Tales from the Reuther Library

In celebration of the Reuther Library’s 50th anniversary, Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO discusses the importance of understanding labor and legislative history when bargaining for better labor contracts for flight attendants today.

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Professor Michelle Adams describes the struggles to integrate Detroit’s highly segregated neighborhoods and schools in the 1960s, a federal judge’s ruling to alleviate that segregation by bussing students between the predominately Black schools in Detroit and predominantly white schools in the suburbs, and the Supreme Court’s subsequent 1974 Milliken v. Bradley decision that acknowledged the segregated state of Detroit schools but overturned the “metropolitan remedy,” thereby allowing de facto school segregation to persist today.

Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and author of The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North.

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Dr. Beth Widmaier Capo discusses the Detroit Feminist Women’s Health Center and the role health practitioners there—including her mother—played in empowering women to understand their bodies and take control of their health in the 1970s. Capo is the Edward Capps Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Illinois College, and author of the article, “The Detroit Feminist Women’s Health Center; Or, on Hearing Your Mom Described as ‘The Fucking Bravest Bitch I Knew.’”

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John Miles Branch discusses the National Labor Relations Board’s policy to dismiss union petitions at charitable organizations in the decades following the Second World War, and the policy’s reversal in 1976 when the board acknowledged nonprofit institutions as a “third sector” of the economy linked with the nation’s commercial life.

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In celebration of the Reuther Library’s 50th anniversary, AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Elissa McBride reflects on the role the union’s history and archives play in current and future labor actions and organizing campaigns.

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Dr. Keith Wunderlich shares the life and legacy of D.L. Holmes, athletic director of what is now Wayne State University from 1917 though 1958. With a meager budget and outdated equipment, Coach Holmes nurtured a generation of track and field Olympians and world record holders in Detroit, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religious background. Wunderlich is co-author of Coach of Champions: D.L. Holmes and the Making of Detroit’s Track Stars.

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Dr. Nick Juravich discusses the experiences of the first-generation of paraprofessional educators in New York City in the 1960s-1980s and their impact on the city’s educational system, community relations, and public sector unions. Juravich is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education.

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Roger Biles and Mark Rose discuss the legacy of Eddie Sadlowski, a charismatic and progressive Chicago steelworker who, unhappy with the United Steelworker of America’s closed-rank authoritarian leadership and tepid support for rank-and-file members, led a highly visible yet unsuccessful dissident campaign in the contentious election for the USWA’s presidency in 1977.

Dr. Biles is a Professor Emeritus of history at Illinois State University. Dr. Rose is a professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. Their article, “’Oil Can Eddie’ and the Battle for the Steelworkers’ Union,” was published in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.

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Dr. Anna E. Lindner discusses the rise and subsequent downfall of the West Central Organization in Detroit, a coalition of civil rights organizations, community groups, and church congregations that sought to bring attention to housing inequality and other social issues in the 1960s. Although founded with good intent, the group’s aggressive lobbying gained short-term results but turned local media and government administrations against them, and the predominantly white liberal leaders in the organization’s first early years struggled to fully understand and address the systemic racism faced by Black Detroiters.

Lindner is an assistant professor of Media & Communication at Nazareth University and author of the essay, “Seeking ‘Self-Determination’ in Detroit: Housing, Race, and the Activism of the West Central Organization, 1964-1971.”

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Dr. Matt Kautz explores how evolving school disciplinary practices, changes in crime reporting, and political pressure in the decades following school desegregation led to the rise of student suspensions, expulsions, dropouts, and the school-to-prison pipeline in Detroit and other cities. Kautz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership and Counseling at Eastern Michigan University. His article “Schools and the Rise of Mass Incarceration in a Post-Brown World,” was published in the Summer 2024 issue of Harvard Educational Review.

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