srafferty's blog

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »