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A group of nurses hold picket signs

Labor

Collecting Area

Includes historical records and personal papers related to labor and social justice movements in America from the late 19th century to today, including a large collection of photographs, audio recordings, video, posters, and artifacts.

Digital Collections

Martin Luth King, Jr. in a group of picketers

The Advancing Workers Rights Project

The Advancing Workers Rights Project: Digitizing the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department Records, a collaboration between Georgia State University and UMD, this project provides new insights into the intersection of the civil rights and labor movements, both nationally and in the South. It offers online access to over 100,000 selected digitized pages of text, photographs, audio recordings and films documenting the civil rights work of the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), 1943-1999.

Item types: documents and photographs

Photograph of armed striking miners, 1914

Digital Collection: Labor in America

This online database contains over 1500 digitized individual documents, photographs and artifacts from the Labor and Social Justice Collections. It includes protest newsletters, flyers, photographs, posters and buttons related to various social justice movements.

Item types: documents and photographs

George Meany and Walter Reuther shake hands and raise gavel to commemorate the merger between the AFL and the CIO at the first annual convention of the AFL-CIO in 1955

Labor Film and Video Material

The labor collection includes film and video material from the AFL-CIO records and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.

Item types: video recordings

Other Resources

Large crowd of deomnstrators in front of the Washington Monument for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 1963

For Liberty, Justice, and Equality

For Liberty, Justice, and Equality: Unions Making History in America Online Exhibit provides an overview of the UMD Labor and Social Justice Collections, including over 100 examples of digitized text, photographs and videos covering over a century of organized labor’s intersection with social justice movements for civil rights, women’s equality, immigrant rights, religious freedom, LGBTQ liberation and environmental justice.

telegram to MLK from George Meany about meeting with union leaders

Labor and Social Justice Collection Guides

This browse list contains over 120 collection guides to historical records, papers, and audiovisual materials in the Labor and Social Justice Collections, including some selected digitized material. Of note are guides to the historical records of the Civil Rights, Legislative, Political Education, International Affairs, and Organizing (unions) Departments of the national AFL-CIO, Pride at Work, the environmentalists Anthony Wayne Smith and Joseph Uehlein, and the Tobacco, Bakery, Carpenters and Shipbuilding unions.

Nelson Mandela with a pro-Union and anti-apartheid hat and sign

Labor and Social Justice YouTube Playlist

This YouTube playlist, under the title George Meany Labor Archive, includes links to over 38 films and auto recordings related to the labor movement’s perspective on civil rights, women’s equality, farmworkers’ organization, international solidarity, LGBTQ rights, environmental protection, health care, and public education.

Historic Labor Newspapers

Top of a 1956 cover for "The Carpenter" newspaper

The Carpenter Magazine, 1881-1988

Published by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, the digitized Carpenter Magazine provides a searchable and downloadable chronological database documenting over a century of one of the most important skilled building trades unions in America.
 

Front of AFL-CIO news, July 9, 1990, featuring group praising Nelson Mandela

AFL-CIO News, 1956-1996

Published by the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the digitized AFL-CIO News provides a searchable and downloadable chronological database documenting the first 40 years of the labor federation’s work to unionize the entire American working class, particularly by opposing discrimination and organizing the public sector.

Cover of CIO news form 1939 with the headline "Mexican Labor Meeting Hears Lewis Urge Unity"

The CIO News, 1937-1955

Published by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the digitized CIO News provides a searchable and downloadable chronological database documenting the history of the federation of unions who organized the American industrial workforce.

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