Tales from the Reuther Library

Tales from the Reuther Library


Latest Episodes

Speak to the Earth and it Shall Teach Thee: Catholic Nuns, the United Farm Workers Movement, and the Rise of an Environmental Ethic, 1962-1978
November 08, 2018

John Buchkoski explores the role that religious women had in grassroots social activism in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly organizations of Catholic women religious. He explains how these groups supported United Farm Worker strikes by publicizing the...

Halloween Spooktacular: Supernatural Stories from Detroit Folklore
October 25, 2018

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 Detr...

International Architect Minoru Yamasaki’s Impact on the Wayne State Campus
October 04, 2018

Reuther Library archivist Shae Rafferty discusses the career of Minoru Yamasaki, renown architect of the original World Trade Center, the Dhahran International Airport in Saudi Arabia, and many buildings in the metropolitan Detroit area.

1933 Chicago Teachers Walkout: That Time Teachers Rioted With Textbooks and Rulers
September 13, 2018

American Federation of Teachers archivist Dan Golodner tells guest host Bart Bealmear about the 1933 Chicago Teachers Walkout, when Chicago teachers joined together to demand that they be paid in actual money and on time,

Assembly Line Housing: Walter P. Reuther, George Romney, and Operation Breakthrough – Part 2
August 23, 2018

In the second of a two-part series, Dr. Kristin M. Szylvian explains how racial segregation and the fear of declining property values ultimately scuttled Operation Breakthrough, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Program early in the Ni...

Assembly Line Housing: Walter P. Reuther, George Romney, and Operation Breakthrough – Part 1
August 09, 2018

In the first of a two-part series, Dr. Kristin Szylvian explains the role of the American labor movement, and UAW president Walter Reuther in particular, in lobbying for and shaping fair housing programs and legislation in Detroit and nationally after ...

I Am A Man: Photographer Richard Copley Recalls His First Assignment, 50 Years After the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike
July 26, 2018

AFSCME archivist Stefanie Caloia shares photographer Richard Copley’s story of his very first and what he considers his most important assignment covering the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and, ultimately, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Jessica Levy on “Black Power, Inc.: Global American Business and the Post-Apartheid City”
July 11, 2018

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,

American Labor’s Anti-Apartheid Movement and Nelson Mandela’s 1990 U.S. Tour
June 28, 2018

Meghan Courtney, Reuther Library archivist, discusses Nelson Mandela’s 1990 visit to the U.S. as well as his long-term relationship with the American Labor Movement during his time in prison and after his release. Mandela’s 12 day,

Julia Gunn on Civil Rights Anti-Unionism: Charlotte and the Remaking of Anti-Labor Politics in the Modern South
June 14, 2018

Dr. Julia Gunn explains how progressive civil rights politics enabled Charlotte, North Carolina, to become the nation’s second-largest largest financial capital while obscuring its intransigence towards working-class protest,