Blogs

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 »