Tales from the Reuther Library

Tales from the Reuther Library


Latest Episodes

Betty Friedan’s Labor Roots
March 28, 2024

Rachel Shteir shares how Betty Friedans early experience as a labor reporter for the Federated Press informed her later work as a famed womens rights activist, author of The Feminine Mystique, and c

The UAW’s Southern Gamble in Foreign-Owned Factories
March 04, 2024

Dr. Stephen Silvia explains how the UAW built a cooperative relationship with workers councils and unions at foreign automotive companies, but has nevertheless struggled to organize those companies

Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence and Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era
December 14, 2023

Dr. Matthew Lassiter shares stories uncovered in Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era, a collaborative digital exhibit creat

Labor Radical Harry Bridges and the Cold War Ire of the US Government
November 09, 2023

In the second of a two-part series, Dr. Robert Cherny recounts how immigrant Harry Bridges successfully led the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for four decades beginning i

Labor Legend Harry Bridges and the Pacific Coast Longshore Strike of 1934
November 02, 2023

In the first of a two-part series, Dr. Robert Cherny explains how the early life of Australian immigrant Harry Bridges prepared him to lead the groundbreaking 1934 Pacific Coast longshoremens and mar

Taming the Octopus: Eli Black and the Search for Social Responsibility at the United Fruit / United Brands Company
September 14, 2023

Dr. Matt Garcia traces the legacy of Eli Black, a former rabbi who, as CEO of United Fruit/United Brands Company in the late 1960s and early 1970s, attempted to instill corporate social responsibility

Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit
June 15, 2023

Dr. Josiah Rector explains that since the 1880s a confluence of unregulated industrial capitalism and racist practices in housing and employment in Detroit created pollution and environmental disaster

Latinx Encounters: How Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans Made the Modern Midwest
May 12, 2023

Dr. Juan I. Mora examines three groups of Latinxs as they used postwar migration, temporary guest-worker programs, and agricultural labor to redefine migrant power, justice, and rights in the twentiet

Under the Iron Heel: Repressing the IWW and Free Speech
February 27, 2023

Ahmed White explains how industrialists and government officials in the United States used violence and legal maneuverings to stultify the Industrial Workers of the World and silence its members in th

“Girls, We Cannot Lose!”: Midwestern Black Women Activists During the Great Depression
January 19, 2023

Dr. Melissa Ford explores the influence of working-class Black women in Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland on the development of Black radicalism in the American Midwest during the Great Depression. Fo