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Tales from the Reuther Library episodes
- Brewing a Boycott: Collective Activism and the Decades-Long Coors Beer Boycott
Dr. Allyson Brantley explains how large and diverse groups joined together for a decades-long consumer boycott of the Coors Brewing Company to fight against its union busting, discriminatory hiring practices, and politics. Brantley is an assistant professor of history and Director of Honors & Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the University of La Verne and author of Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism.
Related Collections:
AFSCME Office of the President: Gerald W. McEntee RecordsAFT President’s Office: Albert Shanker RecordsBob Barber PapersFarm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) RecordsDolores Huerta PapersMetropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO Council: Tom Turner RecordsMichigan Coalition for Human Rights RecordsUAW President’s Office: Owen Bieber RecordsUFW Office of the President: Arturo Rodriguez RecordsRelated Resources:
" rel="noopener noreferrer">Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer ActivismEpisode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Allyson BrantleyMusic: Bart Bealmear45 min - Communists and Community in Wartime Detroit
Dr. Ryan Pettengill explains how communist activists in Detroit worked with labor activists during and after the Second World War to enhance the quality of life in the community by advocating for civil rights, affordable housing, protections for the foreign-born, and more. Pettengill is a Professor of History at Collin College and author of Communists and Community: Activism in Detroit’s Labor Movement, 1941-1956.
Related Collections:
Don Binkowski PapersNat Ganley and Saul Wellman PapersMaurice Sugar PapersSam Sweet PapersShelton Tappes PapersEdith Van Horn PapersUAW Fair Practices and Anti-Discrimination Department RecordsUAW President’s Office: Walter P. Reuther RecordsRelated Resources:
Communists and Community: Activism in Detroit’s Labor Movement, 1941-1956Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Ryan PettengillMusic: Bart Bealmear57 min - Sandfuture: Exploring Minoru Yamasaki, Lost Humanist Architecture, and the Rise of Sick Buildings and Sick People
Artist and author Justin Beal shares the career and legacy of influential yet often forgotten architect Minoru Yamasaki. Yamasaki’s human-centered architectural design was often overrun by economics, politics, and capitalist symbolism, leading to his two most well-known developments, the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis and the World Trade Center in New York City, to come crashing down on live television some thirty years apart–one at the hands of bureaucrats, the other by terrorists. Beal also considers how modern architectural trends and a changing climate have created a generation of buildings that ignore human needs, contributing to sick building syndrome. Beal recently published Sandfuture, his autobiographical exploration of Yamasaki’s legacy and how modern architecture has failed human health.
Related Collections:
Minoru Yamasaki PapersWayne State University College of Education Building Committee RecordsFred Hansen PapersRelated Resources:
SandfutureEpisode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Justin BealMusic: Bart Bealmear49 min - Midnight in Vehicle City: Modern Lessons From the Flint Sit-Down Strike
Edward McClelland recounts the gripping details of the Flint sit-down strike, and considers what we can learn today from the strikers’ successful fight for shared prosperity in 1936-1937. McClelland is a journalist, historian, and author of Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Built the Middle Class.
Related Collections:
Flint Labor RecordsGenora and Sol Dollinger PapersHenry Kraus PapersHy Fish PapersJoe Walton PapersRoy Reuther Oral HistoryVictor G. Reuther PapersWyndham Mortimer PapersRelated Resources:
Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Built the Middle ClassEpisode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Edward McClellandMusic: Bart Bealmear35 min - Blaming Teachers: How America Simultaneously Professionalized and Patronized Education
Dr. Diana D’Amico Pawlewicz explains how the push to professionalize and standardize educators beginning in the mid-1800s, without granting them decision-making power, has made them the public face of foundering school policies developed and implemented by local school administrators and state and national policymakers. Widespread policy narratives that schools and teachers acting as mother figures can solve communities’ problems have inherently placed the public’s blame on teachers when those problems don’t disappear, as seen most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. D’Amico Pawlewicz is an assistant professor in the Educational Foundations and Research Program at the University of North Dakota, where she focuses on the history of education and social policy. She received the 2021 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award for her recent publication, Blaming Teachers: Professionalization Policies and the Failure of Reform in American History.
Related Collections:
Albert Shanker PapersAFT Educational Issues Department RecordsAFT Inventory Part I RecordsAFT Inventory Part II RecordsAFT Office of the President RecordsAmerican Federation of Teachers PublicationsRelated Resources:
Blaming Teachers: Professionalization Policies and the Failure of Reform in American HistoryEpisode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Diana D’Amico PawlewiczMusic: Bart Bealmear47 min - From Bargaining Table to Diplomatic Table: Leonard Woodcock in China (Part 2)
After Leonard Woodcock stepped down as president of the UAW in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter sent him to Beijing as a diplomatic envoy and ultimately as the nation’s first ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. In the second of a two-part interview, his wife Sharon Woodcock talks about Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the United States; Leonard Woodcock’s work after leaving the State Department, including his work on the Board of Governors of Wayne State University; and his support of the Reuther Library. UAW archivist Gavin Strassel discusses Leonard Woodcock’s archival collections at the Reuther Library and the unique, first-hand view they provide into the formation of modern China and U.S / China relations.
Related Collections:
Leonard Woodcock PapersSharon Woodcock Oral HistoryUAW President’s Office: Leonard Woodcock RecordsUAW Vice President’s Office: Leonard Woodcock RecordsRelated Resources:
Collection Spotlight: Leonard Woodcock PapersEpisode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Gavin StrasselInterviewee: Sharon WoodcockMusic: Bart Bealmear42 min - From Bargaining Table to Diplomatic Table: Leonard Woodcock in China (Part 1)
After Leonard Woodcock stepped down as president of the UAW in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter sent him to Beijing as a diplomatic envoy and ultimately as the nation’s first ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. In the first of a two-part interview, his wife Sharon Woodcock talks about Leonard’s labor ideals and shares tales about their time in the ambassador’s residence, including his unusually close relationship with Deng Xiaoping, the leader and architect of modern China.
Related Collections:
Leonard Woodcock PapersSharon Woodcock Oral HistoryUAW President’s Office: Leonard Woodcock RecordsUAW Vice President’s Office: Leonard Woodcock RecordsRelated Resources:
Collection Spotlight: Leonard Woodcock PapersEpisode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Gavin StrasselInterviewee: Sharon WoodcockMusic: Bart Bealmear42 min - Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver
Historian Jane Little Botkin explains how Jane Street, a single mother, firebrand, and little-known IWW organizer, orchestrated a 1916 housemaids’ rebellion in Denver. To fight for better pay and working conditions in the elite Capitol Hill neighborhood, Street worked with—and later, despite—the IWW to blacklist and shame the area’s worst domestic employers, thereby disrupting the comfort and reputations of some of Denver’s most influential and powerful families.
Author of The Girl Who Dared to Defy: Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver and Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family, Botkin has received two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, the Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy Department, and the Best Historical Nonfiction Award from the Texas Association of Authors.
Related Collections:
Industrial Workers of the World RecordsRelated Resources:
Botkin, J.L. (2021). The Girl Who Dared to Defy: Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver. University of Oklahoma Press.Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Jane Little BotkinMusic: Bart Bealmear47 min - It’s Been a Year: Reuther Library Director Aliqae Geraci Recalls Her First Year on the Job During a Global Pandemic
Aliqae Geraci explains that she had big plans when she became director of the Reuther Library a year ago, and those plans were immediately scuttled when her first day on the job coincided with the first day Wayne State University’s on-campus operations were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She describes how she and the Reuther pivoted in the past year to safely provide patrons virtual access to physical archival materials, and contemplates how the pandemic will and won’t change the Reuther’s services in the future. Geraci also shares how she became involved in labor libraries, and what she’s been binging during the pandemic.
Related Resources:
Meet Our New Director, Aliqae GeraciEpisode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Aliqae GeraciMusic: Bart Bealmear43 min - Bootlegged Aliens: How Undocumented Immigrants from Canada in the 1920s Shaped American Immigration Policy
Dr. Ashley Johnson Bavery explains how undocumented European immigrants coming over the Canadian border to work in the Detroit auto industry in the 1920s and 1930s spurred nativist discourse, influenced government policies toward illegal immigration, and shaped how business and labor unions used and positioned migrant labor. Dr. Bavery is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University and author of Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America’s Northern Border.
Related Collections:
AFL-CIO Metropolitan Detroit RecordsJoe Brown PapersCivil Rights Congress of Michigan RecordsRichard Frankensteen PapersInternational Institute of Metropolitan Detroit RecordsHenry Kraus PapersJames Lindahl PapersMaurice Sugar PapersUnited Community Services Central FilesRelated Resources:
Bavery, A.J. (2020). Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America’s Northern Border. University of Pennsylvania Press.Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller EnglishInterviewer: Dan GolodnerInterviewee: Ashley Johnson BaveryMusic: Bart Bealmear45 min
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Stories on labor history, Detroit, and Wayne State University