The Growth of Women’s Leadership and Transformation
of the Labor Movement in the Turbulent Years (1922-1945)

by Elizabeth Faue
Professor of History, Wayne State University

Tuesday, October 15th, 2019, 7pm

The U.S. labor movement went through its most turbulent and transformative period during the years between World War I and the end of World War II. It faced hostile employers, an unsympathetic government, and divided public opinion. Rebuilding required grassroots recruiting, community organizing, and worker education at its most basic level. Working-class women—both workers and supporters of labor—played a fundamental role in this transformation. Women who would later staff government agencies, run political campaigns, and become labor leaders in their own right were an essential part of labor’s regeneration and its emergence as an important political force in the post-World War II era. Come hear the stories of women who helped create labor’s democracy.

Minneapolis native Elizabeth Faue, author of Rethinking the American Labor Movement, has taught labor history for 29 years at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her previous books include Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 and Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Her current project is Work and the Body Politic: Gender, Workplace Risk, and the Health of Democracy.

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