What Makes America Work?
A librarian looks at materials to introduce young people to labor history
By Ann C. Sparanese -- School Library Journal, 5/1/2000
May is Labor History Month. In 1995, President Clinton initiated this designation to recognize the contributions of working people and of the labor movement to the development of the United States. Although it has not yet achieved the kind of public awareness that Black History Month and Women's History Month enjoy, its purpose is similar--to honor ordinary people who are frequently absent from textbook histories and to acknowledge their role in the expansion of our democracy. American labor history is not the narrow chronicle of (white male) labor unions and/or industrial workers, but the inclusive story of working people of all backgrounds--their everyday lives, cultures, and workplace struggles. Organized labor, for all its historical problems and prejudices involving race and gender, is still arguably the largest and most diverse social-justice movement in U.S. history. Take some time this month to look at your collections and highlight some of the resources on the subject that will enlighten and enrich children and young adults.
Penny Colman says that writing about women such as Mother Jones, Frances Perkins, and female workers during World War II led her to labor history. She has written Strike! The Bitter Struggle of American Workers from Colonial Times to the Present (Millbrook, 1995), A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins (Atheneum, 1993; o.p.), and Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II (Crown, 1995). Girls: A History of Growing Up Female in America (Scholastic, 2000) includes the experiences of young workers of many ethnic backgrounds.
Biographies of important labor personalities are relatively few in children's and YA literature, with some notable exceptions. Mary Harris, better known as "Mother" Jones, was an amazing woman, concurrently called the "Miner's Angel" and "the most dangerous woman in America" over the course of her 60 years in the labor movement. Colman's Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children (Millbrook, 1994; o.p.) is written for the elementary grades, while Judith Pinkerton Josephson's Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Workers' Rights (Lerner, 1997) is a good choice for middle school readers. High school students might appreciate Mary Harris's own story, The Autobiography of Mother Jones (Kerr, 1990). Eight prominent labor figures, including Cesar Chavez (about whom many biographies for young people have also been written), Eugene Debs, John L. Lewis, and A. Philip Randolph appear in Thomas Streissguth's Legendary Labor Leaders (Oliver, 1998).
A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Justice
(California Newsreel, 1996) is a video that should find a place in every library collection. It chronicles Randolph's efforts to organize the first national African-American labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car (Pullman) Porters, and shows how his vision was intimately connected to the civil rights movement. Patricia and Fredrick McKissack's A Long Hard Journey: The Story of the Pullman Porter (Walker, 1990) tells the Brotherhood's story in print.Strikes are featured in several titles for young people. Joan Dash's We Shall Not Be Moved: The Women's Factory Strike of 1909 (Scholastic, 1996) is the compelling story of the "Uprising of the 20,000" and recounts the jeers, beatings, and jail that the seamstresses endured before winning improved wages and conditions. Linda Jacobs Altman's The Pullman Strike of 1894 (Millbrook, 1994) tells the story of labor solidarity in the face of overwhelming government and corporate repression. Milton Meltzer's Bread and Roses: The Struggle of American Labor 1865-1915 (Facts On File, 1990; o.p.) uses primary documents and a thematic approach to tell this story. The poignant circumstances of the Chinese laborers who built the transcontinental railroad are well described in Laurence Yep's notable novel, Dragon's Gate (HarperCollins, 1993). Strikes and other workers' struggles are as dramatic as any events in American history; it's unfortunate that more authors do not write about them.
At the River I Stand
(California Newsreel, 1993) is a documentary with incredible power for teenage viewers. Students might be vaguely aware that when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, he was in Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers. Few will know the particulars of that strike, where banners proclaimed "I Am a Man!" After I showed this riveting video at my library, one high school student asked to share it with his social studies class the following week.Today's youth are passionate about the issue of child labor and sweatshop abuse. Students across the country are involved in campaigns to end these practices here and abroad. Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Growing Up in Coal Country (1996) documents the abuses in the mining industry that led to the U.S. movement to abolish child labor. Kids on Strike (1999, both Houghton) tells exciting stories of how young people fought actively for their rights in many industries as far back as 1828 in Paterson, NJ. Understanding the rationale for child labor in the developing U.S. helps young people understand the modern-day, true-life tragedy related in Susan Kuklin's Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery (Holt, 1998). Iqbal was a 12-year-old Pakistani carpet weaver who escaped from his virtual slavery to become, with the help of human-rights organizations, a powerful voice against this exploitation in his and other countries. Upon returning to Pakistan, he was murdered under mysterious circumstances.
Child labor still exists inside the U.S., especially in the case of migrant farm workers. Photojournalist S. Beth Atkin's Voices from the Fields (Little, Brown, 1993) lets these young people speak for themselves. The conditions of migrant and home sweatshop children, as well as teenagers working in low-paying fast-food establishments, is discussed in Milton Meltzer's Cheap Raw Material: How Our Youngest Workers Are Exploited and Abused (Viking, 1994). David L. Parker's Stolen Dreams: Portraits of Working Children (Lerner, 1997) personalizes the plight of young people from all over the world and presents ideas for confronting the issue.
Labor history is beginning to occupy a tiny niche in school curricula, thanks to history teachers, unions, and other organizations. The Bread and Roses Cultural Project of the 1199 National Health & Human Service Employees Union (212-631-4552) has produced a video/ study guide set entitled Fasanella. It features worker/ artist Ralph Fasanella, whose paintings of demonstrations, strikes, and exuberant social activism are a treasure trove of working-class culture. The American Social History Project ( www.ashp.cuny.edu/Docuintro.html) has produced a video series that focuses on "ordinary people." Two excellent titles are 1877: A Grand Army of Starvation, which is about the railroad strike and workers' uprisings of that year, and Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl, about the shirtwaist workers in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century. American labor history curricula and other rich materials for students of various ages can be found on the Web site of the Illinois Labor History Society ( www.kentlaw.edu/ ilhs); the Southern Labor Archives ( www.gsu.edu/~ libpjr/resources.htm); Labor Education Service at the University of Minnesota ( www.irc.csom.umn.edu/les/index.htm); American Labor History: An Online Study Guide ( www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Quad/6460/ AmLabHist/index.html); and Hewitt's Labor History Page ( www.davison.k12.mi.us/academic/hewitt8.htm).
The journal of the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, Labor's Heritage, has a large pictorial format--sort of like an American Heritage for labor--which will appeal to students. And not to leave out music--Ani DiFranco and storyteller Utah Phillips have a collaboration out that is full of labor history, tales, and tunes titled Fellow Workers (Righteous Babe Records, 1999).
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Organized labor, for all its historical problems and prejudices involving race and gender, is still arguably the largest and most diverse social-justice movement in U.S. history. |
The enthusiasm that more young people are manifesting for unions themselves is described in Nancy Fitzgerald's article "Young Workers Unite!" (Careers & Colleges, March-April 1998). The AFL-CIO's "Union Summer" program is developing and channeling this interest. Since 1996, Union Summer has brought several thousand young people into communities around the country to help workers fight for on-the-job justice and to learn the basics of organizing. The AFL-CIO Web site (www.aflcio.org) has documented some of their experiences and also has links to other sites.
A large percentage of young people live in union households, and many teenagers have jobs themselves. Two excellent short-story collections on the subject are Working Days (Persea, 1997), edited by Anne Mazer, and Help Wanted (Little, Brown, 1997), edited by Anita Silvey. In preparation for entering the workforce, an awareness of labor issues can help young people understand that the conflicts and problems they may face--racial discrimination, low pay and demands for increased productivity, sexual harassment, and more--are not theirs alone but have been struggled with collectively in the past. As President Clinton wrote in his 1996 proclamation for Labor History Month, "Each new generation of workers must embrace the activism that has characterized labor's rich history, and all Americans should recognize the role that labor has played in the continuing progress of our democracy." What better place to begin than in the library.
Ann C. Sparanese is Head of Adult and Young Adult Services at the Englewood (NJ) Public Library.
