The East Side Freedom Library invites you a special version of our Labor History Film and Reading Group for March 2021

The Uprising of ‘34
the award-winning documentary by George Stoney
available to be viewed on Vimeo between March 5 and March 19

and a conversation on Tuesday, March 16, at 7pm, via Zoom
with the film’s editor Susanne Rostock
and
labor historian Mary Wingerd, author of the essay
Rethinking Paternalism: Power and Parochialism in a Southern Mill Village

Register here and we will send you a link for the film and Zoom meeting & a PDF of the essay

For Women’s History Month, join ESFL in an exploration of the lives, work, and struggles of southern textile mill workers. The Uprising of ’34 is a startling documentary which tells the story of the General Strike of 1934, a massive but little-known strike by hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers during the Great Depression. The mill workers’ defiant stance — and the remarkable grassroots organizing that led up to it — challenged a system of mill owner control that had shaped life in cotton mill communities for decades. Mary Wingerd’s essay not only explores this system of control, but also unearths the under-the-radar forms of resistance which made this strike possible. And she encourages us to consider other times and places where such control and resistance informed working class life.

The Uprising of ’34 offers a penetrating look at class, race, and power in working communities throughout America and raises critical questions about the role of history in making democracy work today. More than a social document, the film is intended to spark discussion on class, race, economics, and power — issues as vital today as they were decades ago. “The thrust of this film is to give the workers their chance to speak,” said editor Rostock. “We’re very proud of the fact that here’s a film in which they speak for themselves [with no narrator].” ESFL invites you to watch this 88 minute film on your own time and then join us for our conversation in our monthly Labor History Reading Group on the 16th.

Our conversation will feature Susanne Rostock the film’s editor and Minnesota historian Mary Wingerd. Rostock is a director as well as an editor, perhaps best known for her presentation of Harry Belafonte’s life in Sing Your Song [2011]. In an HBO project, she is currently directing Another Night in the Free World which documents the lives of three young women activists from 2012 to the present. Wingerd is the author of Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul (2001) and North Country: The Making of Minnesota (2010). Please join us.

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