Peter Rachleff, East Side Freedom Library

     In the mid-1970s, labor history was a dynamic field of knowledge production in the throes of a paradigm shift.  For the first three-quarters of the 20th century, labor historians were scholars who had been trained in economics, and they had focused on the formation and functioning of unions. But in the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of scholar, inspired by our experiences in the civil rights and women’s movements and impressed by a rank-and-file labor insurgency from the fields of California to the streets of Memphis and from the coal fields of West Virginia to the auto plants of Detroit, reconceptualized labor history as the study of working people. We were interested in all kinds of working people: workers of color as well as whites; immigrants as well as the native born; women as well as men; white collar as well as blue collar, unpaid (housewives who performed domestic labor and enslaved men and women) as well as paid; non-union as well as union. We were interested in the many activities undertaken by these workers: organizing unions and going on strike, to be sure, but also forming mutual benefit societies; creating art and culture; engaging in politics; and more.  We saw these as ways that working people made sense of their lives, processed the narratives circulated by the dominant culture, and found the agency to shape and reshape their lives – and our society.

     Our research led us to construct new stories of working people and to seek new ways to tell these stories.  Documentary film provided a means to bring the stories of past workers to the attention of contemporary workers.  Julia Reichert’s Union Maids (1976) inspired “new” labor historians to keep digging, to find new sources and new stories, and  to share them with audiences outside as well as inside the academy.  Recihert’s work inspired other great documentaries, including Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County (1978), Lorraine Gray’s With Babies and Banners (1978), Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer’s The Wobblies (1979), Connie Field’s The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980), and John DeGraaf’s Labor’s Turning Point (1981– about the Minneapolis Teamsters’ strikes of 1934). Other filmmakers told workers’ stories in dramatic films, such as Blue Collar (Paul Schrader, 1978), Norma Rae (Martin Ritt, 1979) , The Killing Floor (Bill Duke, 1984), Matewan (John Sayles, 1987), and North Country (Nikki Caro, 2005 —  about the struggles of women in Minnesota’s iron mines). 

     Julia Reichert and her colleagues opened the doors to new ways of telling the stories of working people and, consequently, new ways of conceptualizing the history of the United States. Their films reflected labor historians’ research and inspired hundreds of books, from the scholarly to the popular, including graphic texts and novels. Our generation undertook this journey with an eye on the past not for its own sake, but for the insights such engagement can offer us in shaping the future.   

     Join me for the screening and discussion of two of Reichert’s most important labor history films – Union Maids and The Last Truck– on Thursday, February 20, 2020, at 7pm, at the Walker Art Center.  This is a free event.  I will be moderating a post-film panel featuring Kae Jae Johnson from SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Johnny Howard, formerly with UAW 879. 

Union Maids
Directed by Julia Reichert, Jim Klein, and Miles Mogulescu
Reichert interviews three “Union Maids” on their experiences as organizing women of the Labor movement. Fighting for humanitarian rights, these radical workers reflect on their lives filled with purpose and struggle. Frustrated by the privileged class’ participation in the women’s movement and caught up in race and gender discrimination within class warfare, their voices echo and contextualize many social justice issues today. 1976, DCP, 48 min.

The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant
Directed by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar
Workers describe the death of a GM plant as the last truck comes down the line two days before Christmas in 2008. Interviews with talented, experienced tradespeople abandoned in the wake of change reveal the multifaceted impact of the loss of livelihood, purpose, and friends. Reichert chronicles the reopening of the plant a decade later in her new, Oscar-nominated film American Factory, screening on February 22. 2009, DCP, 40 min.

%d