Dr. Julia Gunn explains how progressive civil rights politics enabled Charlotte, North Carolina, to become the nation’s second-largest largest financial capital while obscuring its intransigence towards working-class protest, including public sector sanitation workers, bus drivers, firefighters, and domestic workers. Gunn is a Critical Writing Fellow in History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gunn’s research visit was supported through a Sam Fishman Travel Grant, which provides up to $1,000 for scholars to support travel to Detroit to access archival records of the American labor movement in the Reuther Library. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, a former UAW and Michigan AFL-CIO leader.

Related Archival Collections

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW)

Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

United Automobile Workers (UAW)

Episode Credits

Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English

Host: Dan Golodner

Interviewee: Julia Gunn

Sound: Troy Eller English

With support from the Reuther Podcast Collective: Bart Bealmer, Elizabeth Clemens, Meghan Courtney, Troy Eller English, Dan Golodner, Paul Neirink, and Mary Wallace