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008

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

Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’

Local 174 Mural, "Untitled" 1937

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

Hillbilly Highway: Charting White Migration from Appalachia to the Industrial Midwest

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

Betty Friedan’s Labor Roots

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

The UAW’s Southern Gamble in Foreign-Owned Factories

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

Labor Radical Harry Bridges and the Cold War Ire of the US Government

In the second of a two-part series, Dr. Robert Cherny recounts how immigrant Harry Bridges successfully led the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for four decades beginning in the 1930s, even as his militant unionism and association with communists placed him at odds with the American government during the Cold War and at the center of several deportation hearings.

Cherny is professor emeritus at San Francisco State University and author of Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend.

Related Collections:
CIO Office of the Secretary-Treasurer Records
Civil Rights Congress of Michigan Records
Industrial Workers of the World Records
M.A. Williams Papers
Workers’ Defense League Records

Related Resources:
Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Robert Cherny
Music: Bart Bealmear

Labor Legend Harry Bridges and the Pacific Coast Longshore Strike of 1934

In the first of a two-part series, Dr. Robert Cherny explains how the early life of Australian immigrant Harry Bridges prepared him to lead the groundbreaking 1934 Pacific Coast longshoremen’s and maritime workers’ strikes in the United States, later becoming the first president of the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

Cherny is professor emeritus at San Francisco State University and author of Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend.

Related Collections:
CIO Office of the Secretary-Treasurer Records
Civil Rights Congress of Michigan Records
Industrial Workers of the World Records
M.A. Williams Papers
Workers’ Defense League Records

Related Resources:
Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Robert Cherny
Music: Bart Bealmear

Taming the Octopus: Eli Black and the Search for Social Responsibility at the United Fruit / United Brands Company

Dr. Matt Garcia traces the legacy of Eli Black, a former rabbi who, as CEO of United Fruit/United Brands Company in the late 1960s and early 1970s, attempted to instill corporate social responsibility into the notorious fruit conglomerate before ending his life following a series of business setbacks and looming corruption scandals. Garcia is the Ralph and Richard Lazarus Professor of History, Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies, and Human Relations at Dartmouth College, and author of Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World’s Most Notorious Corporation.

Related Collections:
LP000467: Reverend Victor P. Salandini Papers
LP002659: Anna Andreini-Brophy Papers
LR000221_admin: UFW Administration Department Records
LR002435: UFW Information and Research Department Records

Related Resources:
Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World’s Most Notorious Corporation

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Matt Garcia
Music: Bart Bealmear

Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit

A poster on the back of an anti-incinerator publication proclaims: "Detroit Incinerator: We Say No!" From the Thomas Stephens Papers, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Dr. Josiah Rector explains that since the 1880s a confluence of unregulated industrial capitalism and racist practices in housing and employment in Detroit created pollution and environmental disasters disproportionately affecting the poor, working class, and particularly African Americans. He explores the resulting environmental justice movements in Detroit as residents have fought for clean air, water, and improved public health amid government and corporate divestment and Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy. Rector is an assistant professor of urban, environmental, and labor history at the University of Houston and author of Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit.

Related Resources
Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit

Related Collections:
Joe Brown Papers
Olga Madar Papers
Thomas W. Stephens Papers
UAW Conservation and Recreation Department Records
UAW Foundry and Forge Departments Records
UAW Health and Safety Records
UAW President’s Office: Douglas Fraser Records
UAW President’s Office: Walter P. Reuther Records
UAW President’s Office: Leonard Woodcock Records

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Josiah Rector
Music: Bart Bealmear

Latinx Encounters: How Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans Made the Modern Midwest

Dr. Juan I. Mora examines three groups of Latinxs as they used postwar migration, temporary guest-worker programs, and agricultural labor to redefine migrant power, justice, and rights in the twentieth century Midwest, and particularly in Michigan. He shows that Latinx migrants melded distinct claims to U.S. citizenship, ethnic identity, and labor rights through conflicts over access to intermediary influence, shifting processes of racialization, and the politics of foodways. Mora is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University.

Related Collections:
Agricultural Workers History Collection
Ken Barger Papers
Detroit Latino Records
Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) Records
Monsignor Clement Kern Papers
New Detroit, Inc. Records
UFW Central Administration Records
UFW Michigan Boycott Records
UFW Office of the President: Cesar Chavez Records

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewee: Juan I. Mora
Music: Bart Bealmear