New York University’s Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, in conjunction with filmmakers Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly of Spargel Productions (NYC) and executive producer, writer, and playwright Elizabeth Hemmerdinger, celebrate the opening of a new collection of filmed oral histories entitled “The Real Rosie the Riveter Oral History Archive.”

Panel Discussion:  Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It” Women’s Stories Come to Life, April 3rd at NYU’s Tamimant Library
Esther Horne, native New Yorker, from the 1940s and now. She worked a number of defense jobs during the war including at the Electronic Corporation of America, All Craft Manufacturing Company, New York City and at Gossack’s Machine Shop in Queens.

New York University’s Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, in conjunction with filmmakers Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly of Spargel Productions (NYC) and executive producer, writer, and playwright Elizabeth Hemmerdinger, celebrate the opening of a new collection of filmed oral histories entitled “The Real Rosie the Riveter Oral History Archive.”

A panel discussion featuring two real “Rosies,” the filmmakers, and Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Academic Director, Joseph F. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies on Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 6:00 p.m. at the Tamiment Library, tenth floor, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, (at LaGuardia Place).  A reception will follow immediately after the panel. [Subways A,C,E, B,D,M to West 4th Street; 6 line to Astor Place; R train to 8th Street.]. 

The public may RSVP to: rsvp.bobst@nyu.edu with your name and title/date of the event.

MEDIA ONLY:  Reporters interested in covering or attending the event must contact Christopher James at 212-998-6876 or email christopher.james@nyu.edu.

The real Rosie the Riveters, now in their 80s and 90s, were interviewed over the past two years by Spargel Productions.

“They don’t talk just about walking into the factory,” says Hemmerdinger. “We get their whole lives. We get stories of the Depression; of racial, class and gender divides –a story of America.”

The interviews, now publicly available online at http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/interviews, bring a lifetime of experience and perspective to a transformational time in the lives of these “Rosies,” when they gave the United States a new icon of strength, determination and reliability on their way to changing the perception of working women.

These firsthand accounts of civilian life for an estimated 8 to 16 million women factory workers during the war, retraces our American History with a new perspective. This invaluable video archive collection teaches American social history, WWII involvement, and the evolution of women’s rights synergistically through the first-person telling of the Rosies’ stories.

About Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University:

The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University form a unique, internationally-known center for scholarly research on Labor and the Left. The primary focus is the complex relationship between trade unionism and progressive politics and how this evolved over time. Archival, print, photograph, film, and oral history collections describe the history of the labor movement and how it related to the broader struggle for economic, social, and political change.

In 1977 the Robert F. Wagner Archives was established as a joint program of the New York City Central Labor Council and the Tamiment Library. The Wagner is the designated repository for the records of the Council's more than 200 member unions. Today the Library has an extraordinary research collection documenting the history of organized labor in New York and the workers who built the City.

Tamiment has one of the finest research collections in the country documenting the history of radical politics: socialism, communism, anarchism, utopian experiments, the cultural left, the New Left, and the struggle for civil rights and civil liberties. It is the repository for the Archives of Irish America, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, and a growing Asian American labor collection.

Press Contact

Christopher James
Christopher James
(212) 998-6876