National History Day
PRIMARY SOURCES: A Partial Bibliography
- Newspapers, including Labor Newspapers. Today, local and national newspapers cover work and working people sporadically. Newspapers focused on the interests and activities of working people were widespread in the late 19th century through the mid-20th century; a few are still published in the 21st century. They carry stories about local and national events, labor leaders, politics, court cases, strikes, and more that could be the subject of a case study exploring one of the questions above. Stories in labor presses frequently offer different perspectives on events covered in non-labor newspapers. Some labor presses have been digitized:
- Northwest Labor Press, archive (1916-present) Archives – NW Labor Press
- Industrial Worker Industrial Worker TABLE OF CONTENTS (marxists.org), 1907-1913. Industrial Worker was the newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW]
- Labor Press Project: Pacific Northwest Labor and Radical Newspapers (University of Washington) Labor Press Project (washington.edu) secondary essays on a number of labor newspapers published in the Northwest.
- Labor Notes archive Labor Notes Archive | Page 2 | Labor Notes Labor Notes is a media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists since 1979. Labor Notes maintains a website and publishes a magazine to promote organizing unions, alliances with worker centers, and unions that are run by their members.
- News coverage, 1933-2002: Farm Workers, Strikes, Boycotts – Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. Includes more than 500 articles about the UFW, farm workers, and farm labor conditions that have appeared in Washington newspapers since 1933.
- Sweatshop Watch Newsletter Cornell eCommons :: Browsing by Author Sweatshop Watch was a California-based international coalition of organizations dedicated to ending sweatshop labor.
- Southern Worker: NYU Libraries. Distributed between 1930 and 1937, Southern Worker was a regional newspaper produced by the Communist Party, USA.
- Union newspapers, British Columbia, Canada Union Newspapers – Working People Built BC (labourheritagecentre.ca)
- Also see: Chronicling America Chronicling America « Library of Congress (loc.gov) and Library of Congress Newspapers | The Library of Congress (not labor-specific, but with many local newspapers that can be searched for labor-related topics. Searchable by state, date, search term)
- Oral histories. These can shed light on perspectives and experiences that don’t show up in the written record.
- Create an oral history primary source(s) by interviewing workers, labor activists, and/or union leaders in your local area
- Ask a state or local history society or museum if they have worker or labor oral histories.
- Iowa Labor Oral History Project Iowa Labor History Oral Project | Labor Center – The University of Iowa (uiowa.edu) 1,000 interviews
- Voices of Labor Oral History Project, Georgia State University Collection: Voices of Labor Oral History Project | ArchivesSpace at GSU Library 48 interviews (audio + transcripts); there is a brief description of the content of each interview
- Sisters in the Brotherhoods. An oral history project dedicated to preserving the remarkable stories of women who entered the blue-collar workforce in New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
- Topic Specific
- https://www.laborhistorylinks.org/database Searchable database on a wide range of labor history topics. Includes both primary sources and secondary.
- International Ladies Garment Workers Union [ILGWU] archives, Kheel Center, Cornell University. Includes digitized letters, pamphlets, videos and television commercials, and other highlights from the archive’s ILGUW collection
- Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement [DRUM] records, Walther Reuther Library, Wayne State University. Digitized collection offer firsthand information about the demands, political viewpoints and allies of Black workers during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
- 9to5 National Association of Working Women, Walther Reuther Library, Wayne State University.digitized records include selected posters, images, publications, oral histories.
- Report of the Industrial Commission on Capital and Labor, 1900, Manufactures and General Business 56th Congress, Document 495.HathiTrust
- Final Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations, 1915. This Commission was created by act of Congress; commissioners were appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Commission made a wide-ranging investigation of working conditions and labor conflicts.
- Pesticides | Digital Archives. California State University, Digital Archives. Digitized records include flyers, newsletters, and other ephemera including control of pesticides as a key farmworker demand.
- I AM A MAN — Repository. Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University Digitized records of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ movement include secondary source essays and primary source articles, speeches, flyers, images, and more.
- All Together Now! A Canadian-based project offering primary source images of union banners and secondary source explanation of how unions and workers innovated new banner content to convey their grievances, demands, unity, and common purpose.
- ILGWU Union Label Timeline and Collection Guide. Cornell University, ILR School. Digitized records include images and print material.
- Union-Prevention and Counter-Union Campaign Consulting Files, 1966-2013. This collection points to ways business innovated to resist union organizing by their employees. It consists of materials from counter-union campaigns and other anti-union and union-busting consulting records, 1966 and 2013.