The Reuther Library’s Reading Room will be closed November 27-29, 2024 for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will be back to serve your research needs on Monday, December 2nd.

As always, feel free to submit a request via Ask an Archivist and we will answer as soon as we return. Have a safe and happy holiday!

The Reuther Library will be closed in observance of Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th. We will reopen Wednesday the 6th. See you at the polls!

As always, feel free to submit questions and requests via email at 
reutherreference@wayne.edu and we will answer as soon as we return.

The staff of the Reuther Library is saddened by the passing of long-time AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer and Coalition of Black Trade Unionists co-founder, William “Bill” Lucy. He passed away September 24, 2024 at the age of 90.

Lucy grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and Richmond, California. He worked for Contra Costa County, CA, where he joined with his coworkers to form an AFSCME local in 1956. He later became the local’s president. AFSCME International president Jerry Wurf recognized Lucy as a rising star and invited him to work at AFSCME headquarters in 1966. In 1972, Lucy became AFSCME’s Secretary-Treasurer, the International’s second in command spot. He held that office for 38 years before retiring.  read more »

The Reuther Library will be closed September 2, 2024, in observance of the Labor Day holiday. We will reopen on Tuesday, September 3rd for regular business hours.

Feel free to submit your questions via Ask an Archivist and we will respond upon our return. Have a happy and safe holiday!

Due to an ongoing public safety issue, Wayne State will be closed May 28-30. Reuther Library building is closed to staff and researchers, but you are welcome to submit your questions to reutherreference@wayne.edu.

Reuther Library will be closed on Monday, May 27 in honor of Memorial Day.

We will return to support your research needs on Tuesday, May 28.

Please feel free to submit a request via Ask an Archivist and we will answer as soon as we return.

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce an addition to the Horace Sheffield Jr. Papers is now open for research. These materials were previously under the stewardship of the Charles H. Wright Museum and join a small existing collection of Sheffield’s at the Reuther. Sheffield was a prominent voice in Detroit’s labor and civil rights movements, and his collection is an exciting example of the overlapping movements in Detroit.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to announce the recipients of the 2024 Sam Fishman Travel Grant.

These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, a former UAW and Michigan AFL-CIO leader.

As part of their research visits, awardees are invited to discuss their research on Tales From the Reuther Library and/or another WSU outlet. Watch for updates about recipient visits later in the year.  read more »

The Reuther Library building and Wayne State University campus are closed on Tuesday, January 23rd due to inclement weather.

Reuther Library staff are available to answer your research questions via Ask An Archivist.

Stay warm and safe, and we look forward to welcoming you back soon!

Where: Reuther Library's Conference Room
When: January 22nd, 4 pm

Or join us on Zoom: http://tinyurl.com/4m84sse4

In November 2022, 48,000 graduate workers, post-docs, and academic researchers went on strike at the University of California in the largest strike in higher education to date. While the outcomes of the strike are well-documented, less is known about the three-year contract campaign that preceded it, the organizing strategies behind it, and the diversity of strikers’ day-to-day experiences on the picket line.  read more »

The Reuther will be closed Monday, January 15 in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The holiday is a day to reflect on Dr. King's life and work. We have some collections related to Dr. King. You can ask about them or any other topic via Ask an Archivist.

The Reuther Library's Reading Room will be closed this Friday, December 22 for the winter holiday. The University is closed December 25 - January 1.

We are open and back to serve your research needs on Tuesday, January 2.

As always, feel free to submit a request via Ask an Archivist and we will answer as soon as we return.

Have a safe and happy holiday!

Due to building repairs, the Reuther Library Reading Room will be closed on Wednesday, Nov. 29. Please feel free to contact us via email at reutherreference@wayne.edu for your research needs, and stay warm!

Reuther Library is now accepting applications for the 2024 Albert Shanker Fellowship for Research in Education and the 2024 Sam Fishman Travel Grant.

Albert Shanker Fellows can win up to $600 for travel to the Reuther for research using the AFT and other education-related collections. The deadline for applications from advanced graduate students and faculty are due December 23, 2023.

Sam Fishman Travel Grant awardees can win up to $1,000 for travel to the Reuther for research related to labor history. The deadline for applications is January 5, 2024.

For more information and application forms, see https://reuther.wayne.edu/opportunity

The Reuther Library is proud to announce a lecture from visiting scholar André Odendaal, vice-chancellor's writer-in-residence and honorary professor in History and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape. This event will take place at noon on Thursday, Nov. 15, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library. Refreshments will be provided.

Odendaal will share insights into his remarkable journey in preserving and telling the story of the South African freedom struggle. He played a pivotal role in launching the Mayibuye Archives at the University of the Western Cape in 1997, dedicated to capturing and preserving the rich history of the struggle for freedom. He also served as the founding director of the Robben Island Museum, which holds historical significance as South Africa's first national heritage institution and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Odendaal is the author of "Dear President Comrade: Oliver Tambo and the Foundations of South Africa's Constitution" and has had a distinguished career as a first-class cricketer. Learn more about Odendall's accomplishments at AndreOdendaal.info.

Note: This text includes language that is outdated and may be offensive. Titles of events and writings are included in their original language circa 1963.

A little-known collection in the Wayne State University Archives documents an event that took place at the university in 1963, 60 years ago this year, but commemorating a historic event 100 years before that. The year-long observance — the centennial of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — was marked by celebrations, lectures, symposia, performances, and the granting of honorary degrees. The small collection of the Wayne State University Emancipation Centennial Committee, which resides at the Walter P. Reuther Library, contains a wealth of correspondence, texts of speeches, and academic papers.  read more »

The Reuther Library Reading Room will be closed to the public on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, to allow for furniture installation. We will reopen on Thursday, September 28th for regular Reading Room hours.

The Reuther Library will be hosting a Homecoming Open House on Thursday, October 5, 2023 from 4 - 6 p.m. Tours will take place at 4:15 and 5:15 and will highlight our University collections; including yearbooks, editions of The South End, photos, and film highlighting WSU students and alumni, as well as featured material from our Labor and Urban Affairs collections.

Please join us as we take a look back at campus life through the years and kick off another academic year for the history books! For more information, please call the Reuther Library at 313.577.4024 or email Molly Banes (gh1381@wayne.edu). We look forward to seeing you there!

The Reuther Library will be closed September 4, 2023, in observance of the Labor Day holiday. We will reopen on Tuesday, September 5th for regular business hours.

Feel free to submit your questions via Ask an Archivist and we will respond upon our return. Have a happy and safe holiday!

Reuther Library will be closed to patrons and researchers on Monday, August 21 for a mandatory staff training.

Library operations will continue as scheduled on Tuesday, August 22. Please feel free to reach out to reutherreference@wayne.edu with any research questions, and we wish you a happy and productive August.

The Reuther Library regrets to share the sad news that, on June 7, 2023, Edward Littlejohn, a long-time Wayne State University Law Professor and major contributor to the Reuther Library’s holdings, passed. He was 88.  read more »

Reuther Library will be closed on Tuesday, July 4th, in observance of the holiday. We will return for our regular hours on Wednesday, July 5th.

Have a happy and safe Independence Day!

The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, is pleased to announce the acquisition of an archival collection documenting the life and work of Horace Sheffield Jr.

The Sheffield Collection will give insight into the life and work of a labor and community trailblazer through personal and family papers, correspondence, images, and ephemera collected over a life of leadership: as an official in UAW Local 600, founding member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), President of the Detroit CBTU, founder of the politically influential Trade Union Leadership Council (TULC) and Detroit Association of Black Organizations (DABO), director of the Detroit NAACP, and administrative assistant to UAW President Douglas Fraser.  read more »

Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Ron Williams collection, which comprise the first 16 years of the Detroit Metro Times, and the commencement of the publication’s digitization for research in partnership with the Detroit Metro Times and Euclid Media.  read more »

Reuther Library will be closed on Monday, June 19 in honor of the Juneteenth holiday.

We will return to support your research needs on Tuesday, June 20.

Please feel free to submit a request via Ask an Archivist and we will answer as soon as we return.

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce the opening of the UAW Office of the President: Stephen Yokich Records, now accessible to researchers and the public. Elected the UAW's president in 1994, Stephen Yokich served in that role until 2002.  read more »

Due to the high volume of researchers scheduled March 13-17, Reading Room availability is limited. Appointments are required and will be taken until capacity is reached. Please contact reutherreference@wayne.edu to schedule your appointment.

The Reuther Library will be closed Friday, March 3, as Wayne State University shifts to remote operations in anticipation of inclement weather. We can support your remote reference needs via email, and expect to be back to our standard Reading Room hours on Monday, March 6. Stay safe and warm!

The Reuther Library will be closed Wednesday, February 22, as Wayne State University shifts to remote operations in anticipation of inclement weather. We can support your remote reference needs via email, and expect to be back to our standard Reading Room hours on Thursday, February 23. Stay safe and warm!

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to announce the recipients of the 2023 Sam Fishman Award.

These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement.  read more »

Daniel Kelly received the 2022 Ronald Raven Annual Award, a scholarship providing a tuition stipend and a semester-long internship in the Wayne State University Archives. At the end of his internship, Daniel wrote this summary of his experience.

In March 2022, I received the Ronald Raven Award, which included a tuition stipend and an internship at the Wayne State University Archives in the Walter P. Reuther Library. The Raven Award, funded by Wayne State alumnus Ronald Raven, seemed like an exciting opportunity to gain real-world, hands-on archival experience under the direction of an experienced archivist.  read more »

The Reuther Library's Reading Room will be closed this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the Thanksgiving Holiday. The University is closed Nov. 24 and 25.

We are open Tuesday the 22nd and back to serve your research needs on Monday the 28th.

As always, feel free to submit a request via Ask an Archivist and we will answer as soon as we return.

Have a safe and happy holiday!

As of November 2022, the Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archives (JCA) is moving to a brand-new collections space at Temple Beth El as partner in the newly formed Center for Michigan Jewish Heritage. The JCA collections at Reuther are closed to patrons in preparation for transfer. Potential researchers and visitors should contact JCA Director Robbie Terman at terman@jfmd.org to plan your research visits going forward.  read more »

The Reuther Library will be closed on Tuesday, November 8 for Election Day.

We will be back to our standard Reading Room hours and reference services on Wednesday, November 9.

Have a happy and safe holiday!

We're pretty busy lately!

Sometimes our reading room fills up. If you know you are planning a visit, please let us know a few days in advance so we can add you to our calendar. Once we hit our reading room capacity, we will not be able to accept additional researchers.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

The Reuther Library is saddened by the news that Gerald McEntee, former president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has passed away at the age of 87.  read more »

The newest addition to the Michigan Dance Archives is now open to researchers: Cecchetti Council of America Records. The CCA is a membership-based dance education organization, established in 1939, dedicated to maintaining the standards and methods of ballet training established by Cavalier Enrico Cecchetti (1850-1928).  read more »

The Nettie Kravitz Papers join several others at the Reuther Library documenting the activities of the Johnson-Forest Tendency and its members. Before Kravitz was a professor of Women’s Studies and Literature at Oakland Community College, she was a member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency and later iterations. The socialist subgroup was led by CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya, taking its name from their respective pseudonyms, JR Johnson and Freddie Forest. The Nettie Kravitz Papers are among the most extensive records of  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to announce the recipients of the 2022 Sam Fishman Award.

These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement.  read more »

The Reuther Library is sorry to report the passing of Adam Shakoor, a former Chief Judge to the 36th District Court who had also served Detroit’s Deputy Mayor under the Coleman Young. He was in private practice as a lawyer during other parts of his professional life. He was 74 when he passed on March 20.

For those interested in studying Shakoor’s life and work in public service, the Reuther Library maintains his papers, which cover the period 1981-1993.  read more »

A scholarship fund named for late colleague, Dr. María Gonzalez has been set up for students working with underrepresented collections at the Reuther Library. María inspired faculty, alumni and students alike, teaching in the classroom and working in the community, at organizations like Detroit’s co-working and business incubator, the Green Garage.  read more »

Apply now for the 2022 Sam Fishman travel-to-collections grant! In addition to supporting travel, the award offers opportunities to present and share your research in progress.  read more »

The Albert Shanker Fellowship for Research in Education is now accepting applications! Apply by April 1 (decisions available by April 15).

This research grant, offered by AFT and the Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, provides assistance for advanced graduate students and junior/senior faculty utilizing the American Federation of Teachers archives as well as collections related to educational history housed at the Walter P. Reuther Library. Two grants in the amount of $600 each will be awarded in support of research.  read more »

The Reuther Library marks with sadness the death on February 4, 2022, of the honorable Avern Cohn. Cohn served as Senior United States District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan for forty years, retiring in 2019. His professional and personal papers, Avern L. Cohn Papers, have been part of the Reuther’s collections for several years and represent his wide-ranging interests and activities, from legal opinions and writings, to Michigan, Detroit and Jewish history, and to family matters, philanthropy and leisure travel.  read more »

Watching footage of NASA’s space shuttles blasting off and orbiting the globe, did you realize you were looking at union-made vehicles? Just like a Corvette or F-150, those spaceships (along with their giant orange boosters) were built by union labor, represented by the UAW.

The newly opened addition to the UAW Aerospace Department Records shines a light on the industry side of aerospace.  read more »

How might the relationship and flow of information between parents and the Detroit Board of Education affect the quality and locality of a child’s education? How were the parents of children involved in the inter-district busing debate of the early 1970s informed on the judicial and legal changes factoring into their children’s education?  read more »

Why was the United Auto Workers union involved in the highly controversial legal issue of racially-integrating busing policies in the Pontiac school district? From an outsider’s perspective, there is no clear link. The issue of forced busing has nothing to do with a worker’s union. However, it is important to remember that these workers went home to their families each night.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, invites applications for the Ronald Raven Annual Award for the Winter 2022 semester. Graduate students enrolled in Wayne State’s History Department or the School of Information Sciences are eligible for this award. The successful applicant must be in good academic standing and demonstrate financial need. The award consists of a $1,500 tuition stipend and a semester-long internship in the University Archives. Students who have completed the introductory archival administration course LIS 7710/HIS 7840 are strongly encouraged to apply. The application deadline has been extended to January 31, 2022; preference will be given to early applicants. For details, please see our scholarships page.

Reuther Library will be closed during Wayne State's winter recess starting December 23 at noon.

We hope you have a safe and happy break. We will be returning to our standard Reading Room hours and reference and scanning services upon our return on January 3.

“Several years ago Marvin Fleming, at that time a WBR-3 Trash Collector in the Division of Sanitation, became the instrument through which one of the most deliberate and pernicious systems of racial discrimination in the District government was smashed.”  read more »

The Reuther library is proud to announce the opening of the WWJ / WDIV Film, Video, and Teleprompter Script collection. The collection spans close to 100 years and is the largest archival collection of news-related moving images in metropolitan Detroit.  read more »

Of the many online resources the Reuther Library makes available to its patrons, we now provide a link to another one: Historian Thomas Klug’s Bibliography of Detroit History, Politics, and Culture: Late-19th Century to the Present.  read more »

The Michigan Dance Archives (MDA) at the Reuther Library notes with sadness the passing of Denise Szykula, whose papers became part of the MDA in 2018.  read more »

The Reuther Library is happy to announce the opening of an addition to the UAW Community Action Program (CAP) Department Records. These new records offer insights into elections from 1960-1972, with an emphasis on political races in Metro Detroit.  read more »

We are now open to all researchers and no appointments are required.

New permanent Reading Room hours will run from 9:30-12 and 1-3:30. All in-person researchers must follow Wayne State University's vaccine and masking requirements and visitors will need to fill out the campus daily screener before arrival. Be ready to show your QR code!  read more »

Michael W. Kerwin passed away on July 19, 2021 at the age of 97. A portion of his archival papers are now available for research.

Kerwin was well-known and respected for his activism and long-term involvement in labor, democratic politics, and Irish communities of Detroit. His involvement with the UAW began when he moved to Detroit in 1950 and started a position working at American Metal Products Co. and became a member of the local Education Committee. His interest of participating on the Education Committee lead to a job with the UAW Education Department, where he worked for almost 30 years.  read more »

What we now know as the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs began in 1958 as the Wayne State University Archives. For the next 34 years, Dr. Philip Parker Mason would serve as its Director. During his tenure in that capacity, he would initiate one of the first archival education programs, establish conferences and professional organizations, publish numerous books and other publications, conduct countless oral histories, serve as president of the Society of American Archivists, and build what would be considered the premier labor archives in the United States. Now an oral history documenting Mason’s life and career is available for review at the Reuther Library.  read more »

The Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs continues to serve your needs as researchers with a focus on safety considerations to keep our staff, researchers, and communities healthy. We are pleased to share our current plan for research operations. Though we are not yet offering walk-in visits at this time, we have developed a plan for limited safe access. Please watch this space and our social media accounts for access updates over the coming months.  read more »

A Detroit without cars is hard to imagine, but like any city predating the automobile, the streets weren’t initially designed for a driving culture. Carved first by foot and then by wooden wheel, the landscape had to be adapted to new demands brought by cars. A visual evolution of Michigan Avenue can be traced in the Reuther’s Virtual Motor City, a collection of Detroit News photographs spanning 1860-1980.  read more »

In May 1995, collective bargaining negotiations began normally between the jointly operated Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News and the six unions representing the workforce at The Detroit Newspapers (DNA), Teamsters Local 372, Detroit Mailers Local 2040, Newspaper Guild Local 22, Graphic Communication International Union Locals 13N and 289M, and the Detroit Typographical Union Local 18. Negotiations broke down two months later when the DNA tried to back out of the joint bargaining format with the six unions that had been in place since 1989. In protest, approximately 2,500 employees of the DNA walked out to strike on July 13, 1995. Robert Musial, a striking newspaper worker, gathered the material in this collection to document the strike from his perspective.  read more »

In Memoriam
Philip Parker Mason
April 27, 1927-May 6, 2021

The Walter P. Reuther Library regrets to share the sad news that its founding Director, Dr. Philip Parker Mason, has passed. He was 94. In addition to serving as the Reuther’s founding Director, a position he first occupied in 1958, his contributions to the larger archival profession and as a historian with an extensive publication record, consultancies, and teaching portfolio, reflects a depth and variety that is not often found in the academic community. Many of Mason’s accomplishments are outlined in an oral history where he was the subject. Conducted by Dr. Louis Jones, this forthcoming resource will be available for review at Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the opening of the Avern L. Cohn Papers, now accessible to researchers and the public. The materials in this collection represent the scope of Judge Avern Cohn’s professional life and his wide-ranging interests and activities, from history to family matters and philanthropy to leisure travel. The papers include correspondence, opinions and orders, speeches and writings, scrapbooks, files on a large array of topics and some audio-visual materials.  read more »

A lesser-known, and maybe surprising, source for historians and researchers looking at 20th-century race relations in Detroit are the Jewish Community Council Records, part of the Jewish Community Archives at the Reuther Library.

This large collection documents grassroots discussions and actions in Detroit’s Jewish community and the wider urban community particularly from the 1940s to the 1970s.  read more »

Former SEIU President John Sweeney passed away Monday, February 1, 2021 at the age of 86. Sweeney was well known for his union work, both as former president of the AFL-CIO (1995-2009) and as former president of the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) (1980-1995).  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Wayne State University seeks applicants for the position of University Archivist. Reporting to the Reuther Library Director, the successful candidate will develop and maintain the collections of the University Archives and provide leadership and vision in archival administration and the use of university records.  read more »

The Reuther will be closed Monday January 18 in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

We hope you'll take the time to reflect on Dr. King's life and work. Our collections offer some opportunities:

The creation of Dr. King Day
Dr. King's support of the Memphis Sanitation Worker Strike of 1968
Dr. King's first delivery of the "I Have a Dream" speech at Detroit's TCF Center (then Cobo Hall)

We are pleased to assist you in finding materials related to Dr. King (or any topic) via Ask an Archivist.

The Reuther Library will be closed during Wayne State's winter recess starting December 24.

We hope you have a safe and happy break. We will be returning to our Fall 2020 operating procedures starting January 11.

This fall a project group made up of Reuther archivists and Wayne State College of Education faculty launched the Bridging the Gap Project, an effort to bring archivists and teachers together to craft relevant primary source-focused for K-12 students. The project is funded by the National Historic Publications and Records Commission.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs is proud to announce that the Detroit Revolutionary Movements (DRM) Records are now freely available online.

These materials offer firsthand information about the demands, political viewpoints and allies of Black workers during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The records are especially relevant today as evidence of community-based activism that is formative to today’s social and political movements.  read more »

Appointments for WSU affiliates will be available in 2-hour sessions (10-2 or 2-4), Monday through Thursday.

• Appointments must be made at least 2 business days in advance to allow us to retrieve your materials and quarantine them before your arrival.

• Appointments are available from 10-12 or 2-4. No researchers will be able to remain in the Reading Room during the midday break.

• We will schedule Reading Room appointments to enable us to complete our material quarantine and cleaning process.

• Visitors must complete the Campus Daily Screener. Please arrive on time as staffing is scheduled around your appointment.

• Researchers may request up to 6 boxes (please consult with archivist). No additional boxes can be pulled during your visit.

• Our research space only allows safe distance for a finite number of researchers, so if we are at capacity, we will help you select an alternate day/time for your appointment.

During your visit

• Researchers must wear a mask to enter the building and at all times during their visit. An archivist will greet you when you arrive and scan your QR code confirmation of Campus Daily Screener. Please make sure to keep a 6-foot distance from all others in the building. You will have a designated seat in the Reading Room to ensure a safe distance.

• Restrooms are located on either side of the Reading Room. Before touching materials, wash hands thoroughly. Alcohol-based sanitizers can damage documents.

• Additional Reading Room guidelines apply.

Please do not travel to the library if you have not received an appointment confirmation email from us. If you are not feeling well, we are happy to reschedule your appointment for everyone’s safety.

If you require more than one appointment, please discuss this with an archivist before you schedule your visit.

We recommend downloading a pdf scanning app for your phone or tablet in order to quickly make digital surrogates of material. As always, material cannot be photocopied and our current staffing model does not allow for same-day scanning requests.

1. What is the best way to learn more about the Reuther’s collections remotely?

Please start by visiting our finding aid search at http://archives.wayne.edu or by using the advanced search bar at the top right of this page.

2. I’m having a hard time navigating your finding aids online. Can I talk to an archivist about my topic before I have boxes selected?

Yes! We’re happy to offer advice on search terms or how to find the collections you might need. Email reutherreference@wayne.edu. We are also able to speak with you via Teams (or Zoom if you prefer).

3. How much material can I have scanned and sent to me remotely?

In order to help as many people as possible, we may need to limit researchers to 10 folders per request. While it is certainly possible to ask for more than 10 folders, you may receive material in several phases. Please speak with an archivist if you need assistance narrowing your request or prioritizing materials.

4. Is the Reuther currently supporting classes or offering class visits?

We are available for remote class visits and (beginning in fall), in-person visits with a limit on attendees. Please email @meghan.courtney@wayne.edu to talk about your needs.

5. What are archivists doing if they’re not available in the reading room?

Most of the Reuther's work is continuing as normal. In addition to serving patron research requests remotely, staff continue to apply metadata, work on arrangement and description, develop classroom tools, work with donor organizations, conduct oral histories, produce podcasts, write blog posts, practice digital preservation, and reach out to potential material donors. If you would like to collaborate beyond a simple research request, please reach out.

6. What if I have material I’d like to donate to the Reuther?

Our field archivist Louis Jones would love to discuss your donation. Please contact him at louis.jones@wayne.edu

7. When will the reading room open to researchers outside of WSU?

We expect to update our policies soon. As access changes, we will post notices here and on our social media accounts, listed at the top left of this page.

The Walter P. Reuther Library seeks the interviewees (or heirs thereof) in our “Black Workers in the Labor Movement Oral History Project” in order to make transcripts available to our researchers online. As a resource that has been widely used in the past, we are confident that online access will spur a greater level of research.  read more »

Detroit’s Black citizens have faced a long, complicated history of struggle and perseverance. While the voices of Black individuals are generally underrepresented in archives, Reuther Library has a number of collections that help document this history in varied formats and perspectives, and we've added more in recent years. Here are descriptions of just a few of these notable collections:  read more »

By EmmaLee Herlocher, practicum student in Wayne State's School of Information Science, Summer 2020

The Ernest L. Horne papers documents the activities of the gay and lesbian liberation movement in Detroit from 1984 through 1996, primarily through the records of three organizations Horne as involved in: Association of Suburban People (ASP), South Eastern Michigan Gay and Lesbian Association (SEMGLA), and Detroit Area Gay and Lesbian Council (DAGLC). For the second half of my practicum, I worked with the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University to create a set of archival documents based on these important records to be used in classroom settings, including a teacher plan to help guide discussions.  read more »

The Reuther Library welcomed Dallas Pillen as its new technical services archivist in June. In this position, he will be working with the Reuther’s technical systems, managing metadata about the Reuther’s collections, and assisting the Reuther’s archivists and donors in transferring and preserving digital files. “I am really excited about all the great opportunities that exist to provide and promote remote access to digital content,” he said.  read more »

By Alexandra Penn, Taylor Gibson, and Louis Jones

Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library, in partnership with the Wayne State University student chapter of the Society of American Archivists, is pleased to present an online version of the Michigan Black History Bibliography (MBHB), which originally existed as a card file. The online version of the card file contains hundreds of bibliographic references to sources illuminating the history of African Americans in Michigan up until the early 1970s.  read more »

We are currently closed to the public to limit the spread of COVID-19. For now, we will do our best to assist you virtually.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs continues to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and all those fighting for racial justice. Over the past 60 years,  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library wants to hear from our community about your experiences during COVID-19.

We acknowledge that our community has been hit hard by the virus: Black Detroiters face higher mortality rates than the US average, workers represented by our partner unions have lost jobs or confront risks as essential workers.  read more »

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the tragic passing of Walter and May Reuther. As we solemnly commemorate this event, we also celebrate the lives of two individuals who dedicated so much to the labor movement and transformed society throughout America and abroad.  read more »

In celebration of May Day, the Reuther Library is pleased to share a new image gallery: Industrial Workers of the World Graphic Materials and Artifacts.  read more »

On March 8th, I left Detroit for Alternative Spring Break (ASB) at the Maryland State Archives. At the time, my plan was to return from ASB to the Reuther Library and finish my practicum by mid-April. I had my hesitations about traveling, but I put my concerns aside  read more »

The John C. Leggett Papers, a collection illuminating the class and race struggles of 1960s Detroit, is now available for research. Leggett, a sociologist and academic, focused his studies on the impacts of labor and race on society. The collection, spanning from 1955-1960, contains academic writings and research related to those studies.  read more »

We are excited to announce that Aliqae Geraci has taken the helm as the new director of the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, a position she relishes because of the, “Strength and breadth of its labor union and organizational collections, the expertise and experience of Reuther staff, and Reuther's place within a major research library system and urban research university.”  read more »

The images chosen from the newly opened Jack Conway photographs reflect Jack T. Conway and his close relationship to Walter P. Reuther.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to announce the recipients of the 2020 Sam Fishman Award.

These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement.  read more »

UAW President Emeritus Owen Bieber passed away yesterday, on February 17, 2020. Bieber was a respected figure in the labor movement, known for his commitment to civil rights and steady leadership during turbulent times for organized labor.  read more »

From the minutiae of removing rusted metal fasteners to discussing the legalities of redacting personally identifiable information,  read more »

Recently processed and made available to researchers is the collection Wayne State University English Department Records, with documents dating from the late 1920s to the 1980s. The processing of this collection was made possible in part through the generosity of Leslie Keyes and Hillary Keyes, daughters of former WSU faculty member Daniel Keyes.  read more »

This January 23, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs and Detroit Sound Conservancy present Music in the Archives: A Celebration of Detroit’s Aural History featuring performances by Melvin Davis, Detroit’s Soul Ambassador, and Ron English and his trio  read more »

Learn more about the information offered in our December Historical Calendar, featured in person during the 2019 Noel Night:

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Alabama.
December,  read more »

This is the time of year that we love to indulge in sharing spooky tales with one another. In Southeastern Michigan, there is no lack of supposedly haunted places–many of which make an appearance in the Folklore Archive. The following three stories of haunted places evolved throughout the last 100 years and were recorded and analyzed by students in their field reports.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce the beta launch of Wayne State Library System’s ArchivesSpace Public User Interface. Patrons can explore finding aids from the Reuther and Library Special Collections through ArchivesSpace@Wayne.

Current finding aids on the Reuther’s website will remain in place until beta testing is complete.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit in our Leonard Woodcock Gallery: Women of the Industrial Workers of the World. The exhibit celebrates the militant revolutionaries, “rebel girls,”  read more »

As a graduate student assistant from the School of Information Science, I had a unique opportunity this summer to work on an archival project in the Walter P. Reuther Library. Although my primary professional interest has been working as a librarian once I graduate, I have often wondered about the work of an archivist and some of the things that go on within the Reuther on a day-to-day basis. My task this summer was to create a lesson plan on a subject of my choosing for the Archives and Primary Resources Lab (APREL). After much consideration I decided to focus my project on Judge Damon J. Keith. I wanted my topic to be relevant yet timeless, and of great importance to communities across metro-Detroit.  read more »

Civil rights activist Viola Gregg Liuzzo was remembered and honored on July 23, 2019, when a new sculpture, by local artist Austen Brantley, was dedicated at the Detroit park named after her.

Liuzzo, born in 1925 and a mother of five living in the Detroit area, attended classes at Wayne State University for several years in the early 1960s. In 1965, she drove to Selma, Alabama, to join activists at voter-registration drives and marches led by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to announce a new installation by artist Robbin Henderson. Based on archival documents and photographs from her research at the Reuther Library and other archives, Henderson’s original scratchboard drawings tell the life story of her grandmother – Socialist, IWW organizer, writer, and activist Matilda (Rabinowitz) Robbins (1887-1963).  read more »

A triumph of science that landed astronauts on the moon for the first time ever, the singularly historic Apollo 11 mission succeeded thanks to the bravery of Neil Armstrong and his crew. On Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary, it’s also worth noting the contributions of UAW members who played a vital role in its success.  read more »

Today it is known as the fundraising branch of the United Way of Southeastern Michigan, but in 1935 it was the Detroit Community Fund and it was $150,000 in debt. Out of this crisis, the Women’s Mob was born. Looking at the lackluster state of community service funds raised by the City of Detroit,  read more »

Please note: The oral history course collections mentioned in this post have been consolidated into one collection: Wayne State University Oral History Methodology Course Oral Histories. Please refer to the finding aid here: https://archives.wayne.edu/repositories/2/resources/3381.

The history of the Detroit Incinerator, later rebranded as Detroit Renewable Power, is a microcosm of the history of intersections of environmental and social justice. The Reuther Library has many collections related to the community response surrounding the Incinerator’s building and operation. It was originally built in 1986 near the corner of Russell and East Ferry Street. Billed as the “world’s largest” trash incinerator,  read more »

Frank Cody, 1933-1942

Frank Cody, the first president of Wayne University, was superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools from 1919 until 1942.  read more »

Virginia Park, now officially a historic neighborhood in Detroit, was at the heart of the 1967 Rebellion. The district sits along Virginia Park Boulevard between Woodward and John R. and is now considered part of the New Center area. The neighborhood was the location of the Algiers Motel incident  read more »

When I started as the UAW Archivist, one unprocessed collection stood as the clear priority to open to the public: The UAW Local 600 Records. The largest and arguably most influential local in the historic UAW, numerous researchers clamored for the papers since the union deposited them in the archives.  read more »

The Reuther Library mourns the passing of Judge Damon Jerome Keith who made his transition April 28, 2019. A Detroit native and the grandson of enslaved Africans, Judge Keith lived during a number of pivotal moments in American and world history. Forced to endure and negotiate the confines of a world that too often worked against the interests and advancement of African Americans, he succeeded in life while making enduring contributions to its betterment.  read more »

Please note: The oral history course collections mentioned in this post have been consolidated into one collection: Wayne State University Oral History Methodology Course Oral Histories. Please refer to the finding aid here: https://archives.wayne.edu/repositories/2/resources/3381.

Over the course of the last few months I had the opportunity to work at the Reuther Library processing oral history collections. This was an incredible experience through which I was able to create tools to increase researchers' access to four relatively new collections: the Wayne State University Oral History Course Oral Histories. These four collections are a treasure for researchers studying a number of topics.  read more »

Fifty-five years ago, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees elected a new president who would dramatically change the trajectory of the union.

A founding member of the Wisconsin Service Employees Association in 1932, Arnold Zander took the lead in forming the national public employee union that would become AFSCME.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to announce the recipients of the 2019 Sam Fishman Award.

These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, a former UAW and Michigan AFL-CIO leader.

As part of their research visits, awardees are invited to speak about their work at an informal event at the Reuther Library and/or discuss their research on Tales From the Reuther Library.  read more »

The Reuther Library will be closed Wednesday, January 30, and Thursday, January 31 due to inclement weather. Please do not hesitate to submit your questions via our "Ask an Archivist" button to your left and we will answer when we return. Stay safe!

The Reuther Library's Archives and Primary Resource Education Lab (APREL) seeks a paid intern for the 2019 Winter term.

The Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, is the home to thousands of archival collections documenting the international labor movement, urban and political life in Southeast Michigan, and Wayne State University. Though the library has always served academic researchers, we have adopted a new focus on reaching younger students, particularly undergraduates and high school students.  read more »

The Reuther Library will be closed this December 22-January 1. We will resume normal hours on January 2nd.

We wish you all a safe and restful break, and we look forward to serving you in the new year. Please feel free to submit reference questions at Ask an Archivist and we will make sure to answer them  read more »

My experience with the SS Wayne Victory Ship began as a piece of dumb luck. My boss had submitted his resignation to Wayne State University and I was tasked with cleaning out his office.  read more »

Voices of the United Farm Workers in Texas (2016)
Documentary Screening
12-1:30pm
Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs
5401 Cass Ave.

Join the Reuther Library on December 4 for a screening of Voices of the UFW in Texas, a new documentary detailing the 1966-1967 melon workers' strike and organizing drives in Texas over the next 4 decades.  read more »

Lillian Roberts almost spent Christmas in jail.

The series of events leading up to December 1968 began more than a year before. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller decided to make the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) the sole collective bargaining representative for state employees, rather than allowing those employees to make their own choice. Rockefeller promised to hold a representation election after a year, but he failed to keep his word.  read more »

Join the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University this December 1 for Noel Night!

This year we'll open our doors from 4pm-9pm, and we hope you will visit us for festivities for all ages. We're conveniently located at 5401 Cass, right where the carriage rides begin and end.  read more »

Learn more about the information offered in our December Historical Calendar, featured in person during the 2018 Noel Night:

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Alabama.
December 2,  read more »

In honor of centennial of the end of the First World War, the Reuther Library is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibit Armistice 1918: Detroit and the End of the Great War. The exhibit shares a brief, candid glimpse of the massive celebrations that marked the surrender of Germany and the return of the troops home later in the Spring of 1919, capturing the joy and relief of citizens and soldiers alike. The photo prints, made from original 5x7 glass plate negatives, are stunning in both their content and clarity. The exhibit will be on display in the Leonard Woodcock Gallery through Spring 2018.  read more »

It is that time of year again! Prepare thyself for the long nights to come with a sampling of supernatural tales drawn from student fieldwork projects for the Folklore Archive.  read more »

Join the Reuther Library on October 25 from 12-1 for a research discussion from Fishman Grant Recipient Kelly Goodman of Yale University.

In her forthcoming dissertation Taxing Limits: The Political Economy of American School Finance, Goodman explores both the grassroots and elite political history of funding education through local and state taxes. Goodman uses the example of 1930s and 1970s public budget crises in Michigan and California, notable for their powerful  read more »

In 2017, United Way for Southeastern Michigan (UWSM) celebrated a major milestone: 100 years of continuous promotion of social services to those in need. In addition, the organization’s 10-year plan Agenda for Change concludes this year. Targeting the greater Detroit region, it focuses on access to education, income,  read more »

Join us next Wednesday, October 17th, 2018 for the latest installment of the
Wayne State 150th Panel Series: Organizing Auto Workers, Organizing their History: The UAW and the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University's Sesquicentennial

The history, legacy, and future of United Auto Workers (UAW) Union will be examined by a distinguished panel of speakers, including Marick Masters, Director of Labor@Wayne at Wayne State University;  read more »

Join us next Wednesday, October 10th at 3pm for Sherry Lee Linkon's talk on her book, The Half-Life of Deindustrialization.

From the book's description, "Starting in the late 1970s, tens of thousands of American industrial workers lost jobs in factories and mines. Deindustrialization had dramatic effects on those workers and their communities, but  read more »

The new season of the hit podcast Crimetown will use material from various collections at the Walter P. Reuther Library. Each season of Crimetown examines the “culture of crime” in a different American city. This upcoming season they are focusing on Detroit and using film, video, and sound from the Reuther’s collections.  read more »

The Reuther Library welcomes Sarah Lebovitz to its staff as the archivist for the Service Employees International Union.

Receiving a 2017 graduate degree from the University of Michigan’s School of Information, Sarah specialized in Archives and Records Management from that institution.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce our latest image gallery: Selections from the Jerome P. Cavanagh Photographs.

Jerome P. Cavanagh (1928-1979) was mayor of the city of Detroit from 1962 until 1970. Born in Detroit on June 16, 1928, Cavanagh was  read more »

Guest post by Anita Millers
I am honored to be chosen as the most recent recipient of the Ronald Raven Award. I have a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from Wayne State University (WSU) and am enrolled in the Graduate Certificate Program in Archival Administration.  read more »

Recent work on papers donated to the Reuther Library has created new interest in the Michigan Dance Archives, which focuses on the history of dance in the Detroit metro area and across Michigan. The Michigan Dance Archives (MDA) was established in 1994 to acquire and preserve the rich heritage of Michigan dance, and it includes the papers of its founder Harriet Berg.  read more »

Join the Reuther Library this Wednesday, August 29, for a brown bag research presentation from Jeremy Milloy, PhD., who visits us from Trent University in Ontario.

Describing his work, Milloy explains, "Beginning in the 1960s, drug use by workers became a major societal concern in the United States and Canada. This discovery of a 'drug problem' among workers was a historic shift with meaningful consequences for workers, employers, unions, and the North American workplace.  read more »

As part of my NextGen program participation, I was asked to help the Reuther Library create some teaching materials that would help students engage with primary sources. Being a PhD Student at Wayne’s History Department, I took on the task with enthusiasm. What I found ended up being far more significant for the field of labor history than I anticipated.  read more »

Please join the Reuther Library from 12-1 this Thursday, July 12, for a research presentation by Andreas Meyris on 1920s radicalism and its impact on the New Deal.

Meyris studies American networks of radicalism and reform during the "roaring twenties." While historians correctly describe the twenties as "lean years" for progressive action, Meyris argues that American opposition to the corporate capitalism of the Republican Party becomes more significant when studying this decade. Twenties radicalism, then, may have played an important role in shaping New Deal reforms.

Meyris plans to investigate the Reuther Library’s Brookwood Labor College Records in particular. The school played an important role  read more »

Check out the latest episode of Tales From the Reuther Library, our bi-weekly podcast! This episode, Jessica Levy explains how American corporations and black entrepreneurs worked together to forge a new politics linking American business with black liberation at home and abroad, focusing particularly on Leon Howard Sullivan,  read more »

Please note:

The Reuther Library will be closed this Wednesday, July 4. We are open regular hours the rest of the week.

We hope you have a safe and happy holiday, and we welcome your inquiries July 2-3 and 5-6.

President Lincoln is popularly given credit for freeing enslaved people in the United States with the Emancipation Proclamation. Though he personally did not support the use of slavery, his reasons for creating this proclamation were seen as more political and military than out of an advocacy for human and civil rights. His order, given as President and Commander in Chief of the military, did free people being held as slaves, but only in states that were in active rebellion against the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation gave military forces the authority and power to liberate slaves as they continued to gain ground in the South states.

But what does this have to do with Juneteenth? What is Juneteenth you might ask?  read more »

7:00-8:30 p.m.
David Adamany Undergraduate Library
3rd floor Community Room
 
Since the 1969 Stonewall riots, June has included a celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) culture, starting with the first Christopher Street Parade in 1970. Fifty years ago, there was virtually no public support for LGBTQ rights but now marriage equality is the law of the land. Between these two ends of the spectrum lies a rich history of fighting for equality in nearly every area of public life.  read more »

Please join the Reuther Library for a brown-bag discussion with Jessica Levy of Johns Hopkins University, winner of a Sam Fishman Award, who will be discussing her project, "Black Power, Inc.: Global American Business and the Post-Apartheid City" from 12-1pm in the Reuther Library conference room.

This project attempts to explain the rise of black empowerment in the United States and southern Africa during the late twentieth-century. Black empowerment, defined as private and government programs promoting black entrepreneurship, vocational training, and other forms of black commercial activity, flourished in the late twentieth-century as a popular response to racial unrest in urban areas from North Philadelphia to Soweto.  read more »

The Reuther Library has several recognizable and notable members of the community within its stacks. One such figure, Dr. Cornelius Golightly, happens to be a well-known philosopher and trailblazing African American educator.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library, in collaboration with the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights, is proud to host photographer Richard L. Copley as he discusses his work and experiences during the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike.  read more »

We are excited to announce the release of our new podcast, Tales from the Reuther Library, in which archivists and researchers at the Reuther Library share stories from our collections about the American labor movement, metropolitan Detroit, and Wayne State University.  read more »

The Reuther Library is proud to have Gavin Strassel as the new UAW Archivist.

Strassel has long been an important part of the Reuther Library team. He came to the Reuther in December 2013 as an Archives Technician.  read more »

Please join the Reuther Library at Noon on May 22 for a brown bag research talk from Dr. Dominique Pinsolle, Associate Professor, University of Bordeaux Montaigne entitled
"Rediscovering Sabotage: How an Industrial Concept Became a National Threat in France and the United States, 1897-1918."

Dr. Pinsolle’s research provides a comparative and transnational perspective on sabotage as a labor tactic in the United States and France. In both countries,  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to welcome Shae Rafferty as the Labor and Urban Affairs (LUAC) Archivist. Shae brings a breadth of experience to this newly-created position that focuses on processing, arranging and describing new collections so they may be  read more »

Join the Reuther Library at 12, May 14th, for a Talk from John Buchkoski from the University of Oklahoma.

Buchkoski will discuss his research on a forthcoming work entitled “Speak to the Earth and it Shall Teach Thee: Catholic Nuns, The United Farmworkers Movement, and the Rise of an Environmental Ethic, 1962-1978.” The research explores organizations formed by nuns – including  read more »

Every first Saturday in May, sports fans take in the historic Kentucky Derby, "the most exciting two minutes in sports." The pinnacle of horse racing, the Derby takes place at Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville, Kentucky. Most spectators focuson the horses and jockeys, but the race would be impossible without the efforts of thousands of racetrack employees  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University is pleased to announce the awards from the Sam Fishman Travel Grant program for 2018. These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, a former UAW and Michigan AFL-CIO leader.

As part of their research visits, awardees are invited to speak about their work at an informal event at the Reuther Library or as part of the North American Labor History Conference (NALHC) held on the Wayne State University campus in the fall. Watch for details of these events as individuals finalize their travel and research plans.

The 2018 awardees are:  read more »

Although Wayne State University archivist Alison Stankrauff loved history, she wasn't quite sure what to do with her history degree as an undergraduate student at Antioch College in Ohio. That changed when she landed an internship at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. There, she was tasked with researching the oldest house in the city, built by the city's founders and rumored to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.  read more »

Thomas Oliver “T.O.” Jones believed a union for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee was a necessity. A sanitation worker himself, he experienced the unfair working conditions and accompanying low pay. It was the 1960s and forty percent of full-time Memphis sanitation workers qualified for welfare assistance. The men had to carry heavy trash bins, often leaking waste, from residents’ yards to the trucks in sweltering Memphis heat. Black workers did not  read more »

In 1968, Memphis sanitation workers, AFSCME Local 1733, went on strike for increased wages and union recognition, but most importantly, to be treated with respect and dignity. The strike became an important chapter in the civil rights movement, attracting the support of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was visiting the striking workers when he was assassinated. Photographer Richard L. Copley documented key moments  read more »

While the number of women in engineering increased dramatically between 1900 and 1950, the actual number of women in engineering was still quite small: approximately 3,000 women, or just two-tenths of one percent of working engineers in the United States. Detroit's automobile industry presented a growing number of opportunities for women in engineering, however, and local papers in the 1950s and 1960s frequently published articles about these female curiosities in what was still very much considered "a man's world." The stories of Society of Women Engineers Detroit Section members provide a fascinating look at the opportunities and challenges faced by midcentury women engineers as they thrived–or not–in the Motor City.  read more »

Wayne State and Title IX Panel Discussion
Thursday, March 22
11 a.m.
Purdy/Kresge Library Simons Room (144)

Many people think of Title IX as mostly affecting sports but its reach on college campuses goes far beyond athletics.  read more »

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, this Folklore Friday we focus on the legends, beliefs, and traditions of the Irish, as recorded by students for their individual field projects.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is happy to announce an addition to the NAACP Detroit Branch Records collection.

The Detroit Branch of the NAACP was established in 1912, making it one of the oldest branches in the country. Over the past century, this organization has worked to support and improve the lives of African Americans, particularly in areas of housing, employment, education, police-community relations, and voting.  read more »

On February 29, 1968, The Kerner Commission issued its report on the root causes of urban rebellion in the United States. Though the report was a top-down response to inequality, it was not the only response to growing unrest in American cities. That same year, Ralph Abernathy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. planned the Poor People’s Campaign to address a lack of economic opportunity through grassroots organizing and demonstration.  read more »

Whether you celebrate the 14th of February or not, the day provides a good opportunity to take a closer look at some of the intimate stories contained within the Reuther's collections. While our purpose for collecting personal papers lies in their connections to organizations or social movements that help our understanding of the history of labor, metropolitan Detroit, or Wayne State University, it is often impossible to separate the private person from his/her public accomplishments. There is perhaps no better example of this than the Matilda Robbins Papers and the story of a deep love contained within.  read more »

As PyeongChang prepares to light the torch for the 2018 Olympics, we are reminded of when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) almost passed the baton to the city of Detroit. The story of Detroit’s persuasive and nearly successful endeavor to bring the 1968 Olympic games to the Motor City is told through the documents of the Jerome Cavanagh Papers at the Walter P. Reuther Library. Detroit, thanks to postwar economic growth, had previously been suggested as the United States’ pick as Olympic candidate city.  read more »

Wayne State enjoys one of the most distinctive campuses in the state. The development of this space, however, has been a constant challenge due to its urban setting and lack of available land. The campus we enjoy today is the result of nearly 100 years of adaptive reuse of historic structures and new construction.  read more »

On February 1, 1968, Robert Walker and Echol Cole of Memphis, Tennessee were killed on the job by a malfunctioning garbage truck. Ten days later, members of their union, AFSCME Local 1733, voted to strike. Their struggle for recognition of their union and their humanity caught the attention of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the entire nation.

Please join the Walter P. Reuther Library and AFSCME in observing a moment of silence for for these men.  read more »

Wayne State University has a big birthday this year – 150 years! Wayne State University has been a critical artery in the heart of Detroit and been vital to the lives of so many in the city and around the world.  read more »

Longtime AFSCME leader Paul Booth has passed away at the age of 74.  read more »

It was truly an honor to receive the Fall 2017 Raven Award and an invaluable experience to work closely with the audiovisual archivists at the Reuther Library. I am in my second year as a graduate student at Wayne State  read more »

Until recently the only way to find Reuther collections online was by using Reuther website. While the website still provides the most information about all our 1700+ archival collections, they can now also be found by searching the WSU Library catalog. This new functionality makes our collections more findable, and is particularly useful if you are looking for a variety of material types. For example, if you need both primary sources (e.g., archival materials), and secondary sources (e.g., books), you can do one search using the library catalog that will return results for both types of material.  read more »

As 2017 draws to a close, it is time to look forward to all that is to come in the new year. This Folklore Friday we are sharing traditions and beliefs concerning New Year’s Eve. These customs are taken from student projects within the Folklore Archive that include interviews with immigrants or first-generation members of different ethnic communities throughout Southeastern Michigan, largely from Southern and Eastern Europe.  read more »

Please note that the Reuther Library will be closed from December 25 to January 1 for Wayne State University's winter break.

We are open until 4pm on December 22nd, and will we back to serve your needs in the reading room January 2 at 10am.

Please feel free to submit reference questions at Ask An Archivist and we will get back to you when we return.

Have a safe and happy holiday season!

This fall we have processed two new collections that add to the history of desegregation efforts in Detroit schools. These collections highlight the disparate perspectives represented in archives, where pieces of evidence can be assessed together to gain a deeper understanding of events in the past.

Attempts to desegregate Detroit Public Schools, particularly the court case Bradley v Milliken during the 1970s and 1980s, were very controversial endeavors.  read more »

The Reuther Library is proud to house archival materials detailing the work of William Bunge, former Wayne State Professor and activist, who created the Detroit Geographical Expedition Institute to offer free courses to Detroit residents in cartography, geography, community activism, and urban planning. Over the years, Bunge’s radical stances brought him into conflict with the university administration and the United States Government.  read more »

Join the Reuther Library for our second year as a participant in Midtown’s Noel Night, this Saturday, December 2. We will be welcoming visitors from 5-10pm and offering free photos in front of historic photo backdrops, snacks and hot chocolate, access to our exhibit spaces, activities, and more.  read more »

Please note: Wayne State University and the Reuther Library will be closed this Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving Holiday. We are open Wednesday the 22nd and back to serve your needs on Monday the 27th.

As always, feel free to submit a request via Ask an Archivist and we will answer as soon as we return.

Have a safe and happy holiday!

Dawn Mabalon, Associate Professor at San Francisco State University, will share her research on the life and work of Larry Itliong, a Filipino leader of California’s farm labor movement. It focuses on relationships between Filipino and Mexican farm workers, reframing this struggle in multi-ethnic and multi-generational contexts to be more inclusive of radical Filipino American perspectives.  read more »

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Prismatic Club, the Reuther Library has opened the records of the Detroit-based men’s private social club.

The Prismatic Club was founded by Samuel R. Bartlett on January 10, 1867, in Detroit.  read more »

Halloween is nearly upon us and what better way to celebrate the long, dark nights to come than through an exploration of Detroit’s supernatural landscape?  read more »

Reuther archivists are always looking for new ways to publicize the collections under their care and share the stories hidden within. Recently, Society of Women Engineers archivist Troy Eller English embarked on a new project to share stories from SWE's history and archival collections. Along with co-host Anne Perusek, SWE's director of editorial and publications, in September Eller English launched SWE Stories: Tales from the Archives, part of SWE's larger podcast series, Advance.  read more »

Kristin M. Szylvian, Associate Professor of History and LIS at St. John's University in New York, will discuss conflicts between federal housing agencies and organized labor concerning prefabricated housing.  read more »

The Reuther Library will be closed September 4, 2017, in observance of Labor Day. We will reopen on Tuesday the 5th.

Feel free to submit your questions via Ask an Archivist and we will answer them when we're back in the office. Enjoy the holiday!

In 1955, The Laborer magazine commissioned a series of paintings titled "Landmarks in Labor", including them in their publications throughout that year. Each painting depicts and describes vital accomplishments of the American labor movement, from the birth of the eight hour day to the founding of the Knights of Labor. The images, found in a collection of labor union photographs, are being presented but the Reuther Library in anticipation for the upcoming Labor Day.  read more »

What do Casey Kasem, Lily Tomlin, and Jeffrey Tambor all have in common? They are all Wayne State alumni, and their portraits are part of the Wayne State University Photograph Collection. The University's Public Relations Department (formerly Media Services) is responsible for capturing images of staff members, faculty, and students in order to record the members of their campus. The photographs in the collection span over fifty years, up to the early 2000s.  read more »

After working with Magilla Entertainment since May, the Reuther’s AV Department was excited to view the August 13th premier of the History Channel’s docuseries, “The Cars That Made America.” The three-night, six-hour special event will kick off the network’s Car Week this Sunday.  read more »

Please note: the Reuther Library Reading Room will be closed this Thursday, August 10, 2017, from 12-4. Researchers will be able to access materials between 10-12.

Please contact Reference Archivist Kristen Chinery (kristen.chinery@wayne.edu) to make research arrangements.

Please join Bonnie Ernst, 2017 Fishman Grant recipient, in a discussion of the research leading to her dissertation, “Women in the Age of Mass Incarceration: Gender, Rights, and Punishment in Michigan," Thursday, July 13th, 12pm at the Reuther Library.

In the final third of the twentieth century, women were the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population, and women of color were disproportionately sent to prison. Nearly all scholarship on the history of the criminal justice system focuses on the imprisonment of men. Ernst's dissertation, “Women in the Age of Mass Incarceration: Gender, Rights, and Punishment in Michigan,” reframes historical narratives on imprisonment by focusing on women and gender.  read more »

For more than 87 years, Wayne State University has granted admission and provided services to the physically disabled. The 1960s saw the beginning of the Disability Rights Movement in the United States and with the steadily increasing number of disabled  read more »

The Harper Hospital collection contains records from the nurses and doctors of Harper Hospital during World War I. Included is information about their location in France, dates of when they left the United States and when they returned, and an extensive list of those men and women who served Base Hospital Number 17. Hospital staff, if large enough, were assigned to their own base hospital, but could be combined with staff from other hospitals.  read more »

Many people are surprised to learn that Detroit once had two Chinatowns, both built by a resilient community that thrived in the city for nearly 100 years. As Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month draws to a close, we invite you to visit our latest HistoryPin tour: a look back on Detroit's Chinese Community.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to share a new web-based exhibit to accompany our current atrium display, 12th Street, Detroit, 1967: Employment, Housing, Policing, and Race Relations in Evidence. The web exhibit includes digitized archival documents from our physical exhibit as well as additional items from our archival collections for users to explore.  read more »

This blog post was contributed by Autumn Diaz, a student in Wayne State University's archives program in Winter 2017.

The Reuther Library holds many important historical collections, and as history inevitably repeats itself, many are more relevant than ever to current events. The Gay Liberator collection, in the space of just two compact boxes, offers a history unique to Detroit and its LGBT community. Published from 1970-1976, the Gay Liberator also reflects growing political awareness  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is proud to announce the opening of the SEIU Photographs, a collection of images that spans the union’s proud history from 1915 to 2012. The majority of the collection originated from the Communications Department at SEIU’s international offices in Washington D.C. Most of the photos have been taken for SEIU’s various publications and informational literature (posters, pamphlets). Many of these photos capture pivotal moments in the union’s history, ranging from  read more »

Visit the Reuther Library's Woodcock Wing gallery now through winter 2017 for an exhibition of previously unpublished photographs of Detroit's 1967 Civil Unrest by preeminent photojournalist, Tony Spina.  read more »

This Earth Day, we’d like to highlight archival collections that demonstrate organized labor’s role in environmentalism and the understanding of Earth Day as advantageous to the interests of business and workers alike. Though one may not expect it, numerous collections highlight unions’ historical efforts to fight pollution and champion conservation.  read more »

Please join the Reuther Library, 5:30-7:30PM, April 27 for an opening reception as we open our exhibit "12th Street, Detroit, 1967: Employment, Housing, Policing, and Race Relations in Evidence." Speakers include Dr. Melba Boyd, Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies at Wayne State University, and Dr. Cynthia Fleming, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Visitors will get a first look at the Reuther's exhibit and the archival documents that serve as evidence to understand the events surrounding Detroit's Civil Unrest.  read more »

Please join the Reuther Library for a presentation from our latest Fishman grant recipient Wednesday April 5, 2017, at noon.

Amy Zanoni, a doctoral candidate from Rutgers University, will discuss her research into disinvestment, austerity measures, and privatization efforts beginning in the 1970s at the Cook County Hospital.  read more »

This Women’s History Month, we bring you the story of an activist and labor leader whose fascinating life needs to be remembered and re-appreciated. For several decades, Rose Pesotta organized across the country for garment workers in New York, rubber and auto workers in the Midwest, and immigrant laborers in California. She also worked for victims of government persecution, war and prejudice. Pesotta was a pioneer in labor organizing, an unstoppable force for the common worker, for the immigrant and for justice.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University is pleased to announce the awards from the Sam Fishman Travel Grant program for 2017. These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, a former UAW and Michigan AFL-CIO leader.  read more »

William V. Banks seemingly did it all: he was a lawyer, minister, Freemason, businessman, and civic leader. He is perhaps best known as the founder of the United States’ first Black-owned and operated television station, WGPR-TV 62, and its sister radio station, WGPR-FM. In addition to all of these accomplishments, he was also known as an advocate for labor. In the 1930s, as the head of the Detroit arm of the International Labor Defense, he defended imprisoned striking workers in a business and social climate that was often hostile to organized labor and strikers.  read more »

Born and raised in Chicago by Mexican-­American parents, Nancy De Los Santos is an accomplished filmmaker and proud “Chicana from Chicago” who has dedicated her life and career to rewriting and redefining the image of Latina/os in the mainstream media.  read more »

Since his early days as a child laborer in a textile mill, Dave Miller (1891-1979) devoted himself to the labor movement. Miller shared his life and times—and thoughts on the present and the future—in a circa-1972 interview available in the Reuther Library’s holdings.

Working on cataloging this interview, I came away impressed with Miller’s witness to a broad range of developments and events that shaped the twentieth century, not to mention his direct involvement in some them, including his advocacy for women’s suffrage and against the death penalty and his fight for universal health care. Miller deserves recognition for his pioneering work in the UAW alone, but he did that and more.  read more »

We’ve gathered hundreds of collections in our nearly 50 years, so sometimes even we forget what amazing things that are in our stacks. The Michigan Commission on Displaced Persons Records is certainly not our most popular collection, but it is particularly relevant given the current climate in our country.  read more »

Please note that Wayne State University and the Reuther Library will be closed Monday January 16th in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Academic Calendar 2017 We'll reopen on Tuesday, January 17th at our regular time.

The Reuther Library and Wayne State University will be closed in observation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

While we’re out, we wanted to tell you a bit more about the way this became a national holiday and the people who worked to make sure it happened.

Dr. King was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee  read more »

2016 was an active year at the Walter P. Reuther Library, especially for its collection archivists. Unique among archival repositories, the Reuther Library has six archivist positions directly supported by labor and cultural institutions, making us their official archives and giving the collection archivists the exclusive honor to preserve and provide access to their organization’s histories. Please enjoy the following highlights from each of our collection archivists on their work with the donor organizations and updates on their collections.  read more »

The Reuther Library is proud to announce that it has been awarded a Humanities Grant from the Michigan Humanities Council. The grant will support an exhibit of selected materials related to Detroit’s 1967 Civil Unrest, taken from the Reuther's over 40 archival collections on the topic. The exhibit will be installed in the Reuther Library’s atrium in April 2017 and will be accompanied by a web exhibit and document sets for use in K-12 classrooms. Visitors will learn about analyzing archival material and begin to understand the archive as a place that belongs to the community it serves.  read more »

As the Oral History Project Archivist at the Reuther Library, my job is to arrange and describe our oral history collections so researchers can find them -- work that has been made possible by a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Documenting Democracy grant awarded to the library in 2014. I’ve come to greatly admire many of the interviewees, and to be fascinated by their life stories and accomplishments. In a series of blog posts, I’ll tell about some of my “oral history heroes” and what makes them special to me.  read more »

Visit the Reuther Library's Woodcock Wing gallery now through spring 2017 for an exhibition of photographs of Detroit's Poletown by photographer Bruce Harkness.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs will close at 4pm, December 23rd, 2016 for Winter Break. We'll return to our regular business hours on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2017. Please contact us if you have any questions. Ask An Archivist

In 1937, United Auto Workers Local 174 sponsored the creation of a series of murals to enliven their Union Hall and celebrate their rich, if relatively young, history. The resulting work proved to be one of the most memorable pieces of Detroit’s New Deal-era artwork.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is honored to announce the opening of the The Leonard Woodcock Papers. Leonard Woodcock orchestrated profound accomplishments in a variety of fields, notably as head of the UAW and later as Ambassador to China, making these historical records a valuable resource to a wide range of researchers.  read more »

On January 30th, 2009 the Reuther switched off its old 1.0 website for good. For those that recall, its retirement was long overdue. By the time of its retirement, the site had endured over a decade of development that had led to a patchwork of static HTML pages with a great deal of problems. The problems spanned from broken links to grossly out-of-date collection descriptions. The later issues provided the impetus to find a quick fix. This lead to the implementation of the Reuther’s 2.0 website.  read more »

Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) are drawn from a diverse range of professions and fields, including medical, sanitation, transportation, social work, clerical, and many others in the public service sector. Nothing in the union and the country’s history brought all of them together like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and aftermath.  read more »

Belle Isle became Michigan’s 102nd State Park in 2014 through a lease agreement made with the City of Detroit. In honor of this occasion, the Reuther Library presents an exhibition of images that show the important role the park has played in the lives of Detroit’s residents. The exhibition will run from August 2016 to December 2016.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce the restoration, duplication, and digitization of two 16mm historic Wayne State University films. The Reuther’s Audiovisual department received a National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) grant that made all of the work possible. The historic films document the years 1925 and 1932 in Wayne’s history (before it was actually named Wayne State University) and are a part of a newly discovered series of silent films that span the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

The films give the viewer a glance into what college life was like for students nearly one hundred years ago.  read more »

This May, at the start of my last semester at Wayne State’s School of Library and Information Science, I began a Practicum in Digital Content Management here at the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. Over the last three months I have spent many hours with Series 10 of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Collection. This series, which is mostly pamphlets and handouts, needed digitization to keep it alive. Access to the series was restricted, not for inflammatory content, but because of the fragile condition of the early 20th century documents. This made me a kind of digital life support for this information rich material.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the digitization of over 100 reel-to-reel audio recordings related to the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). AWOC was chartered by the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to organize farm workers in California. AWOC called many strikes against growers and farm labor contractors and achieved some success in raising wages of farm laborers. They merged with the National Farm Workers Association to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO in 1966.

These recordings, mostly from California, range from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. They include talks with farm workers, organizing meetings, documentary sound, and interviews with movement leaders.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the opening of several new collections related to LGBT History in Southeast Michigan.

Though collecting material related to civil rights and social movements in Southeast Detroit has always been a mission for the Walter P. Reuther Library, we aim to grow the LGBT collection to include a broader range of voices. To this end, the Reuther will have a table at Detroit’s Hotter Than July! picnic on July 30th at Palmer Park to bring greater awareness to our archival collections. This event is part of a week-long celebration of Black LGBT pride and is sponsored by LGBT Detroit.

In conjunction with this festival the Reuther is pleased to announce that the LGBT Detroit Records are open for research.  read more »

This article was written by Audrey Swartz, a recipient of the Ronald Raven award and a student in Wayne State University's SLIS program, during the spring of 2016.

As Wayne State celebrates its sesquicentennial in 2018, there is an effort to increase access to photographs located in the University Archives. With the help of a student intern and the Audio Visual archivists at the Reuther, we have been able to begin this process. Wayne State University’s photography collection, housed in the AV Department at the Reuther Library, ranges from roughly 1945 to 2003. These photographs cover everything from sporting events (did you know WSU once had a rowing team?) to campus ceremonies, life and construction.  read more »

The Reuther Library will be closed this July 4 in honor of Independence Day. We will be back to our normal hours beginning Tuesday, July 5.

In the meantime, feel free to ask your questions at Ask an Archivist and we will assist you when we return.

Have a happy and safe holiday!

The Reuther Library is proud to host “25 Years, 25 Treasures,” a new exhibit celebrating the Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archive’s 25th anniversary!

25 Years, 25 Treasures will showcase 25 significant photographs, documents, and objects from its collection. These key pieces tell the remarkable story of Detroit’s Jewish community.

Since 1991, the Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archives has collected over 2 million documents, 25,000 photographs, and recorded over 100 oral histories chronicling the rich and varied history of Detroit’s Jewish community. The Reuther Library has served as a partner in this effort, housing the majority of the collection and hosting researchers in our reading room.  read more »

Please join us this July 21st for a lunchtime presentation of the work of Dr. Greg Wood as he explores the relationship between the UAW and General Motors in the generation after initial struggles for union recognition.

Utilizing records found in the UAW Region 1B Collection at the Walter P. Reuther Library, this talk examines anti-union practices on auto industry shop floors during the 1960s. Throughout the decade, UAW committeemen at General Motors in Pontiac, for example, confronted extensive management efforts to roll back the power and presence of organized labor in what was supposed to be a closed shop.  read more »

The Reuther Library notes with sadness the death of Marjorie S. Fisher on June 12. The wife of Max M. Fisher, Marjorie Fisher was the founder with her husband of the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation. She became the Founding Chair of this family-run foundation after the death of Max Fisher in 2005.  read more »

Few archives actively collect and collaborate with active donor organizations like the Walter P. Reuther Library. This special relationship was on full display at the 2016 International Convention of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Detroit. The union made a special point to incorporate historical resources from the Reuther Library, its official archives, into the proceedings this May.  read more »

Please be advised that the Reuther Library will be closed this May 30th for Memorial Day. We'll be open based on our regular schedule the following day, May 31st.

To learn more about service during the war, visit our image galleries related to World War I and World War II.

On May 9, 1916 the American Federation of Labor issued a charter to the American Federation of Teachers. For 100 years the AFT has shaped the conversation on public education, the American labor movement, civil and human rights as well as the true value of democracy in our society. The AFT started with 8 locals that represented fewer than 5,000 teachers across the country and now represents 1.6 million teachers, paraprofessionals, public employees and health care workers.  read more »

Please join us June 1 at noon for a brown bag research discussion in the Reuther Conference Room.

From hand-sketched diagrams of plant layouts drawn up in hasty preparation for strikes, to diagrams of syndicalist visions of One Big Union, mapping has long been an important but overlooked part of labor organizing. Steve McFarland, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Tampa, will be at the Reuther Library in May and June doing research into maps created by workers organizations.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to introduce Brandon Carter as its new Facilities Coordinator. One of the Reuther Library’s most essential employees the past two years, he has played a role in many of the archives’ core functions. This experience and a Swiss Army knife-like skill set makes Brandon uniquely qualified in his new role, where he will do everything from oversee student employees to liaison with other departments on campus.  read more »

The Reuther Library’s Facebook presence has been alive and well since our first posts were submitted back in 2009. Over the course of our nearly seven years of use  read more »

The 5th event in our series “Latino Americans: 500 Years of History” will take place at 6pm this Friday, April 22, as part of the Wayne State University Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies’ Academia del Pueblo!

Join us in General Lectures room 150 for an exploration of storytelling and narrative evidence. We’ll feature a performance from Sacramento Knoxx, who will share his new piece on Southwest Detroit.

We will also discuss the future of the Detroit area's archival records in a panel:

"What Do We Need to Document Our Community's History Into the Archives?"  read more »

By the late 1950s, it was becoming increasingly clear that the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) would have to strike against Southern Airways (SOU). The main issue was wages. The union maintained that all of their aviators should receive the same salary regardless of the size of the airline, but SOU, a smaller, regional carrier, claimed they could only afford to pay a lower rate. ALPA knew this was a battle they had to take on, though it would not be easy. Frank Hulse, the founder and president of SOU, was staunchly anti-union, and had recently succeeded in breaking up the mechanic’s union at Southern Airways. ALPA was the last union standing at SOU.  read more »

“Music hath charms to sooth a savage heart, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” –William Congreve 1670-1729

This quote, among others, was scribbled on notes belonging to the famous and first Labor Lawyer –Maurice Sugar, and can be found in the Reuther Library’s Maurice Sugar Papers.  read more »

Please join the Reuther Library for a presentation from our latest Fishman grant recipient this April 8, 2016, at noon.

Joel Suarez, a doctoral student from Princeton University, considers the values ascribed to work in the wake of its transformation in the latter half of the twentieth century. He explores how contending visions of the good life— among intellectuals and policymakers, but most importantly workers—were challenged and reconstituted amid changes wrought by industrialization, deindustrialization, and the ascent of low-wage service sector work.  read more »

This March 29th, please join the Walter P. Reuther Library for a panel discussion to celebrate the opening of a new exhibit on loan from Michigan State University. The exhibit spotlights the voices of Latin@ workers to explore their impact on the auto industry in Michigan, drawing from photographs, oral histories, and other archival records. Panelists will discuss the contributions of Latin@ auto workers from a variety of perspectives.  read more »

The Jewish community of the Detroit area recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of the tragic death of a prominent leader, Rabbi Morris Adler. Born in Russia in 1906, Rabbi Adler was the spiritual leader of Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Detroit (later in Southfield, MI) from 1938 until 1966. On February 12, 1966, while presiding at religious services he was shot by a mentally disturbed congregant; he died 27 days later at the age of 59. The Reuther Library marks this sad anniversary and notes that Rabbi Adler’s legacy remains in several collections in the archives.  read more »

The American Federation of Teachers is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. As part of the celebration, the Reuther has opened or added to several collections – the culmination of an 18 month collections backlog-processing project. The records are from the AFT National headquarters, regional, and local offices. These 13 collections represent the breadth of AFT activities from the local to the national level.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce Stefanie Caloia as our new AFSCME archivist. Caloia recently completed an 18-month position as the Reuther's AFT project archivist, during which she processed and opened for research 13 collections totaling over 1335 linear feet of records. Her earlier experience includes working at a private archive and processing records for the National Parks Service in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns. She completed her graduate work at Wayne State, and first came to the Reuther as a practicum student in the spring of 2011.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to host Marcus Cederström as he shares his research on Signe Aurell on March 17th at noon. The event is open to the public.

Cederström's research considers the significant role Swedish women immigrants took in socially engaged action in the United States, particularly in support of temperance and labor movements.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University is pleased to announce the awards from the Sam Fishman Travel Grant program for 2016. These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, a former UAW and Michigan AFL-CIO leader.  read more »

SEIU has a knack for creative protest imagery. In 1993, SEIU members parodied the Oscars to raise awareness of Los Angeles-area janitors demonstrating for improved working conditions. In recognition of this year’s approaching Academy Awards, we will take a look back at this portion of the Justice for Janitors campaign.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Edward Stanton Photographs. The collection features the earliest surviving work of the Detroit-born photographer, Edward Stanton (1914-2006), and includes images taken in Detroit’s Paradise Valley and Black Bottom neighborhoods in the years surrounding the end of the Great Depression.  read more »

The Detroit Federation of Teachers has seen a number of challenges and triumphs since its founding in 1931 – a significant number of which occurred during the 21-year tenure of president Mary Ellen Riordan. Riordan guided the union through many transformative events, including the introduction of collective bargaining for teachers and the first teacher strike in Detroit, and was involved with various court cases that transformed education policy and public employee unions.  read more »

In the mid 1970s, the Walter Reuther Library produced an invaluable source of information for numerous researchers that have walked through its doors - the Michigan Black History Bibliography Index. The index contains a wealth of information that does not exist anywhere else, providing researchers with connections to unique and often obscure sources. With this blog, a wider audience will become aware of its existence and value. The index is a four-drawer card file identifying sources that are key to understanding Black history in Michigan, and its hundreds of bibliographic references span from the 19th Century until the mid 1970s.  read more »

In 2014 the National Historical Publications and Records Commission awarded the Walter P. Reuther Library its two-year Documenting Democracy grant to enhance access to the library's oral history collections, thus enabling my hiring. As Oral History Project Archivist, I’m lucky enough to get to “unearth” some of the great treasures of our collections. Thanks to the grant, I am arranging and describing more than 1,600 previously undescribed or “under-described” oral histories in our collections.  read more »

The Reuther Library is proud to announce the opening of an addition to our Mel Ravitz Papers. The new materials include documents related to Ravitz’s work and research in urban planning and its impact on communities, ranging from 1945-2009. Notably, the collection includes some of Mr. Ravitz’s personal journals from the early 1960s. The addition to this collection may prove particularly valuable to researchers with an interest in the causes and effects of Detroit’s 1967 civil unrest.  read more »

Winter is the time for the celebration of holidays and festivals in many ethnic and religious groups around the world, from the Winter Solstice to Kwanzaa. Though the Reuther Library lacks any Druid collections that shed light on prehistoric winter rites, it is the home of a relevant “hidden gem” collection: the Folklore Archive. The holiday information in this collection is wide-ranging, enlightening and sometimes amusing.

The Folklore Archive, established in 1939, contains the oldest and largest record of urban folk traditions in the United States. At its core are thousands of student field research projects from Wayne University (later Wayne State) classes.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the launch of a new HistoryPin tour: Detroit and World War II

The interactive tour features images that highlight the role of everyday citizens in the war effort between the years 1940-1945. Topics featured include military draft and recruitment, mobilization, salvage drives, rationing, community events, and defense work. Of particular interest are photographs of industrial training, the daily life of prisoners of war held at Fort Wayne, U.S.O. recreation activities, and community involvement in the war effort.  read more »

December 5th is Repeal Day, celebrating the end of Prohibition in the United States in 1933.

The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1919, prohibiting the sale, consumption, and manufacturing of alcoholic beverages. The National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), defined what constituted an illegal alcoholic beverage  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs invites applications for travel grants of up to $1,000 as part of the 2016 Sam Fishman Travel Grant Program. The program provides research grants to support faculty, students, independent researchers, and union members  read more »

The Reuther Library and Wayne State University will close for winter break beginning at noon on December 24th. We will reopen with our regular hours starting January 4, 2016.
Thank you for a wonderful 2015, and we look forward to supporting your research in the new year. Read more about Wayne State University's Winter Break closure.

Please join the staff of the Reuther Library for a workshop on preserving your family's history - the third event in our "Latino Americans: 500 Years of History" series!

Many families have a box of photos in the attic, an envelope of paperwork in the closet, or an assortment of files on a computer. Without care, these items might be lost to future generations and historians who want to tell the story of the people of Detroit. This workshop will cover some easy and cost-effective ways to care for your family's history, whether it is currently on your phone or on a shelf.

The event will take place December 12, 2015
1-4 pm
Detroit Public Library - Campbell Branch
8733 W. Vernor Hwy
Detroit, MI 48209

Participants are encouraged to bring photographs or paper materials to scan and will receive a digital copy to share with friends and family.  read more »

In honor of Veteran's Day, the Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to share a new image gallery: Stills from the World at War: The Home Front (1939-1945). The new gallery serves as a celebration of the extraordinary service of individuals, both military personnel and civilian, during the Second World War, a commemoration of the sacrifices made, and a glimpse back to Detroit as it developed into the industrial heart of the war effort.  read more »

The Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archives document the rich and varied history of the Detroit Jewish community. In 1991, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit placed the bulk of its archival holdings in the Reuther Library. The collection dates back to the beginning of the United Jewish Charities in 1899. Through the years, the Jewish Community Archives (JCA) at the Reuther Library has expanded to include more than two million documents chronicling the growth and development of the Federation and its member agencies and Jewish communal agencies.

Recently, some new collections have been added and some revisions have been made to finding aids.  read more »

This November 7th from 3-5 PM, please join the Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs for a screening of “Latino Americans, 500 Years of History,” Documentary Episode 6: Peril and Promise (1980-2000) at the Bowen Branch of the Detroit Public Library. A group discussion will follow.

PBS's Episode Guide asks on Episode 6: "Is a new Latino world being created here as the Latino population and influence continues to grow? Alternatively, will Latinos in America eventually assimilate into invisibility, as other groups have done so many times?" Representatives from Wayne State University's Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies will join attendees in a dialogue on the episode’s themes of community and identity.  read more »

Jason Kozlowski, assistant professor at West Virginia University, will present an overview of his current research at a brown-bag lecture at noon on Thursday, December 3, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library.

The event will detail research on his book project, tentatively titled “Shifting Terrain: Work, Deindustrialization and Labor Relations in the Earthmoving Equipment Industry, 1967-2000.”  read more »

The Reuther Library salutes Myra Wolfgang as she is inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame this month.

Almost 40 years after her death, Myra Wolfgang stands among the giants in Detroit’s labor movement. Her involvement in labor organizing began not long after graduating from Northern High School in Detroit in 1931. By the age of 23, she was leading strikes and directed organizing drives in local businesses, through the local chapter of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union (today known as UNITE HERE!). She first received national publicity for organizing a “pink-collar” sit-down strike among women workers at the Woolworth’s department store in Detroit in 1937.  read more »

The Reuther Library mourns the passing of our friend, the incomparable Grace Lee Boggs.

Boggs was a writer, philosopher, mentor, and an outspoken activist for many causes, including civil rights, workers’ rights, Black Power, environmental justice, feminism, and community empowerment. To many, she seemed a force of nature – always working, organizing, teaching, and inspiring others to think critically and improve the world around them. Her philosophies evolved constantly throughout her life, but one thing held true from the beginning to the end: her faith that positive social change was possible if people were willing to work together.  read more »

Ben Zdencanovic, a doctoral student in the history department at the Yale University, will present an overview of his current research at a brown-bag lecture at noon on Thursday, October 15, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library.

His presentation, “The CIO and the World: Research in 1940s Labor Internationalism and Social Politics at the Reuther Library,” explores changes in postwar politics in the United States and abroad.  read more »

October 2nd is National Custodial Workers Appreciation Day, and it’s a good time to look back at the profession that served as the foundation for the Service Employees International Union, one of the largest partners of the Walter P. Reuther Library. Originally named the Building Service Employees International Union, the union first received its charter as the union for flat janitors in America. Though SEIU has dramatically evolved over the past century, custodial workers continue to serve as one of the largest units within the union. Below are photos from Foundation of the Union: Janitors and Custodians in SEIU, a curated collection of images from the SEIU photograph collections.  read more »

It’s hard to explain to people just how extensive (over 2,500 collections) and varied the archival holdings of the Reuther Library are. When someone asks, we first respond with the “Big Ones, ” such as the UAW, the American Federation of Teachers, the Wayne State University Archives. There are important medium-sized collections too, among them Focus Hope, the United Farm Workers and the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). Then there are the very small collections that are sometimes overlooked, hidden like small pebbles in a jar filled with big stones. These often contain fascinating materials that complement the Reuther’s more prominent collections.

One of these is the A.G. and Marie Mezerik Papers.  read more »

This September 26th, please join us for a screening of “Latino Americans, 500 Years of History,” Documentary Episode 5: Prejudice and Pride (1965-1980). Representatives from Wayne State University's Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies will join attendees in a dialogue on the episode’s themes of work and citizenship. The group will also address the role archives can play in a community’s history and the role of community in determining materials that are preserved. The event, hosted at the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation (1211 Trumbull Avenue, Detroit, Michigan), will explore the connection between the film's use of archival materials and the importance of archives in documenting a movement for future research.  read more »

Trish Kahle, a doctoral student in the history department at the University of Chicago, will present an overview of her current research at a brown-bag lecture at noon on Thursday, September 10, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library.

Her presentation, entitled, "Jobs, Lives, and Land: Energy, Environmentalism, and Union Democracy in the Appalachian Coalfields," examines the Miners for Democracy, arguably the most successful union democracy movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  read more »

This article was originally written by Kris Kniffen, a student in the Wayne State University School of Library and Information Science, in early 2015.

Jimmy Hoffa was a prominent labor leader in the 1950s and 60s, serving as the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters between 1958 and 1971. In spite of significant contributions to the union’s cause, however - such as the development of the first national agreement for teamsters’ rates in 1964 - it is not Hoffa’s history in the unions that earned him the widespread name recognition that he still possesses today. Instead, the Hoffa name is infamous for its connections to organized crime, and for Hoffa’s mysterious disappearance on July 30, 1975.  read more »

This post was authored by Justine Tobiasz, a student in the Wayne State University Archives Certificate Program, during the 2014-2015 academic year.

In 1981, a portion of the Detroit neighborhood known as Poletown was destroyed as a result of a deal between Mayor Coleman Young and General Motors to make room for a new Cadillac assembly plant.  read more »

Join the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs to celebrate the achievements of Professor Emeritus Dr. Philip P. Mason and commemorate the Reuther Library's 40th anniversary.

Dr. Philip P. Mason and his former students and colleagues Kathleen Roe, Warner Pflug and Dr. Frank Boles will offer remarks. The Reuther Library will also unveil a portrait of Dr. Mason to be hung on permanent display.  read more »

Dr. Donna Kesselman, Professor, Université Paris-Est Créteil, will provide an update on her current research into the changing interrelationships between labor, management, and government in the automobile industry. This brown-bag presentation will take place at noon on Wednesday, August 5, 2015, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. Transformations in employment norms are an integral component of today's globalizing world labor market. Exploring “employment grey zones” provides a critical thought approach to defining these constantly evolving labor-management structures.  read more »

On Thursday, July 30, celebrate the life and works of Detroiter and Lamaze childbirth method pioneer Flora Hommel through her collection at the Reuther Library. Join us for an opportunity to learn more about the late Flora Hommel and her collection at the Reuther Library through a display and discussion featuring local historians, Hommel’s family, and others associated with the Lamaze childbirth method.  read more »

The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) was one of the first industrial unions to adopt the concept of gender equality and extend its membership to women. From its very inception, as organizers, agitators, advocates, and active members, women played an important part in the union’s development.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library was recently awarded a $10,000 Latino Americans: 500 Years of History grant from the American Library Association (ALA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support public programming aimed at celebrating and preserving the history of Latino/a Americans in the Detroit metropolitan area.  read more »

On May 1, 2015, the Reuther Library hosted a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon to increase online visibility of our collections related to the labor movement. Editors spent the afternoon developing new skills, collaborating on ways describe collections to the general public, and brainstorming ideas to expand the Wikipedia editing group for future events. The group edited over 20 articles during the May Day event and identified several more to create, such as entries for Mary Van Kleeck, Sam Fishman, and the Association for Union Democracy.

The Reuther joined labor archives across the country in this effort  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce that the Max M. Fisher Papers are now open to researchers. This large collection documents Fisher's life and career as a successful Detroit industrialist and investor, influential Republican Party fundraiser and power broker, Jewish community leader, and major philanthropist. It includes correspondence, documents, speeches, interviews, photographs and other media, and documents from his biographer.  read more »

The Ronald Raven Annual Award provides a tuition stipend and semester-long internship in the Wayne State University Archives to Wayne State University graduate students in the fall and winter semester. The details of the award are located on the Reuther Library Scholarships page.

Kristin Kniffen was the sixth recipient of the Ronald Raven Annual Award, completing her University Archives internship in May 2015. The following is a summary of the internship in her own words.

From my very first day at Wayne State University as a master’s student in the joint History and Library Science degree programs, my professors have encouraged me to seek hands-on experience in the archival field. During earlier semesters I sought this experience through volunteer projects at the Charles H. Wright Museum, but by the time the Winter 2015 semester had rolled around I was still sadly without any formal processing experience. I finally gained that experience thanks to the Ronald Raven Annual Award. The work proved to be not only wonderfully educational, but deeply enjoyable as well.  read more »

The Reuther Library notes with sorrow the passing on May 15 of Flora Suhd Hommel.

Hommel was one of the pioneers who brought the Lamaze psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth to the United States, establishing an important teaching organization in Detroit, the Childbirth Without Pain Education Association (CWPEA). She championed the rights of women to control childbirth, creating a grass-roots movement contemporaneous with the women’s movement of the 1960s-1970s. Hommel and the CWPEA were important catalysts in establishing similar childbirth and parenting organizations and teacher-monitrice accreditation programs across the United States.  read more »

On May 22nd, 2015, the Detroit Sound Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the musical sounds and stories of Detroit, will hold its second annual conference at the main branch of the Detroit Public Library. The Michigan Sound Conference will explore the ways that the Mitten State, and the Motor City in particular, have led the world in shaping the contemporary sonic landscape. As a part of the conference, the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs will host the one-day exhibit "This Is My Town: The Concert Poster Art of Detroit, 1970s-2000s." This exhibit presents a selection of posters advertising musical, dramatic, and visual arts events in Detroit from the 1970s to the 200s, drawn from the papers of David Clements.  read more »

The Reuther Library is proud to announce an upcoming brown-bag lecture presented by Sarah Stanford-McIntyre, a doctoral candidate at the College of William and Mary. This event will take place at noon on Thursday, May 21, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library. Ms. Stanford-McIntyre will present on her current research in her talk “Working Landscapes: The Labor of West Texas Oil, 1920-1970,” a regional history of oil, labor, and environmental change during the Permian Basin oil boom, including corporate imagery of technology, the mythology of the oil prospector, and the vital role of wage workers across the industry. The presentation is free and open to the public.  read more »

A brown bag presentation series highlighting archival practice continues on May 15 with Reuther Library director Erik Nordberg’s presentation "Free Money: Basic Skills of Grant Writing for Archives." The one-hour session will be held at 12:30 p.m. in the Woodcock Conference Room at the Walter P. Reuther Library. Nordberg has experience both awarding and managing grant-funded archives projects, having served as both executive director of the Michigan Humanities Council and director of the University Archives and Historical Collections at Michigan Technological University.

Open to students, alumni, and interested professionals and educators, future events in this series are scheduled on the last Fridays of the month. Contact Kim Schroeder for more information at 313-577-9783 / ag1797@wayne.edu or Erik Nordberg at 313-577-2013 /

In honor of this weekend's annual Flower Day, we invite you to visit our tour on HistoryPin: “Detroit’s Eastern Market”

Since 1891, Detroit’s historic Eastern Market has been the go-to destination for fresh produce, meats, and supplies of local businesses and residents. The market spans 43 acres of land on Detroit’s east side and is presently the largest public market district in the United States. It is home to over 150 specialty businesses, a thriving wholesale food industry and is a hub in the local artisan community. An average of 30,000-40,000 visitors attends the Saturday market during the high months.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to welcome Rebecca Bizonet as project archivist for its oral history collections. Her arrival on staff last week marks the beginning of work on a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Documenting Democracy grant awarded to the library in 2014.  read more »

Two archivists from the Reuther presented talks at the Historical Society of Michigan's 57th annual Local History Conference in March. The joint session, entitled “Out of the House: Detroit Women’s Organizations in the 20th Century” was presented by Troy Eller English, the Society of Women Engineers Archivist, and Aimee Ergas, the Reuther's collections archivist for Jewish Detroit. Kathy Schmeling of the Reuther Library was the moderator.  read more »

Dr. Michelle Rodino-Colocino, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University, will provide an overview of her research into the role that media has played in labor-management relations. This brown-bag presentation will take place at noon on Thursday, April 23, 2015, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. Her book-length project, Making Media Work: A Cultural History of New Media and Labor Management, explores how new media from film to smart phones has figured in management’s promotion of, and workers' resistance to, so-called “speedup” practices that intensify work for less return. The presentation is free and open to the public.  read more »

On April 15, 2015, the National Park Service designated Wayne State University's McGregor Memorial Conference Center as a national historic landmark. The 1958 building is one of four on the Wayne State campus designed by the architect Minoru Yamasaki.

On May 1, 2013, the reflecting pool and sculpture garden of the McGregor Memorial Conference Center was re-opened to the public after months of restoration and repairs. Information on the reopening ceremony, and details about the renovation, can be found here.  read more »

By virtue of the time and place of its founding and development -- that is, a large industrial city in the 20th Century -- Wayne State University has always been a modern

In response to patron feedback and a review of policies at similar institutions across the country, the Reuther Library made a change to its digital imaging policy for the reproduction of materials in the Reading Room. Patrons may now use a cell phone, tablet, or digital camera for their imaging needs. The Reuther will continue to provide digital cameras on a first come, first served basis.

The $0.25 per image fee has been replaced with a daily imaging fee of $10.00, plus tax. There is no charge to patrons taking fewer than ten images. Patrons are still responsible for recording information about the images they take on the Digital Image Request Sheet regardless of equipment used. Patrons may request publication-quality images of any material from the Reuther Library at its standard fees.

Reuther Library reference policies are listed on our Reading Room page. Please direct questions or comments about the change in policy to Kristen Chinery, Reference Archivist.

Kristen Chinery is the Reference Archivist for the Walter P. Reuther Library.

This spring 2015, Wayne State University will be honoring one of its own whose contribution to humanity exemplifies the best in humanity. In March 1965 Viola Gregg Liuzzo traveled to Selma, Alabama in response to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s request of support for a voter registration drive in that state. On March 25, after the last of three marches that month, Liuzzo was shot and murdered on Highway 80 outside of Selma, Alabama while assisting with the transportation of marchers on the way home from the protest.  read more »

Join the staff of the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs for an informal gathering with founding director Dr. Philip Mason at 3:30pm on Tuesday, March 24. Dr. Mason will share personal reflections on the 40th anniversary of the Reuther Library building’s initial construction in 1975. Following Dr. Mason’s remarks, attendees will be invited to visit the Reuther Library’s reading room, which has recently received a significant renovation with the support of an anonymous donor. The event is free and open to the public.

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University is pleased to announce the awards from the Sam Fishman Travel Grant program for 2015. These annual grants provide up to $1,000 to support travel to the Reuther Library to access archival records related to the American labor movement. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, a former UAW and Michigan AFL-CIO leader.  read more »

On December 9, 2014, Dr. Fancis Shor of the Wayne State University Department of History delivered the presentation "Re:Collecting Past Radicals and Rebels: The Resonance of Resistance and the Persistence of Injustice" in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs.  read more »

The Reuther Library recently had the privilege of opening the Detroit Latino Records to researchers. This collection consists of materials from numerous organizations gathered by Wayne State University professor José Cuello. Dr. Cuello has spent his career as an educator, researcher and activist for the Latino community and these records reflect his involvement in this community from 1969 to 1995.  read more »

Best known as the first African American member of management at both the Michigan Bell Telephone Company and AT&T, Ramon S. Scruggs, Sr. served as an influential civil rights figure in the American business community from the 1940s until his passing in 1984. What separated Scruggs from many other civil rights figures was his focus on improving racial equality through integrating African Americans into positions of management within large corporations. The Ramon S. Scruggs Sr. Papers, recently opened to the public at the Walter P. Reuther Library, chronicle the subject’s numerous accomplishments.  read more »

The Reuther notes with sadness the passing of Ernest C. Dillard, who passed away at 101 years of age this week.

Ernest C. Dillard, Sr. was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on January 24, 1915, though the bulk of his labor and civil rights activities were in Detroit, Michigan. Dillard was an active member of United Auto Workers Local 15 and was the first African-American elected to a succession of UAW leadership posts. He retired in 1980 as assistant director of the UAW Community Action Program.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce its partnership with HistoryPin. For the uninitiated, HistoryPin is a popular, interactive social media platform that uses geotagging to link historical photographs to modern mapping systems. Partnering institutions and individuals--currently thousands across the globe-- “pin” still images, audio resources, or moving images to their subject’s original location. These pins can be grouped together in a tour or collection, each allowing for the individual user to explore historical topics or locations. The platform is widely available through a website or via mobile device applications.  read more »

In January 2014 the Reuther received a generous donation, which could be used for any purpose as it was not dedicated to a specific account or project. After careful consideration of how to use the funds, a decision was made to update the Reading Room, the first renovation to the room since the building’s construction in 1975. The donation allowed us to purchase new furniture, to install new carpeting, to repaint the room, and to refurbish the Reading Room's reference desk.  read more »

The Ronald Raven Annual Award provides a tuition stipend and semester-long internship in the Wayne State University Archives to three Wayne State University graduate students each year. The details of the award are located on the Reuther Library Scholarships page. Applications for the Winter 2015 semester are due January 2, 2015.

Meghan McGowan was the fifth recipient of the Ronald Raven Annual Award, completing her University Archives internship in December 2014. The following is a summary of the internship in her own words.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to welcome Gavin Strassel as SEIU Archivist. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Information, and previously served in the University of Michigan’s Special Collections. He first joined the Reuther team as an Archives Technician in December 2013.  read more »

NOTE: The public event featuring Fran Shor has been rescheduled to 4:30pm on Tuesday, December 9.

Dr. Francis Shor, of the Wayne State University Department of History, will deliver the presentation "Re:Collecting Past Radicals and Rebels: The Resonance of Resistance and the Persistence of Injustice." This event will take place at 4:30 PM on Tuesday, December 2 in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to welcome Stefanie Caloia as our new AFT Project Archivist. Her recent experience ranges from work at a private archive to positions with History Associates, Inc. and the National Parks Service. She completed her graduate work at Wayne State, and first came to the Reuther as a practicum student in the spring of 2011.  read more »

Bruce Duncan “Utah” Phillips (1935-2008) was one of the most prominent members of the American folk community in the latter half of the 20th century. He became well known as a folk singer, storyteller, poet, radio host, and activist beginning in the late 1960s and continued to be a distinguished figure in the folk and labor communities for the following four decades. The Walter P. Reuther Library, the repository for the Utah Phillips Papers, is pleased to announce that the collection is now open for research.  read more »

In 1919, University of Colorado engineering students Lou Alta Melton and Hilda Counts wanted to establish an American Society of Women Engineers and Architects—a women’s auxiliary that would run alongside professional engineering and architectural organizations.  read more »

With the school year now upon us, the Reuther Library presents a look back at summers past as recorded in the Merrill-Palmer collections. As Edna Noble White, first director of the Merrill-Palmer Institute, once said, "The children of a nation are its greatest potential asset." This belief was reflected in the Institute's main role, which was the understanding and interpretation of the individual from birth to adulthood.  read more »

Bernard “Bernie” J. Firestone was one of Detroit’s foremost social activists, a nationally recognized labor leader, and a champion of causes great and small. Influenced by everyday struggles, he was an advocate for anyone who faced oppression or injustice.  read more »

There is a select group of people who place the needs of others above their own, do so against formidable forces and at great risk to their own welfare and well-being. They take these risks never knowing exactly how they will fare, but recognizing that their convictions demand that they cannot do otherwise. General Gordon Baker, Jr., a Detroit revolutionary, was among this select group of people. On May 24, 2014, a packed audience at Dearborn, Michigan’s UAW Local 600 memorialized his life that ended six days before. It was there that attendees gave tribute to a man whose impact did not pass with his death.  read more »

Devin Erlandson was the fourth recipient of the Ronald Raven Annual Award, a scholarship providing a tuition stipend and a semester-long internship in the Wayne State University Archives. At the end of her internship, Devin wrote this summary of her experience.

I first learned about the Ronald Raven Annual Award from Dr. Louis Jones in his archival administration class.  read more »

The World War I centennial is upon us. In honor of this occasion, the Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to share a new image gallery: Stills from the World at War.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library announces the retirement of Mike Smith, Archivist. Mike’s duties at the time of his retirement focused on the archives of the United Automobile Workers and the Jewish Community Archives. However, he wore many hats during his tenure at the Reuther.  read more »

The following is a guest post by Devin Erlandson, recipient of the Ronald Raven Annual Award and the Summer 2014 intern for the Wayne State University Archives.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which excluded all people of Japanese ancestry from living on the Pacific coast. Of the 127,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, 112,000 were sent to internment camps. 2,000 Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans with American citizenship) were uprooted from colleges and universities—their academic future was suddenly very uncertain.

The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, worked to relocate and resettle Nisei students at Midwestern and East Coast colleges and universities. One such institution was Wayne University.  read more »

On June 28, 1990, AFSCME members welcomed Nelson Mandela to their biannual convention in Miami, Florida, chanting, “Mandela, yes! Apartheid, no!”  read more »

Disc jockey, voice actor, and Wayne State University alumnus Casey Kasem passed away on June 15, 2014.

Born Kemal Amin Kasem to Lebanese immigrant parents, Kasem attended Northwestern High School in Detroit, and served in the Korean War before returning to enroll at Wayne State University. He graduated from Wayne State in 1958, and over the years he returned to Detroit to support his school.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Affairs is proud to showcase a selection of posters from the United Farm Workers collection. These posters represent important campaigns and events from the early history of the UFW.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs is proud to be chosen as the recipient of a grant of $109,152 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). This grant will facilitate the discovery and promotion of 1,660 oral histories of individuals directly involved in the labor, civil rights, and social justice movements, among other important historical developments.  read more »

Researchers may note that there’s been a new addition at the Reuther Library recently. Meghan Courtney stepped into her new position as AFSCME archivist in March. “When I saw the posting for this job, I thought it could make use of my archival training and my long-time involvement in the labor movement at the same time,” Courtney said. “I'm excited to use all the different parts of my education and life experience in this position.”  read more »

This is a guest post by Julia Teran, Wayne State University graduate student and recipient of the Ronald Raven Annual Award, which provides a scholarship and internship three times each year to History and Library students with an interest in university archives and records management.

As a young professional entering the world of archival administration, I was very pleased to be accepted as the Winter 2014 recipient of the Ronald Raven Annual Award. I have been a graduate student in the Joint MLIS/MA in History program, with a concentration in archival administration, at Wayne State University for the past three years. With just one more year until graduation, I appreciate the importance of gaining practical experience in the archival field in order to be well prepared to enter the profession.  read more »

The staff of the Reuther Library mourns the loss of our beloved friend and colleague, Carrolyn Davis. Carrolyn died unexpectedly on April 8, 2014. Her passing leaves an immense void in the hearts of her colleagues at Wayne State, the archival community, and her friends throughout the library world.

She attended Detroit Public Schools and graduated from Northwestern High School. She received her Bachelors and Masters Degrees from Wayne State University.  read more »

In 1992, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) selected the Walter P. Reuther Library as the official repository for its archives and records.  read more »

The Wayne State University Mace, a ceremonial scepter used at certain official university occasions, will be present on Friday, April 4, when M. Roy Wilson is inaugurated as the 12th president of Wayne State University. The mace also appears at Commencement ceremonies and at each year's New Student Convocation. The Wayne State University Mace has been in use for thirty years; it was built for the university by Phillip Fike.  read more »

Social movements that disrupt the status quo and go on to change the lives of participants most often coalesce around a powerful leader. In 1962, Cesar Chavez, a former migrant worker and community activist, began the long struggle for farm workers’ rights by organizing the National Farm Workers Association in Delano, California—the forerunner of the UFW. By 1965, after signing up about 1200 members, Chavez was asked to join a grape strike in Delano led by the predominant Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC).

The Walter P. Reuther Library commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike by recounting its near fifty-year relationship with the United Farm Workers to document and preserve its legacy.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is very pleased to announce the Sam Fishman Travel Grant Awardees for 2014. Each year, the Fishman Travel Grants provide up to $1000 for travel to the Reuther Library for research into its vast collection of archival records related to American labor movement. The award is named in honor of Sam Fishman, one of Michigan’s great labor leaders.  read more »

At 12:01 am on March 4th, 1989 the ALPA pilots of Eastern Airlines (EAL) walked out in a sympathy strike to support the International Association of Machinists (IAM) strike. The pilots held the line for 285 days, but when they finally voted to return to work at the end of November there were no jobs left to return to. In fact, in less than three years after the vote to strike, Eastern Airlines ceased operations permanently, never to fly again.  read more »

In late 1967 Herbert Hill, labor director for the NAACP, traveled to the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit to conduct a series of oral histories with African American men and women that centered around their experiences in the labor movement.  read more »

The folksinger and activist Pete Seeger died Monday, January 27, 2014 at the age of 94, bringing to an end a career that lasted from the Great Depression to the twenty-first century. His lifelong engagement with culture and politics, and his deep commitment to the labor movement, brought him into continual contact with the rank and file of unionized American workers. In 1939, when Seeger was 20 years old, he worked in the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song as an assistant to the musicologist Alan Lomax, and it seems fitting that this onetime archivist is so well represented in the archives and manuscripts of the Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. No fewer than twelve collections in the Reuther Library collections include correspondence, recordings, or other first-hand evidence of his career.  read more »

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 required that women be paid the same amount as men when performing the same work. This milestone, however, did not go far enough in protecting women from wage discrimination. This 1963 law promoted equal pay for equal work, but beginning in the 1970s, advocates for women’s rights waged a series of legislative and collective bargaining battles to provide equal pay for comparable work as well.  read more »

At the start of 2014, the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs would like to take a moment to remember the year that's just ended and revisit the content that was added to our website in 2013. It was a banner year for the Reuther's blog, with more visits, visitors, and pageviews than in any previous year.  read more »

December 24th, 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of one of the great tragedies of the early twentieth-century: the Italian Hall disaster of the 1913-1914 Copper Country Strike.  read more »

In the autumn of 2013, Wayne State University School of Library and Information Science student Lura Smith was chosen as the second recipient of the Ronald Raven Annual Award. This scholarship includes a stipend and a semester-long internship with the Wayne State University Archives; it is awarded to a student with an interest in university archives and records management. Upon completion of the intership, Lura recorded this impression of her experience.

I am interested in the archives profession because to me it represents the preservation of humanity.  read more »

The Wayne State University Archives is now accepting applications for the Ronald Raven Annual Award, to be awarded to a Wayne State University graduate student in History or Library Science in January 2014. The successful applicant will receive a $600 tuition credit and an internship in the University Archives for the Winter 2014 semester. Students who have completed the introductory archival administration course LIS 7710/ HIS 7840 are strongly encouraged to apply. The application deadline is December 24; application details are on our scholarships page.

On December 7, 2013, the forty-first annual Noel Night will take place in Midtown Detroit. The first Noel Night, on December 19, 1973, was a production of Detroit Adventure, a coalition of organizations that formed in 1959 to promote cultural conversation and experience in the greater Detroit area. In its 21 years of operation, Detroit Adventure served many functions in the pursuit of its mission: to organize, coordinate, and promote the fine arts in the Metro Detroit region.  read more »

On October 17 Reuther Library field archivist Dr. Louis Jones, CA, was recognized at the 16th Annual Wayne County Council for Arts, History and Humanities Recognition Awards. Jones received the WCCAHH Award for his excellent work in collecting the records of significant people and organizations within Wayne County, Michigan.  read more »

With the 2013-2014 school year in full swing, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the American educational system and, in particular, how it all begins – preschool. As the topic of high quality preschool becomes increasingly relevant in the 21st century, it is important to note that it is not a new concept. The Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute (MPSI), an active research center on Wayne State University's campus, was a pioneer in addressing these early formative years of a child's education.  read more »

The 2013 issue of the Walter P. Reuther Library Newsletter is now available. The new issue includes an announcement of the Reuther's acquisition of the Utah Phillips Papers, a letter from Reuther Director Beth Myers, and an overview of our accomplishments in the last year. Download or view the 2013 newsletter, or peruse the complete collection of Reuther newsletters from 1971 to the present day.

On Friday, October 4, the Reuther Library hosted a reception for the opening of Dance Pioneers: Michigan’s 20th Century Movers, a new exhibit on display in the Woodcock Gallery. The opening reception was introduced by Harriet Berg, founder of the Michigan Dance Archives, and included remarks from Leslee O'Day Benyo, Reuther Library Director Beth Myers, and Reuther Library Field Archivist Louis Jones.  read more »

This is the third in a series of four blog posts annotating Jerry Peacock's 1939 cartoon map of the Wayne University campus. This entry discusses the block between Warren Avenue and Merrick Avenue. View the entire map here or read Part 1 or Part 2.

The 1939 campus of Wayne University bore little resemblance to the Wayne State University campus of today. Second, Putnam, Merrick, and Kirby Streets, which once criss-crossed the University, are now closed to traffic and have been replaced by pedestrian malls. Private residences, and houses repurposed as offices and classrooms, were demolished to make room for large purpose-built structures. In 1939 the University was thinly spread over land that it would later purchase and transform entirely.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library bid a fond farewell last week to Johanna Russ, who served as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Archivist from June 30, 2008 until September 27, 2013. After five years at the Reuther, Johanna Russ leaves Michigan to become Senior Archival Specialist at the Chicago Public Library.  read more »