Where Are the Workers?: Labor's Stories at Museums and Historic Sites
edited by Robert Forrant and Mary Anne Trasciatti contributions by Susan Grabski, Amanda Kay Gustin, Karen Lane, Rob Linné, Erik Loomis, Tom MacMillan, Lou Martin, Scott McLaughlin, Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan, Karen Sieber, Katrina Windon, Jim Beauchesne, Rebekah Bryer, Rebecca Bush, Conor Casey, Rachel Donaldson, Kathleen Flynn and Elijah Gaddis
University of Illinois Press, 2022 eISBN: 978-0-252-05338-2 | Cloth: 978-0-252-04439-7 | Paper: 978-0-252-08646-5 Library of Congress Classification HD8066 Dewey Decimal Classification 331.0973
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK The labor movement in the United States is a bulwark of democracy and a driving force for social and economic equality. Yet its stories remain largely unknown to Americans. Robert Forrant and Mary Anne Trasciatti edit a collection of essays focused on nationwide efforts to propel the history of labor and working people into mainstream narratives of US history. In Part One, the contributors concentrate on ways to collect and interpret worker-oriented history for public consumption. Part Two moves from National Park sites to murals to examine the writing and visual representation of labor history. Together, the essayists explore how place-based labor history initiatives promote understanding of past struggles, create awareness of present challenges, and support efforts to build power, expand democracy, and achieve justice for working people.
A wide-ranging blueprint for change, Where Are the Workers? shows how working-class perspectives can expand our historical memory and inform and inspire contemporary activism.
Contributors: Jim Beauchesne, Rebekah Bryer, Rebecca Bush, Conor Casey, Rachel Donaldson, Kathleen Flynn, Elijah Gaddis, Susan Grabski, Amanda Kay Gustin, Karen Lane, Rob Linné, Erik Loomis, Tom MacMillan, Lou Martin, Scott McLaughlin, Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, Karen Sieber, and Katrina Windon
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Robert Forrant is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the author of Metal Fatigue: American Bosch and the Demise of Metalworking in the Connecticut River Valley. Mary Anne Trasciatti is a professor of rhetoric and the director of labor studies at Hofstra University. She is the author of a forthcoming book on Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and civil liberties activism.
REVIEWS
"Where are the Workers? has much to offer labor historians, public historians, and all readers who want to know more about how working people's stories are told and how those narratives can be presented more often, with more respect in museums and historic places." --North Carolina Historical Review
“A much-needed contribution to larger and urgent national conversations around both organized labor and place-based public labor history. The need for (and threats to) unions, the struggle for fair wages, efforts to ensure workplace safety--the headlines of the present were the headlines of the past, too. These essays make the compelling case that museums and historic sites have, can, and must actively shape public understanding, while helping to inspire the activists and organizers of the future.”--Marla Miller, coauthor of Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Uncovering Labor’s History
Part I. In Practice: Collecting and Interpreting the History for the Public
Chapter 1. Public Memory and the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
Chapter 2. Interpreting Barre, Vermont’s Granite Industry in All Its Rich Complexity
Chapter 3. Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the 1912 Bread & Roses Strike at Street Level: Interpretation Over Time
Chapter 4. “Like a Family” or “A Committee of Half-Starved Human Beings”: Multiple Perspectives in Interpreting Southern Mill Labor History
Chapter 5. History, Memory, and Community in the Redeveloped Loray Mill
Chapter 6. “Cut Off from Fair Play”: Representing Labor Issues in the Context of the Elaine Massacre
Chapter 7. Corrective Collecting and Democratizing Documentation: Preserving, Interpreting, and Promoting Regional Workers' History at the Labor Archives of Washington
Part II: Writing the History
Chapter 8. Labor History and the National Park Service: How the Government Does and Does Not Remember Our Working Past
Chapter 9. The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum and the Difficult History of Agricultural Organizing
Chapter 10. Labor Sweated Here: Commemorating Workers and Their Activism in Paterson, New Jersey
Chapter 11. Latinx Murals of Texas: Memorials to Immigrant Experience, Working-Class
History, and Solidarity
Chapter 12. Labor and Art: Interpreting the Maine Labor Mural Controversy
Where Are the Workers?: Labor's Stories at Museums and Historic Sites
edited by Robert Forrant and Mary Anne Trasciatti contributions by Susan Grabski, Amanda Kay Gustin, Karen Lane, Rob Linné, Erik Loomis, Tom MacMillan, Lou Martin, Scott McLaughlin, Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan, Karen Sieber, Katrina Windon, Jim Beauchesne, Rebekah Bryer, Rebecca Bush, Conor Casey, Rachel Donaldson, Kathleen Flynn and Elijah Gaddis
University of Illinois Press, 2022 eISBN: 978-0-252-05338-2 Cloth: 978-0-252-04439-7 Paper: 978-0-252-08646-5
The labor movement in the United States is a bulwark of democracy and a driving force for social and economic equality. Yet its stories remain largely unknown to Americans. Robert Forrant and Mary Anne Trasciatti edit a collection of essays focused on nationwide efforts to propel the history of labor and working people into mainstream narratives of US history. In Part One, the contributors concentrate on ways to collect and interpret worker-oriented history for public consumption. Part Two moves from National Park sites to murals to examine the writing and visual representation of labor history. Together, the essayists explore how place-based labor history initiatives promote understanding of past struggles, create awareness of present challenges, and support efforts to build power, expand democracy, and achieve justice for working people.
A wide-ranging blueprint for change, Where Are the Workers? shows how working-class perspectives can expand our historical memory and inform and inspire contemporary activism.
Contributors: Jim Beauchesne, Rebekah Bryer, Rebecca Bush, Conor Casey, Rachel Donaldson, Kathleen Flynn, Elijah Gaddis, Susan Grabski, Amanda Kay Gustin, Karen Lane, Rob Linné, Erik Loomis, Tom MacMillan, Lou Martin, Scott McLaughlin, Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, Karen Sieber, and Katrina Windon
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Robert Forrant is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the author of Metal Fatigue: American Bosch and the Demise of Metalworking in the Connecticut River Valley. Mary Anne Trasciatti is a professor of rhetoric and the director of labor studies at Hofstra University. She is the author of a forthcoming book on Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and civil liberties activism.
REVIEWS
"Where are the Workers? has much to offer labor historians, public historians, and all readers who want to know more about how working people's stories are told and how those narratives can be presented more often, with more respect in museums and historic places." --North Carolina Historical Review
“A much-needed contribution to larger and urgent national conversations around both organized labor and place-based public labor history. The need for (and threats to) unions, the struggle for fair wages, efforts to ensure workplace safety--the headlines of the present were the headlines of the past, too. These essays make the compelling case that museums and historic sites have, can, and must actively shape public understanding, while helping to inspire the activists and organizers of the future.”--Marla Miller, coauthor of Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Uncovering Labor’s History
Part I. In Practice: Collecting and Interpreting the History for the Public
Chapter 1. Public Memory and the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
Chapter 2. Interpreting Barre, Vermont’s Granite Industry in All Its Rich Complexity
Chapter 3. Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the 1912 Bread & Roses Strike at Street Level: Interpretation Over Time
Chapter 4. “Like a Family” or “A Committee of Half-Starved Human Beings”: Multiple Perspectives in Interpreting Southern Mill Labor History
Chapter 5. History, Memory, and Community in the Redeveloped Loray Mill
Chapter 6. “Cut Off from Fair Play”: Representing Labor Issues in the Context of the Elaine Massacre
Chapter 7. Corrective Collecting and Democratizing Documentation: Preserving, Interpreting, and Promoting Regional Workers' History at the Labor Archives of Washington
Part II: Writing the History
Chapter 8. Labor History and the National Park Service: How the Government Does and Does Not Remember Our Working Past
Chapter 9. The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum and the Difficult History of Agricultural Organizing
Chapter 10. Labor Sweated Here: Commemorating Workers and Their Activism in Paterson, New Jersey
Chapter 11. Latinx Murals of Texas: Memorials to Immigrant Experience, Working-Class
History, and Solidarity
Chapter 12. Labor and Art: Interpreting the Maine Labor Mural Controversy
Contributors
Index
Back cover
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC