Exploring history has been a central focus for the East Side Freedom Library since we began, especially the history of working people in all their variety and complexity. Some workers performed uncompensated labor, some were unable to form or join unions, and some experienced discrimination at the hands not only of employers, but on the part of other workers. Yet, we also know that, on occasion, a wide range of workers were able to come together in solidarity and change the course of history.
When we are able to put these past experiences into conversation with the present, new insights and ideas about forging a path to a future we would like to live in—can emerge. This month, such explorations will occupy a lot of our work.
The murder of George Floyd has prompted many of us to think carefully about institutional racism here in Minnesota. On Thursday evening, July 9, at 7pm, three local historians — Bill Green, Chris Lehman, and Marty Case — will come together to present their investigations. In the past year, each has written a carefully researched and closely argued book. Case’s The Relentless Business of Treaties explores the theft of land from indigenous peoples. Lehman’s Slavery’s Reach explores the influence of slaveholders in the shaping of Minnesota’s political and economic systems. Green’s Children of Lincoln explores the loss of interest in racial justice on the part of one-time abolitionists. We eagerly anticipate what might be revealed when they converse together, and we invite you to join.
On Friday evening, July 10, we will screen and discuss a film about the first nationwide strike in the United States, the great railroad strike of July 1877. This film, “1877: The Grand Army of Starvation,” made in the mid-1980s, raises questions which are familiar to us today: the power of the government in quelling protest; the ways the media misrepresents protestors; the damages done by economic inequality; and the possibilities of solidarity in struggles for justice. We look forward to the conversation it is sure to prompt.
Our two ongoing reading groups this month will also explore the experiences of working people in the past and how those experiences resonate in our present. On Tuesday, July 21, our Reparations Reading Group will explore how sharecropping and convict labor became powerful ways to extract unpaid labor from newly freed men and women in the South. And on Tuesday, July 28, our Labor History Reading Group will explore how the World War I Flu Pandemic contributed to the 1919 Seattle General Strike. Newcomers are always welcome in our reading groups.
I want to mention an additional resource which we have just added to our website — a video by an Earlham College History Professor (Ryan Murphy) and his students, discussing their experiences linking union organizing in Indiana casinos with their readings in Ryan’s seminar. This video provides a brilliant window into the ways that we can place the past and present in a conversation with each other. You can watch it here.
We invite you to join us for these explorations into history, to take part in these conversations. Together, we can learn; together, we can envision a path to a better future.
Love and Solidarity,
Peter Rachleff