The Labor Archives and Research Center (LARC) at San Francisco State University will be a host site for the San Francisco Archives Crawl 2019. LARC
documents the history of the Bay Area’s working people and unions.
Established in 1985 through a collaborative effort of historians, labor leaders
and academics, the Archives preserves and promotes the region’s rich working class
history.
The intersection of race and gender with the struggle for economic justice is represented throughout the collection. Records in the Archives include
material from unions representing hotel and restaurant workers; early garment
worker organizing; workers in the longshore, trucking and warehouse industries;
service employees in healthcare and the public sector; faculty and staff in higher
education; construction trades; retail and grocery workers; newspaper and
printing trades; clerical workers; and exotic dancers. LARC also holds material
from labor-related organizations such as the depression-era Maritime Federation
of the Pacific; California Labor School (cultural hub for the Bay Area’s
progressive and labor communities during the 1940s-1950s);
Committee for Support of International Trade Union Rights
(solidarity efforts related to ending apartheid and the wars in Central
America); the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board; Northern
California Conference of the United Church of Christ (United Farm Worker
organizing support); San Francisco chapter of the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade; and feminist labor groups Union W.A.G.E. and Tradeswomen.
The Labor Archives also has over 10,000 photographs, several thousand union
and social movement posters, buttons and badges, as well as early 20
th
century union banners. LARC’s oral history project contains dozens of
interviews documenting Golden Gate Bridge workers, LGBT labor activists, 2004
strike/lockout of UNITE HERE Local 2 hotel workers, faculty leaders of the
1968-1969 San Francisco State Strike, women breaking the gender line in non-traditional
work, and Bay Area union and civil rights leaders.
Sneek Preview
The
theme of this year’s Archives Crawl is California
History in 10 Objects. Two of the artifacts
you will get to see are:
Fred Dummatzen
Scrapbook.
This scrapbook is a compelling personal look into the construction of one of
the world’s most iconic landmarks and the human cost of construction before the
advent of worker safety laws. Fred Dummatzen
was a member of Laborer’s Union No. 261 and was one of ten men killed in an
accident on February 17, 1937. The album, which was partially compiled after
Dummatzen's death, includes snapshots taken by Dummatzen and his fellow workers
of the bridge under construction, offering an intimate window into male worker
culture. There are also clippings, photographs and poems in honor of Dummatzen
and a heartbreaking image of Fred’s parents holding a news article about the
accident. Fred’s family donated the scrapbook during the Golden Gate Bridge 50th
anniversary celebrations held by LARC in 1987.
Sue Ko Lee
Scrapbook.
Like the Dummatzen album, the Sue Ko Lee scrapbook offers a compelling personal
story, this one focused on the fight against runaway sweatshops and the
exploitation of immigrant women workers. In
1938, Sue Ko Lee and her co-workers at the National Dollar Store factory organized
the Chinese Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 361. Protesting low wages, they went
on strike for 105 days and eventually won a good contract. A year later the
company closed the factory rather than be unionized. Despite this loss, the
strike was critical in helping to break down racial barriers in San Francisco.
After the factory shut down, the union helped find the workers jobs outside of
Chinatown, in what had previously been white-only shops. The strike also led to
Chinese workers taking leadership roles in the union – Sue Ko Lee became a
business agent then secretary of the union local. Her scrapbook was donated through the help of
author Judy Yung, whose publications on Chinese women in San Francisco Unbound Voices and Unbound Feet feature chapters on the strike. The scrapbook contains photographs,
newspaper clippings, and bulletins featuring lovely hand-drawn illustrations.
Come
join us for the San Francisco Archives Crawl and learn more about the City’s
radical labor history!
