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(s): Robert Forrant, Mary Anne Trasciatti
Series: Working Class in American History, 2
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 256
City: Urbana
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
