Hutchins Library News Blog

From Amanda Peach, Associate Library Director: 

Hutchins Library has thrilling programming scheduled for October!

Here are the highlights so that you can save the dates to your calendar:

1. "Ghosts in the Archives" research event
   When: Tuesday, 10/3, from 5-7pm

Where: Special Collections and Archives

What: Conduct research on regional spooky tales to share at our "Ghost Stories Under the Stars" event later in the month.

2. "Banned Books Reading"

When:  Tuesday, 10/3, from 7-9 pm

Where: Hutchins Library Lobby

What:  Join Beth Feagan, Amanda Peach, and an exciting line-up of guest readers as we share excerpts from banned books. There will be refreshments and giveaways of free banned books and banned books swag.

3. "The Kentucky Tragedy" Lunch and Learn

When: Thursday, 10/5, from 11:30 am - 1 pm

Where: Flex space on the main floor of Hutchins

What: Enjoy a free lunch while Caitlyn Rahschulte regals you with a true tale of a night of bloody vengeance done in the name of love.

4. "Ghost Stories Under the Stars"

When: Monday, 10/16, at 7pm

Where: The log circle on the quad

What: Join Berea's Folklorist, Emily Hilliard, and tell your haunting story or listen to others share spooky tales.

We hope you will join us in the fun

Hutchins Library is pleased to honor Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 with an exhibition from Berea College's Special Collections and Archives of Manuel Joglar Cacho's 14-stanza poem, "Por Los Caminos del Día." Joglar Cacho (1898 – 1994) was a celebrated Puerto Rican poet whose book of poems first appeared in 1925.. In 1969, his "Por Los Caminos del Día" ("Along the Paths of the Day") was published as a set of 16 detached prints illustrated by Puerto Rican linoleum print artist and journalist José Antonio Torres Martinó (1916 – 2011). This notable work of twentieth-century poetry and art (signed copy 93 of 250) is part of the Berea College Special Collections and Archives. 

The exhibit can be viewed in the main floor of Hutchins Library during regular hours. This exhibit is free and open to the public. The exhibit runs from September 15 to October 15 2023. The exhibit also includes a small selection of books by Puerto Rican authors and/ or about Puerto Rico. In addition, there are two monitors on the side showing a translation into English of the poem. The poem was translated into English by Angel Rivera. 

Additional resources: 

The Richmond Register featured an article on the exhibit. 

Enciclopedia PR (an online Spanish language encyclopedia) features a biographical entry on Manuel Joglar Cacho. 

A reminder that Hutchins Library is closed on Monday, September 4, 2023 for the Labor Day holiday. In the meantime,  you can access our online resources 24-7 via the library website: https://libraryguides.berea.edu/. If you are off campus, you may need to log in with your Berea College credentials and authenticate with DUO. 

Here are some resources about the holiday so you can learn more about this observance: 

• A history of Labor Day, via the U.S. Department of Labor. 
• Some facts and figures on labor in the United States, via the U.S. Census Bureau.

Here are some book from our library on labor history that you may want to check out and read to learn more. For e-books, if you are off campus, you will need your Berea College credentials and DUO authentication: 

The Broken Table by Chris Rhomberg

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781610447751

Publication Date: 2012-04-13

When the Detroit newspaper strike was settled in December 2000, it marked the end of five years of bitter and violent dispute. No fewer than six local unions, representing 2,500 employees, struck against the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, and their corporate owners, charging unfair labor practices. The newspapers hired permanent replacement workers and paid millions of dollars for private security and police enforcement; the unions and their supporters took their struggle to the streets by organizing a widespread circulation and advertising boycott, conducting civil disobedience, and publishing a weekly strike newspaper. In the end, unions were forced to settle contracts on management's terms, and fired strikers received no amnesty. In The Broken Table, Chris Rhomberg sees the Detroit newspaper strike as a historic collision of two opposing forces: a system in place since the New Deal governing disputes between labor and management, and decades of increasingly aggressive corporate efforts to eliminate unions. As a consequence, one of the fundamental institutions of American labor relations--the negotiation table--has been broken, Rhomberg argues, leaving the future of the collective bargaining relationship and democratic workplace governance in question. The Broken Table uses interview and archival research to explore the historical trajectory of this breakdown, its effect on workers' economic outlook, and the possibility of restoring democratic governance to the business-labor relationship. Emerging from the New Deal, the 1935 National Labor Relations Act protected the practice of collective bargaining and workers' rights to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment by legally recognizing union representation. This system became central to the democratic workplace, where workers and management were collective stakeholders. But efforts to erode the legal protections of the NLRA began immediately, leading to a parallel track of anti-unionism that began to gain ascendancy in the 1980s. The Broken Table shows how the tension created by these two opposing forces came to a head after a series of key labor disputes over the preceding decades culminated in the Detroit newspaper strike. Detroit union leadership charged management with unfair labor practices after employers had unilaterally limited the unions' ability to bargain over compensation and work conditions. Rhomberg argues that, in the face of management claims of absolute authority, the strike was an attempt by unions to defend workers' rights and the institution of collective bargaining, and to stem the rising tide of post-1980s anti-unionism. In an era when the incidence of strikes in the United States has been drastically reduced, the 1995 Detroit newspaper strike stands out as one of the largest and longest work stoppages in the past two decades. A riveting read full of sharp analysis, The Broken Table revisits the Detroit case in order to show the ways this strike signaled the new terrain in labor-management conflict. The book raises broader questions of workplace governance and accountability that affect us all.

 

A Mother's Job by Elizabeth Rose

Call Number: 362.1209 R795m General Collection

ISBN: 9780195111125

Publication Date: 1999-01-14

Americans today live with conflicting ideas about day care. We criticize mothers who choose not to stay at home, but we pressure women on welfare to leave their children behind. We recognize the benefits of early childhood education, but do not provide it as a public right until children enterkindergarten. Our children are priceless, but we pay minimum wages to the overwhelmingly female workforce which cares for them. We are not really sure if day care is detrimental or beneficial for children, or if mothers should really be in the workforce. To better understand how we have arrived atthese present-day dilemmas, Elizabeth Rose argues, we need to explore day care's past.A Mother's Job is the first book to offer such an exploration. In this case study of Philadelphia, Rose examines the different meanings of day care for families and providers from the late nineteenth century through the postwar prosperity of the 1950s. Drawing on richly detailed records created bysocial workers, she explores changing attitudes about motherhood, charity, and children's needs.How did day care change from a charity for poor single mothers at the turn of the century into a recognized need of ordinary families by 1960? This book traces that transformation, telling the story of day care from the changing perspectives of the families who used it and the philanthropists andsocial workers who administered it. We see day care through the eyes of the immigrants, whites, and blacks who relied upon day care service as well as through those of the professionals who provided it.This volume will appeal to anyone interested in understanding the roots of our current day care crisis, as well as the broader issues of education, welfare, and women's work--all issues in which the key questions of day care are enmeshed. Students of social history, women's history, welfare policy,childcare, and education will also encounter much valuable information in this well-written book.

 

A Union for Appalachian Healthcare Workers by John Hennen

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781952271250

Publication Date: 2021-11-01

History at the intersection of healthcare, labor, and civil rights. The union of hospital workers usually referred to as the 1199 sits at the intersection of three of the most important topics in US history: organized labor, health care, and civil rights. John Hennen's book explores the union's history in Appalachia, a region that is generally associated with extractive industries but has seen health care grow as a share of the overall economy. With a multiracial, largely female, and notably militant membership, 1199 was at labor's vanguard in the 1970s, and Hennen traces its efforts in hospitals, nursing homes, and healthcare centers in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and Appalachian Ohio. He places these stories of mainly low-wage women workers within the framework of shake-ups in the late industrial and early postindustrial United States, relying in part on the words of Local 1199 workers and organizers themselves. Both a sophisticated account of an overlooked aspect of Appalachia's labor history and a key piece of context for Americans' current concern with the status of "essential workers," Hennen's book is a timely contribution to the fields of history and Appalachian studies and to the study of social movements.

 

Porn work : sex, labor, and late capitalism by Berg, Heather

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781469661940

Publication Date: 2021

"Every porn scene is a record of people at work. But on-camera labor is only the beginning of the story. Part labor history, part ethnography illuminating the lives of the performers who work in the medium, 'Porn Work' takes readers behind the scenes to explore what porn performers think of their work and how they intervene to hack it. It tells a story of crafty workers, faltering managers, and shifting solidarities"-- Provided by publisher.

 

Blood Runs Coal by Mark A. Bradley

Call Number: 364.152 B811b 2020 General Collection

ISBN: 9780393652536

Publication Date: 2020-10-13

In the early hours of New Year's Eve 1969, in the small soft coal mining borough of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, longtime trade union insider Joseph "Jock" Yablonski and his wife and daughter were brutally murdered in their old stone farmhouse. Seven months earlier, Yablonski had announced his campaign to oust the corrupt president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Tony Boyle, who had long embezzled UMWA funds, silenced intra-union dissent, and served the interests of Big Coal companies. Yablonski wanted to return the union to the coal miners it was supposed to represent and restore the organization to what it had once been, a powerful force for social good. Boyle was enraged about his opponent's bid to take over--and would go to any lengths to maintain power. The most infamous crimes in the history of American labor unions, the Yablonski murders triggered one of the most intensive and successful manhunts in FBI history--and also led to the first successful rank-and-file takeover of a major labor union in modern U.S. history, one that inspired workers in other labor unions to rise up and challenge their own entrenched, out-of-touch leaders. An extraordinary portrait of one of the nation's major unions on the brink of historical change, Blood Runs Coal comes at a time of resurgent labor movements in the United States and the current administration's attempts to bolster the fossil fuel industry. Brilliantly researched and compellingly written, it sheds light on the far-reaching effects of industrial and socioeconomic change that unfold across America to this day.

 

Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire by Ismael García-ón

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9780520974272

Publication Date: 2020-02-18

Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire is the first in-depth look at the experiences of Puerto Rican migrant workers in continental U.S. agriculture in the twentieth century. The Farm Labor Program, established by the government of Puerto Rico in 1947, placed hundreds of thousands of migrant workers on U.S. farms and fostered the emergence of many stateside Puerto Rican communities. Ismael García-Colón investigates the origins and development of this program and uncovers the unique challenges faced by its participants. A labor history and an ethnography, Colonial Migrants evokes the violence, fieldwork, food, lodging, surveillance, and coercion that these workers experienced on farms and conveys their hopes and struggles to overcome poverty. Island farmworkers encountered a unique form of prejudice and racism arising from their dual status as both U.S. citizens and as "foreign others," and their experiences were further shaped by evolving immigration policies. Despite these challenges, many Puerto Rican farmworkers ultimately chose to settle in rural U.S. communities, contributing to the production of food and the Latinization of the U.S. farm labor force.

 

Professors in the Gig Economy by Kim Tolley (Editor)

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781421425344

Publication Date: 2018-05-01

The Uber-ization of the classroom and what it means for faculty. One of the most significant trends in American higher education over the last decade has been the shift in faculty employment from tenured to contingent. Now upwards of 75% of faculty jobs are non-tenure track; two decades ago that figure was 25%. One of the results of this shift--along with the related degradation of pay, benefits, and working conditions--has been a new push to unionize adjunct professors, spawning a national labor movement. Professors in the Gig Economyis the first book to address the causes, processes, and outcomes of these efforts. Kim Tolley brings together scholars of education, labor history, economics, religious studies, and law, all of whom have been involved with unionization at public and private colleges and universities. Their essays and case studies address the following questions: Why have colleges and universities come to rely so heavily on contingent faculty? How have federal and state laws influenced efforts to unionize? What happens after unionization--how has collective bargaining affected institutional policies, shared governance, and relations between part-time and full-time faculty? And finally, how have unionization efforts shaped the teaching and learning that happens on campus? Bringing substantial research and historical context to bear on the cost and benefit questions of contingent labor on campus, Professors in the Gig Economywill resonate with general readers, scholars, students, higher education professionals, and faculty interested in unionization. Contributors: A. J. Angulo, Timothy Reese Cain, Elizabeth K. Davenport, Marianne Delaporte, Tom DePaola, Kristen Edwards, Luke Elliott-Negri, Kim Geron, Lorenzo Giachetti, Shawn Gilmore, Adrianna Kezar, Joseph A. McCartin, Gretchen M. Reevy, Gregory M. Saltzman, Kim Tolley, Nicholas M. Wertsch

 

The Jewish Unions in America by Bernard Weinstein (Translator); Maurice Wolfthal

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781783743568

Publication Date: 2018-01-01

"Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers' organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers' rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein's descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal's readable translation makes Weinstein's Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration."--Publisher's website

 

Reconsidering Southern Labor History by Matthew Hild (Editor); Keri Leigh Merritt (Editor)

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9780813052335

Publication Date: 2018-06-11

United Association for Labor Education Best Book Award The American Dream of reaching success through sheer sweat and determination rings false for countless members of the working classes. This volume shows that many of the difficulties facing workers today have deep roots in the history of the exploitation of labor in the South. Contributors make the case that the problems that have long beset southern labor, including the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions, have become the problems of workers across the country. Spanning nearly all of U.S. history, the essays in this collection range from West Virginia to Florida to Texas. They examine vagrancy laws in the early republic, inmate labor at state penitentiaries, mine workers and union membership, and strikes and the often-violent strikebreaking that followed. They also look at pesticide exposure among farmworkers, labor activism during the civil rights movement, and foreign-owned auto factories in the rural South. They distinguish between different struggles experienced by women and men, as well as by African American, Latino, and white workers. The broad chronological sweep and comprehensive nature of Reconsidering Southern Labor History set this volume apart from any other collection on the topic in the past forty years. Presenting the latest trends in the study of the working-class South by a new generation of scholars, this volume is a surprising revelation of the historical forces behind the labor inequalities inherent today. Contributors: David M. Anderson | Deborah Beckel | Thomas Brown | Dana M. Caldemeyer | Adam Carson | Theresa Case | Erin L. Conlin | Brett J. Derbes | Maria Angela Diaz | Alan Draper | Matthew Hild | Joseph E. Hower | T.R.C. Hutton | Stuart MacKay | Andrew C. McKevitt | Keri Leigh Merritt | Bethany Moreton | Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan | Michael Sistrom | Joseph M. Thompson | Linda Tvrdy

 

On Gender, Labor, and Inequality by Ruth Milkman

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9780252098581

Publication Date: 2016-07-15

Ruth Milkman's groundbreaking research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define. Milkman's introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women's labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book's second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers. A first-of-its-kind collection, On Gender, Labor, and Inequality is an indispensable text by one of the world's top scholars of gender, equality, and work.

 

Reframing Randolph by Andrew E. Kersten; Clarence Lang

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9780814724477

Publication Date: 2015-01-01

At one time, Asa Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was a household name. As president of the all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), he was an embodiment of America's multifaceted radical tradition, a leading spokesman for Black America, and a potent symbol of trade unionism and civil rights agitation for nearly half a century. But with the dissolution of the BSCP in the 1970s, the assaults waged against organized labor in the 1980s, and the overall silencing of labor history in U.S. popular discourse, he has been largely forgotten among large segments of the general public before whom he once loomed so large. Historians, however, have not only continued to focus on Randolph himself, but his role (either direct, or via his legacy) in a wide range of social, political, cultural, and even religious milieu and movements. The authors of Reframing Randolph have taken Randolph's dusty portrait down from the wall to reexamine and reframe it, allowing scholars to regard him in new, and often competing, lights. This collection of essays gathers, for the very first time, many genres of perspectives on Randolph. Featuring both established and emergent intellectual voices, this project seeks to avoid both hagiography and blanket condemnation alike. The contributors represent the diverse ways that historians have approached the importance of his long and complex career in the main political, social, and cultural currents of twentieth-century African American specifically, and twentieth-century U.S. history overall. The central goal of Reframing Randolph is to achieve a combination of synthetic and critical reappraisal.

 

Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can) by Peter Matthiessen

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9780520958364

Publication Date: 2014-03-21

In the summer of 1968 Peter Matthiessen met Cesar Chavez for the first time. They were the same age: forty-one. Matthiessen lived in New York City, while Chavez lived in the Central Valley farm town of Delano, where the grape strike was unfolding. This book is Matthiessen's panoramic yet finely detailed account of the three years he spent working and traveling with Chavez, including to Sal Si Puedes, the San Jose barrio where Chavez began his organizing. Matthiessen provides a candid look into the many sides of this enigmatic and charismatic leader who lived by the laws of nonviolence. Sal Si Puedes is less reportage than living history. In its pages a whole era comes alive: the Chicano, Black Power, and antiwar movements; the browning of the labor movement; Chavez's fasts; the nationwide boycott of California grapes. When Chavez died in 1993, tens of thousands gathered at his funeral. It was a clear sign of how beloved he was and how important his life had been. A new foreword by Marc Grossman considers the significance of Chavez's legacy for our time. As well as serving as an indispensable guide to the 1960s, this book rejuvenates the extraordinary vitality of Chavez's life and spirit, giving his message a renewed and much-needed urgency.

 

Out in the Union by Miriam Frank

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781439911419

Publication Date: 2014-06-13

Out in the Union tells the continuous story of queer American workers from the mid-1960s through 2013. Miriam Frank shrewdly chronicles the evolution of labor politics with queer activism and identity formation, showing how unions began affirming the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers in the 1970s and 1980s. She documents coming out on the job and in the union as well as issues of discrimination and harassment, and the creation of alliances between unions and LGBT communities.    Featuring in-depth interviews with LGBT and labor activists, Frank provides an inclusive history of the convergence of labor and LGBT interests. She carefully details how queer caucuses in local unions introduced domestic partner benefits and union-based AIDS education for health care workers-innovations that have been influential across the U.S. workforce. Out in the Union also examines organizing drives at queer workplaces, campaigns for marriage equality, and other gay civil rights issues to show the enduring power of LGBT workers.