Tamiment Library has many biographies of American women labor activists and workers from
the nineteenth and twentieth century. The following titles are books and dissertations on major
figures, like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, as well as lesser known leaders, and group portraits of
women in a particular occupation (e.g. coal miners, blues singers).
Please note that there are also many individual and group biographies on video available at Bobst
(see Film & Video Histories section for more information).
HD6079.2.U5 A82 Asher, Nina Lynn. "Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca: Feminist Trade Unionist, 1894-1946." Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1982. Biography of organizer and first female vice president of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America from 1914-1946, who struggled to promote feminist agenda in male-dominated union. Also discusses her shift from socialist to New Dealer, and her run for a Congressional seat. See also the video biography of ACWA organizer Louise Shanberg, Sticking to the Union, in which she recalls working closely with Bellanca.
HD8073.J6 A74 1978 Atkinson, Linda. Mother Jones, the Most Dangerous Woman in America. New York: Crown Publishers, 1978. Popular biography of the famous radical and labor organizer — the most recent and thorough of several available at Tamiment. See library catalog for other titles, and see also Jones' autobiography under Memoirs & Autobiographies and collected works under Novels, Collected Prose, etc.
TT505.H35 B47 1988 Berch, Bettina. Radical by Design: The Life and Style of Elizabeth Hawes. New York: Dutton, 1988. Life of fashion designer and radical journalist whose published works included an exposé of the fashion industry (Fashion is Spinach, 1938) and an account and critical assessment of women's factory work in WWII (Why Women Cry; Or, Wenches With Wrenches, 1943, listed in Studies, Treatises, etc., 1920-1945).
HD6073.M392 U68 1985 Book Committees of the Massachusetts History Workshop. They Can't Run the Office Without Us: Women Look at 60 Years of Clerical Work. Cambridge: Massachusetts History Workshop, 1985. Women's experiences in office work and history of organization. Based in part on interviews conducted by Jean Tepperman for her book, Not Servants, Not Machines (under Studies, Treatises, etc., post-1945).
HQ1413.B56 B76 1987a Brown, Kathleen A. "Ella Reeve Bloor, Suffragist, Trade-Unionist, Socialist, and Revolutionary in the Making, 1862-1919." MA thesis, San Francisco State University, 1987. Lengthy master's thesis (almost 200 pages) on Bloor, a founder of the American Communist Party in 1919. See also Bloor's autobiography, We Are Many, under Memoirs & Autobiographies.
HX84.F5 C36 1995 Camp, Helen C. Iron in Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1995. Biography of one of the most important radicals in the 20th century U.S., the only female leader of the IWW, a founder of the ACLU, and leader of the Communist Party USA starting in the 1930s and its first female chair in 1961. See also Flynn's autobiography, I Speak My Own Piece, under Memoirs & Autobiographies, her collected writings, under Novels, Collected Prose, etc., and her personal papers, under Archival Manuscript Collections.
ML3521 .D355 1998 Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. Uses the careers and lives of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday to show how black women blue singers not only triumphed artistically over a hostile pop music industry, but also built an unacknowledged proto-feminist consciousness in working-class African American communities.
HD6079.2.U5 K57 1991 Kirkby, Diane. Alice Henry, The Power of Pen and Voice: The Life of an Australian-American Labor Reformer. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Examines life of this internationally oriented Progressive who served as Secretary of the U.S. National Women's Trade Union League and edited the organization's journal, Life and Labor. Focuses on Henry less as an individual leader than as a lens for broader conflicts and developments in Progressive labor reform movement. See also Archival Manuscript Collections for WTUL-related sources.
HD6509.P47 L44 1993 Leeder, Elaine J. The Gentle General: Rose Pesotta, Anarchist and Labor Organizer. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993. Biography of Russian immigrant seamstress who organized for the ILGWU and became its only female Vice President in the 1930s; also organized in rubber and auto workers for the CIO. See also Pesotta's autobiography, Bread Upon the Waters, under Memoirs & Autobiographies.
HD6079 .M39 1974 Maupin, Joyce. Labor Heroines: Ten Women Who Led the Struggle. Berkeley, Calif.: Union WAGE Educational Committee, 1974. Portraits of important women labor activists from the 19th and early 20th century: Agnes Nestor, Augusta Lewis, Clara Lemlich, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Hannah O'Day, Kate Mullaney, Leonora Barry, Rose Schneiderman, Mother Jones, and Sarah Bagley.
HQ1413 .O53 M55 1993 Miller, Sally M. From Prairie to Prison: The Life of Social Activist Kate Richards O'Hare. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. Biography of the Socialist Party's leading female agitator in its Debsian "Golden Age" of the early 20th century.
HD6073.M6152 U66 1996 Norris, Randall, and Jean-Philippe Cyprés. Women of Coal. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Life stories of three generations of Appalachian coal mining women, with photographic portraits.
HD6079.2.U5 O75 1995 Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense & a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Group biography of four immigrant women who rose to prominent positions in the labor movement and reform politics: Rose Schneiderman, Fannia Cohn, Pauline Newman, and Clara Lemlich.
HD6079.2.U5 O85 O'Sullivan, Judith, and Rosemary Gallick. Workers and Allies: Female Participation in the American Trade Union Movement, 1824-1976: Exhibition Organized by Judith O'Sullivan: Catalog. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975. Catalog booklet includes brief historical essay, chronology, and many short biographies of 19th- and 20th-century notables.
HD6079.2.U5 P38 1988 Payne, Elizabeth Anne. Reform, Labor, and Feminism: Margaret Dreier Robins and the Women's Trade Union League. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Biography of Chicago-area activist who became president of the National Women's Trade Union League and emphasized motherhood as common ground for cross-class organizing among women. See also Archival Manuscript Collections for WTUL-related sources.
ML420.J15 R66 1999 Romalis, Shelly. Pistol Packin' Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Explores life of coal miner's daughter from Eastern Kentucky who became a labor activist and legendary protest folksinger, and her role in representing the "folk" to and among left-wing intellectuals and artists.
HD6509.M375 S25 1988 Salmond, John A. Miss Lucy of the CIO: The Life and Times of Lucy Randolph Mason, 1882-1959. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Biography of important Southerner reformer of first half of the 20th century who worked for the YWCA, the National Consumers' League, and became the public relations representative for the CIO in the deeply anti-union South from 1937 to 1953.
HD6079.2.U5 S36 1997 Schofield, Ann. "To Do & To Be": Portraits of Four Women Activists, 1893-1986. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997. Comparative biography of four women whose activism improved conditions for women workers, especially in the garment trades: Gertrude Barnum, Mary Dreier, Pauline Newman, and Rose Pesotta.
Film R2757 Scholten, Pat Creech. "Militant Women for Economic Justice: The Persuasion of Mary Harris Jones, Ella Reeve Bloor, Rose Pastor Stokes, Rose Schneiderman, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn." Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 1978. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1979. One microfilm reel.
HD6073.T42 U57 1983 Selden, Bernice. The Mill Girls: Lucy Larcom, Harriet Hanson Robinson, Sarah G. Bagley. New York: Atheneum, 1983. Novel-like narratives of the lives of three of the most prominent of the much-studied Lowell Mill Girls.
HQ1413.K45 S58 1995 Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. First of two planned volumes on the famous socialist and feminist reformer whose efforts in the National Consumer's League, factory inspection, and other arenas helped win protective labor legislation for women and other industrial regulations. Places Kelley in context of an expanding sphere of political activism carved out by educated middle-class and upper-class women in the late 19th century. See also Kelley's autobiography, Notes of Sixty Years, under Memoirs & Autobiographies.
HD6079.2.U5 Y67 1981 Union Women's Alliance to Gain Equity (Union WAGE). "You Can't Scare Me…" Labor Heroines: 1930s-1980s. San Francisco: Union WAGE, 1981. A fifty-six page illustrated pamphlet providing brief profiles of ten labor and political activists: Dolores Huerta, Ethel Rosenberg, Mary Imada, Myra Wolfgang, Carmen Lucia, Elizabeth Nicholas, Elaine Black Yoneda, Dorothy Healey, Frances Albrier, and Lynn Childs.
HQ1413.S69 Z56 1989 Zipser, Arthur, and Pearl Zipser. Fire and Grace: The Life of Rose Pastor Stokes. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Life of Cleveland cigarmaker who became well-known socialist in her own right and traveled in leftist intellectual circles with wealthy socialist husband. See also Stokes' autobiography, I Belong to the Working Class, under Memoirs & Autobiographies, and her personal papers, under Archival Manuscript Collections.