Oral history

Grace Hospital Records

drice — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:11:58 -0500

Grace Hospital opened for patients in December, 1888 with seventy-five beds. It expanded rapidly over the next several decades, serving over 15,000 inpatients and 90,000 outpatients by its fiftieth year, 1938, and opening the Northwest Branch in 1942. Building additions in 1953 and 1964 made Grace the second largest voluntary non-profit hospital in Michigan. Grace and Harper Hospitals merged in 1973 and consolidated with other hospitals in the newly-created Detroit Medical Center in 1985. The Grace Hospital Collection consists of the materials relating to the administration of the hospital and the Detroit Medical Center, medical procedures and education, the activities of the Grace Hospital School of Nursing and the hospital Women's Auxiliary, and to the history of health care and hospital development in Detroit in the twentieth century. Included are 100th anniversary materials on the history of Grace Hospital and the Grace Hospital School of Nursing: seven oral histories conducted by Dr. Philip Mason.

John Herling Papers

drice — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:38:31 -0500

John Herling was a prolific journalist, working for several publications and serving as White House correspondent and syndicated columnist specializing in labor affairs throughout the 1950s & 1960s. He owned "John Herling's Labor Letter," which he edited and published from 1947-1990, as well as authoring several books, including Strikes Under the New Deal, The Great Price Conspiracy and The Right to Challenge. Herling was also working on other books about the labor movement, including a book about the UAW, at the time of his death in 1994.

His papers reflect his interest in writing about the labor movement in America. The records in Part 2 consist primarily of interviews conducted by Herling as research for a book on the UAW, which was ultimately written by John Barnard and published in 2004 under the title, American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers During the Reuther Years, 1935-1970. The interviews were conducted mainly with people associated with the UAW, however several involve people in other labor unions. The records consist of transcripts or notes (taken during interviews that were not recorded), although there are a few speech and panel transcripts as well (noted in inventory). There are also audio recordings of interviews, panels, and conferences. Researchers should note that some pages of interview transcripts are missing, some audio recordings are unmarked, and not all interviews exist in both transcript and audio recording format.

Guest Post: Ciera Casteel on the Wayne State University Oral History Course Oral Histories

aorchard — Fri, 19 Apr 2019 11:05:31 -0400

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 »

Meet Rebecca Bizonet, Oral History Project Archivist

drice — Fri, 01 May 2015 11:59:33 -0400

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 »

NHPRC Oral History Project: An Update from the (Wave) Field

rbizonet — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 11:57:13 -0500

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 »

Recent additions: Black perspectives at the Reuther Library

srafferty — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 18:06:22 -0400

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 »

(Podcast) Dirty Socks, Goose Fat, and Hot Toddies: Cold Remedies from the Folklore Archive

teller — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 14:59:22 -0500

Reuther Library archivists Elizabeth Clemens and Dan Golodner raise a glass for the regional and ethnic cold remedies collected in the Reuther's extensive Folklore Archive, including whiskey, honey, lemon, hot toddies, goose fat poultices, the color red, horehound, catnip tea, dirty socks, and the more dangerous turpentine and kerosene -- don't try those at home! read more »

Podcast: Halloween Spooktacular - Supernatural Stories from Detroit Folklore

teller — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:47:33 -0400

Archivist Elizabeth Clemens shares spooky stories from the Reuther Library's Folklore Archives about Le Loup Garou, or the Werewolf of Grosse Pointe; the Ghost of Tanglewood Bridge on Detroit's Belle Isle; hauntings at home; and a helpful witch on Detroit's McClellan Street who fetched groceries and hung her skin on the wall. Archivist Bart Bealmear reminds us of Gundella the Green Witch, a local personality with an advice column in Detroit-area newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s. read more »