Tales from the Reuther Library

Dr. Matt Kautz explores how evolving school disciplinary practices, changes in crime reporting, and political pressure in the decades following school desegregation led to the rise of student suspensions, expulsions, dropouts, and the school-to-prison pipeline in Detroit and other cities. Kautz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership and Counseling at Eastern Michigan … Continue reading Schools and the Rise of Mass Incarceration in a Post-Brown World

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 … Continue reading The Worthy Wages Movement for Childcare Workers

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 … Continue reading Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19

Dr. Harris Dousemetzis shares the extraordinary impact of U.S. President Jimmy Carter on gay rights in the 1970s and early 1980s, from instituting policies to prevent anti-gay discrimination of most federal employees to facilitating IRS nonprofit status for gay rights organizations and community centers, enabling them to receive federal funding for educational materials and health … Continue reading The Carter Presidency and Gay Rights

Reuther Library audiovisual archivist Mary Wallace has worn many hats over the past 27 years, from student page in the Reading Room to interim director and chief weather-spotter and safety monitor. As she prepares to retire in January 2025, Wallace reflects on the changes she's seen at the Reuther and in the field, shares a … Continue reading A Fond Farewell with Audiovisual Archivist Mary Wallace

Dr. Felicia George explains how number lotteries in the city's Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods in the 20th century, although illegal and rife with exploitation, also raised some Black Detroiters out of poverty and created an important social support in a community stressed by racial discrimination and job insecurity. Dr. George is an adjunct … Continue reading When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling's History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City

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

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 … Continue reading Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural'

Dr. Say Burgin explains that contrary to the common belief that white activists were purged from the Black freedom movement in the mid-1960 and 1970s, Black-led organizations in Detroit – including the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Workers—called on white activists to organize within their own white … Continue reading Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit

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

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, … Continue reading Betty Friedan's Labor Roots

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 … Continue reading The UAW's Southern Gamble in Foreign-Owned Factories

Dr. Matthew Lassiter shares stories uncovered in Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era, a collaborative digital exhibit created by undergraduate history students documenting nearly 200 civilians killed between 1957 and 1973 by the Detroit Police Department and other law enforcement agencies in the … Continue reading Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence and Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era

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

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

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

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, … Continue reading Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit →

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 … Continue reading Latinx Encounters: How Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans Made the Modern Midwest →

Ahmed White explains how industrialists and government officials in the United States used violence and legal maneuverings to stultify the Industrial Workers of the World and silence its members in the early twentieth century. White teaches labor and criminal law at University of Colorado Boulder and is the author of Under the Iron Heel: The … Continue reading Under the Iron Heel: Repressing the IWW and Free Speech →

Dr. Melissa Ford explores the influence of working-class Black women in Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland on the development of Black radicalism in the American Midwest during the Great Depression. Ford is an associate professor of African American history at Slippery Rock University and author of A Brick and a Bible: Black Women's Radical Activism … Continue reading “Girls, We Cannot Lose!”: Midwestern Black Women Activists During the Great Depression →

While the 1936-1937 Flint Sit-Down is usually viewed as a pivotal success for the UAW, Dr. Gregory Wood considers more closely the influence of anti-union workers and the General Motors-supported Flint Alliance both during and after the strike. Wood is an associate professor and chair of the history department at Frostburg State University. His research … Continue reading “No Labor Dictators For Us”: Revisiting Anti-Union Forces in the Flint Sit-Down Strike →

Reuther Library audiovisual archivist Mary Wallace discusses the Library's WWJ / WDIV Film, Video, and Teleprompter Scripts collection, which captures seven decades of news, current events, politics, and community life as reported by the Detroit news station from the 1920s through 1990s. Related Collections: WWJ / WDIV Film, Video, and Teleprompter Scripts Episode Credits Producers: … Continue reading Heard It On the News: Preserving 20th Century Detroit History Through Local Newscasts →

Peter Hammer describes the life and legacy of civil rights icon George W. Crockett, Jr. A Black lawyer who fought racism and defended constitutional rights in landmark cases in the 1940s through the 1960s, Crockett brought his ethos to the Detroit Recorder's Court during his time on the bench from 1966 through 1978, and to … Continue reading No Equal Justice: The Legal and Civil Rights Legacy of George W. Crockett Jr. →

Louise Milone recounts how smog produced by the southwestern Pennsylvanian steel industry poisoned the air in the Monongahela Valley town of Donora on November 1, 1948, killing more than 22 people and sickening thousands more. Exploring the response of the US Steel Corporation, employees, and Donora residents, Milone explains how the United Steelworkers of America … Continue reading A Miasma of Metals: The Steelworkers' Environmental Call Following the Donora Smog of 1948 →

Emma Maniere describes how homeowners associations in Grosse Pointe, an affluent suburb bordering Detroit, developed a point system following the Second World War to rank and exclude prospective homebuyers to maintain the community's Anglo Christian whiteness and affluence. The point system, which ranked nativity and ethnicity, accent, skin tone, and occupation, among other measures, was … Continue reading A “Most Conscientious and Considerate Method”: Grosse Pointe's Gross Post-War Housing Point System →

Dr. Jason Resnikoff explains that the rise of automation in the mid-20th century workplace was heralded as a way to free workers from manual labor, but resulted instead in the intensification of human labor and the degradation of workers' protections and powers. Resnikoff is a core lecturer in the History Department at Columbia University and … Continue reading Labor's End: Automation's Failed Promise of Freedom →

Dr. Vincent Haddad explains that while Detroit has often served as the inspiration for crime-ridden settings in comics, DC Comics rose above those stereotypes with black superheroes Amazing-Man in the 1980s series All-Star Squadron and the Cyborg solo series in the 2010s. He describes how those two series represented Detroit and issues of race, policing, … Continue reading Detroit vs. Everybody: Exploring Race, Place, and Black Superheroes in DC Comics →

Dr. Krysta Ryzewski explains how historical archaeology digs at famous Detroit locales – including the Little Harry speakeasy, the Blue Bird Inn, and the Grande Ballroom – have clarified how underrepresented communities of Detroit experienced and responded to the Great Migration, changing economic forces, and a shifting political and social landscape in the 20th century. … Continue reading Detroit Remains: Using Historical Archeology to Connect Detroit's Past to Its Present →

Brandon Ward explains how Detroit residents, community organizations, and the labor movement, alarmed by the pollution remaining in Detroit's deindustrialized era that mostly heavily impacted Black Americans and the working class, worked together from the 1970s onward to create a healthier, greener, and more livable city. Ward is a lecturer at Perimeter College at Georgia … Continue reading Environmental Activism in Deindustrialized Detroit →

Labor leader and social activist Milton Tambor discusses his life's work in Detroit since the 1950s as a social worker; AFSCME local union president, staff representative and assistant education director; and teaching faculty in both labor studies and social work at Wayne State University and other institutions. He also discusses the intersection of labor and … Continue reading Bargaining for the Common Good: Milton Tambor Reflects on 50 Years in Labor and Social Activism →

Reuther Library SEIU archivist Sarah Lebovitz shares highlights from the union's first 100 years, and explains how its archives at the Reuther Library have supported labor organizing and centennial celebrations. Related Collections: SEIU District 925 Records SEIU Executive Office: George Hardy Records SEIU Executive Office: John Sweeney Records SEIU Executive Office: William McFetridge Records SEIU … Continue reading And Many More: Celebrating SEIU's Centennial in the Archives →

Dr. Allyson Brantley explains how large and diverse groups joined together for a decades-long consumer boycott of the Coors Brewing Company to fight against its union busting, discriminatory hiring practices, and politics. Brantley is an assistant professor of history and Director of Honors & Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the University of La Verne and author of … Continue reading Brewing a Boycott: Collective Activism and the Decades-Long Coors Beer Boycott →

Dr. Ryan Pettengill explains how communist activists in Detroit worked with labor activists during and after the Second World War to enhance the quality of life in the community by advocating for civil rights, affordable housing, protections for the foreign-born, and more. Pettengill is a Professor of History at Collin College and author of Communists … Continue reading Communists and Community in Wartime Detroit →

Artist and author Justin Beal shares the career and legacy of influential yet often forgotten architect Minoru Yamasaki. Yamasaki's human-centered architectural design was often overrun by economics, politics, and capitalist symbolism, leading to his two most well-known developments, the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis and the World Trade Center in New York City, to … Continue reading Sandfuture: Exploring Minoru Yamasaki, Lost Humanist Architecture, and the Rise of Sick Buildings and Sick People →

Edward McClelland recounts the gripping details of the Flint sit-down strike, and considers what we can learn today from the strikers' successful fight for shared prosperity in 1936-1937. McClelland is a journalist, historian, and author of Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Built the Middle Class. Related Collections: Flint Labor … Continue reading Midnight in Vehicle City: Modern Lessons From the Flint Sit-Down Strike →

Dr. Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz explains how the push to professionalize and standardize educators beginning in the mid-1800s, without granting them decision-making power, has made them the public face of foundering school policies developed and implemented by local school administrators and state and national policymakers. Widespread policy narratives that schools and teachers acting as mother figures … Continue reading Blaming Teachers: How America Simultaneously Professionalized and Patronized Education →

After Leonard Woodcock stepped down as president of the UAW in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter sent him to Beijing as a diplomatic envoy and ultimately as the nation’s first ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. In the second of a two-part interview, his wife Sharon Woodcock talks about Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the … Continue reading From Bargaining Table to Diplomatic Table: Leonard Woodcock in China (Part 2) →

After Leonard Woodcock stepped down as president of the UAW in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter sent him to Beijing as a diplomatic envoy and ultimately as the nation’s first ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. In the first of a two-part interview, his wife Sharon Woodcock talks about Leonard’s labor ideals and shares … Continue reading From Bargaining Table to Diplomatic Table: Leonard Woodcock in China (Part 1) →

Historian Jane Little Botkin explains how Jane Street, a single mother, firebrand, and little-known IWW organizer, orchestrated a 1916 housemaids’ rebellion in Denver. To fight for better pay and working conditions in the elite Capitol Hill neighborhood, Street worked with—and later, despite—the IWW to blacklist and shame the area’s worst domestic employers, thereby disrupting the … Continue reading Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver →

Aliqae Geraci explains that she had big plans when she became director of the Reuther Library a year ago, and those plans were immediately scuttled when her first day on the job coincided with the first day Wayne State University’s on-campus operations were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She describes how she and the … Continue reading It’s Been a Year: Reuther Library Director Aliqae Geraci Recalls Her First Year on the Job During a Global Pandemic →

Dr. Ashley Johnson Bavery explains how undocumented European immigrants coming over the Canadian border to work in the Detroit auto industry in the 1920s and 1930s spurred nativist discourse, influenced government policies toward illegal immigration, and shaped how business and labor unions used and positioned migrant labor. Dr. Bavery is Assistant Professor of History at … Continue reading Bootlegged Aliens: How Undocumented Immigrants from Canada in the 1920s Shaped American Immigration Policy →

Labor historian Dr. Toni Gilpin explores how the McCormick family’s greed and union-busting in the late 19th century set the stage for a bitter battle between the International Harvester corporation and the radical Farm Equipment Workers union in the 1930s and 1940s. Although the union was absorbed by the United Auto Workers in 1955, Gilpin … Continue reading The Long Deep Grudge: How the Haymarket “Riot” of 1886 Evolved into a Bitter Battle Between the Farm Equipment Workers Union and International Harvester in the Mid-Twentieth Century →

Sean Henry discusses the Detroit Interracial Committee’s (IRC) pragmatic attempt to ease racial tensions in the city following the 1943 Detroit riots. Assuming that it could not completely eliminate racial antagonism, the IRC instead used its Community Barometer initiative and the Detroit Public Schools program for intercultural education to identify and manage systemic racial inequities … Continue reading The Detroit Interracial Committee and Racial Pragmatism, 1944-1950 →

Dr. Timothy Minchin explores how the SEIU nearly doubled its membership from 1980-1995, during a time of significantly declining numbers in most other American labor unions. Through an exploration of SEIU’s membership drives at nursing homes, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and its long-running Justice for Janitors campaign, Minchin credits the union’s growth to a combination of … Continue reading SEIU: A Successful Union in an Era of Labor Decline →

Salaina Catalano Crumb explains how American fascism developed and thrived in Michigan from the 1920s through the 1940s due to the influence of right-wing individuals and organizations swayed by the politics of Nazi Germany, including industrialist Henry Ford, anti-communist clergy members Father Coughlin and Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith, militant secret societies like the Black Legion, … Continue reading When It Happened Here: Michigan and the Transnational Development of American Fascism, 1920-1945 →

Dr. Clay Walker explains how César Chávez’s lifeworld discourse – the language, culture, and experiences that shaped who he was and how he encountered and navigated the world – uniquely prepared him to lead the United Farm Workers and effectively communicate his message to a diverse audience. Dr. Walker is a senior lecturer in English … Continue reading Reading the Room: How César Chávez’s Early Life Prepared Him to Lead →

Society of Women Engineers archivist Troy Eller English shares the tragicomic story of Lucille Pieti, 1950 mechanical engineering alum and Miss Wayne University. Sidelined in technical writing despite her degree and experience, Pieti found her career veering farther and farther away from engineering in the mid-1950s as her bosses at Chrysler capitalized on her beauty … Continue reading Mechanical Engineer To Booth Babe and Back Again: The Tragicomic Career of Wayne State Engineering Alum Lucille Pieti →

Reuther Library field archivist Dr. Louis Jones and former archives students and staff members Mattie Dugan and Allie Penn discuss the Reuther’s Michigan Black History Bibliography (MBHB) and the multi-year, student-led project to digitize a decades-old index card file. Meticulously compiled by Reuther librarian Roberta McBride in the 1970s, the MBHB cataloged well-known and obscure … Continue reading (Re)Introducing the Michigan Black History Bibliography →

Wayne State history PhD candidate James McQuaid discusses his research on the gradual cognizance and acceptance of queer autoworkers in the twentieth century, leading toward the UAW’s rapid embrace of LGBTQ-friendly policies and initiatives in the 1990s. He shares compelling stories of several queer auto workers, including: Billie Hill discovering a lesbian enclave in a … Continue reading This Union Cause: The Queer History of the United Automobile Workers →

Reuther Library outreach archivist Meghan Courtney discusses the conclusions of the 1968 Kerner Commission report in the context of today’s protests over race relations and police brutality. Following infamous rebellions in Detroit and Newark in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, chaired by Illinois governor Otto Kerner, to … Continue reading Race and Rebellion: Reexamining the Unlearned Lessons of the Kerner Report a Half Century Later →

Allie Penn explains how her work on a grant-funded digitization project introduced her to the Housewives League of Detroit and led to a digital humanities project mapping Detroit Black-owned businesses from the 1930s through 1950s. Espousing the informal motto, “Don’t buy where you can’t work,” the Housewives League of Detroit was founded in 1930 by … Continue reading Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work: Black-Owned Businesses and the Housewives League of Detroit →