The following works offer in published, edited form historical documents (letters, photographs, etc.) and oral histories by and about working women, their experiences, and their activism.
Some are broad, diverse overviews of women's work historically, like Baxandall's and Gordon's
America's Working Women, while others offer a more focused view of a particular union, group of
workers or an event, such as the Lawrence, Mass., textile strike of 1912.
Please see the Novels, Prose, Poetry & Other Literary Works section for collected writings and speeches of women workers and labor leaders. Please also note that some scholarship in other categories, such as Biographies, draws heavily on oral histories. For archival collections of oral histories held at Tamiment/Wagner, see Archival Nonprint Collections, Oral Histories.
HD6515.C5 L35 1964 Oversize Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. The
Inheritance: Adapted from the 50th Anniversary Film of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America, AFL-CIO. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 1964. Over one hundred
historical photos, with brief captions and a running narrative, that tell story of garment workers and
their union.HD6095 .A662 1995 Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Linda Gordon, eds. America's Working Women: A Documentary History, 1600 to the Present. New York: Norton, 1995. Expanded and revised version of important 1976 collection, co-edited with Susan Reverby. Includes diverse selections from diaries, popular magazines, oral histories, letters, songs, fiction, etc., showing women's work and activism in broad array of contexts.
HD8039.T42 U6525 1990 Blewett, Mary H., ed. The Last Generation: Work and Life in the Textile Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1910-1960. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Edited collection of textile workers' oral histories, interwoven with historical context and analysis.
HD6073.B72 U63 1991 Blewett, Mary H. We Will Rise in Our Might: Workingwomen's Voices from Nineteenth-Century New England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Excerpts of primary documents, placed in detailed historical context.
HD6095 .B74.1976 Brownlee, W. Elliot, and Mary M. Brownlee. Women in the American Economy: A Documentary History, 1675 to 1929. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976. Documents selected to show the diversity of women's attitudes toward work and historical complexity of their participation in the marketplace.
HD5325.T4 1912 L38 1970z Bobbins & Bayonets: Documentary Sources on the Lawrence, Massachusetts Textile Strike. United States: Random House, 197[?]. Includes photos, documents, and narratives of the famous 1912 textile strike involving many immigrant women workers and the IWW.
HD6073.T42 A132 1986 Byerly, Victoria. Hard Times Cotton Mill Girls: Personal Histories of Womanhood and Poverty in the South. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, Cornell University, 1986. Oral histories of black and white women workers in North Carolina's cotton mill villages.
HQ1412 .C36 Cantarow, Ellen, with Susan O'Malley and Sharon Strom. Moving the Mountain: Women Working for Social Change. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1980. Oral histories of three activists: Florence Luscomb (suffrage, labor, peace), Ella Baker (civil rights), and Jessie Lopez de la Cruz (farmworkers' rights).
HD6515.H6 C6 1984 Comerford, Georgeen. 1199, A Family Portrait: Photographs of Hospital Workers. New York: District 1199, Cultural Center, Inc., 1984. Around forty photographs, with brief introductory essay. Based on an exhibit for 1199's "Bread & Roses" Cultural Project.
PS3553.R247 I2 1981 Craig, Bette, and Joyce Kornbluh. I Just Wanted Someone to Know: A Documentary Play. Brooklyn, NY: Smyrna Press, 1981. Dramatic presentation of twenty-six wage-earning women's oral histories of life and work in various fields over the twentieth century.
HD6073.B92 U63 1998 Eisenberg, Susan. We'll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1998. Oral histories of women who began to integrate the male world of construction in the late 1970s but have remained a very small and embattled minority in the building trades.
HD6073.F652 U64 1997 Fields, Leslie Leyland. The Entangling Net: Alaska's Commercial Fishing Women Tell Their Lives. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Twenty women discuss their work in a dangerous and male-dominated occupation.
HD6073.A452 U64 1987 Gluck, Sherna Berger. Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Oral histories of ten women who were aircraft industry workers in California during World War II. Places war work in the context of their diverse life-long experiences.
TR820.5 .H564 1981 Hine, Lewis W. Women at Work: 153 Photographs. Ed. Jonathan L. Doherty. Rochester and NY, NY: George Eastman House; In Association with Dover Publications, 1981. Collection of portraits by the pioneering social-documentary photographer of women in factories, homework, service, and other employments from 1907 to 1938.
D810 .N4 B4 1999 Honey, Maureen, ed. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. Photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women collected from the leading African-American periodicals of the era. Editor's introduction places them in historical context of unique opportunities and enduring racism and sexism surrounding war work, and highlights the unacknowledged artistic contributions they represent.
HD8055.A5 I52 International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The Position of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in Relation to CIO and AFL, 1934-1938, Chronicled in Documents and Records. New York: International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, 1938. A booklet that reprints in chronological order declarations, resolutions, public statements and official editorial comments on the ILGWU's views of the CIO and its relations with both it and its older rival in the 1930s, the AFL.
HQ1419 .J39 Jensen, Joan M. With These Hands: Women Working on the Land. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1981. Journals, letters, oral histories, myths, fiction, and other oral and literary sources documenting the experiences of some of the millions of Native American, Latina, Asian American, African American and Euro-American women who have done agricultural labor from the early 19th century through the 1980s.
LC5251 .L9 Lynip, Ryllis (Alexander) Goslin, and Omar Pancoast Goslin. Growing Up: 21 Years of Education with the I.L.G.W.U. New York: Educational Department, International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, 1938. A thoroughly illustrated historical review of the union's many educational and cultural programs.
HD6095 .H34 1997 Martin, Molly, ed.; Photographs by Sandy Thacker. Hard-Hatted Women: Life on the Job. 2nd ed. Seattle: Seal Press, 1997. Twenty-six women describe life on the job in a variety of traditionally male trades.
HD6095 .W68 1988 Oversize Michelson, Maureen R., and Michael R. Dressler, eds. Women & Work: Photographs and Personal Writings. Pasadena, Calif.: New Sage Press, 1988. Eighty-five women in diverse fields talk about their jobs and lives, and are photographed at work. Chosen as a "best book for young adults" by American Library Association.
M1 .T158 folder 47 National Women's Trade Union League of America. Songs, First International Congress of Working Women, Washington, DC, October, 1919. Chicago: National Women's Trade Union League of America, 1919. Lyrics to sixteen songs, with some music.
M1 .T158 folder 46 New York State Federation of Teachers Unions. Sing With the Union. Edited by Anne Meeropol, assisted by Fred Rosenberg; cover design by Juleon. Albany, NY: New York State Federation of Teachers Unions, 19[??]. Includes lyrics to twenty-six songs.
HD8039.R12 U66 1998 Niemann, Linda; Photographs by Lina Bertucci. Railroad Voices. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998. A collective memoir/oral history of the world of work on railroads, with many photographs, authored by two of the first women to work as "brakemen." (See also Niemann's memoirs under Memoirs & Autobiographies.)
HD6079.2.U5 R63 1996 O'Farrell, Brigid, and Joyce L. Kornbluh, eds. Rocking the Boat: Union Women's Voices, 1915-1975. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. Produced to make accessible to broader audience some of the interviews from The Twentieth Century Trade Union Woman, Vehicle for Social Change oral history project (see listing below). Provides eleven oral histories of activists.
Tam / Micro 28 Perkins, Frances. The Reminiscences of Frances Perkins [microform]. Glen Rock, NJ: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1977. 61 microfiches, from New York Times Oral History Program and Columbia University Oral History Collection; pt. 3, no. 182. Microfiche of typescript originally issued in nine books. Transcript of interviews conducted by Dean Albertson in Washington, DC, during the years 1951 through 1955. Includes indexes.
Tam / Micro 2 pt.1 Program on Women and Work at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. The Twentieth Century Trade Union Woman, Vehicle for Social Change [microform]: Oral History Project. Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1979- , ©1978- . Transcripts of interviews with many women union activists, famous organizers such as Pauline Newman as well as many lesser- known but important figures.
HD6060.5.U52 S433 1985 Schroedel, Jean Reith. Alone in a Crowd: Women in the Trades Tell their Stories. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985. Oral histories of diverse group of Seattle women in non-traditional jobs, presented under five themes: feminism, occupational health and safety, race, union, and family.
HQ1412 .S44 Seifer, Nancy. Nobody Speaks For Me! Self-Portraits of American Working Class Women. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976. Oral histories, organized thematically, of ten women whose lives generally illustrate transformations from housewives to activists.
HQ1421 .S592 1995 Sidel, Ruth. Urban Survival: The World of Working-Class Women. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, ©1978. Oral histories of eight working-class women of different ages and races, who discuss their concerns re: child care, healthcare, social services, job insecurity, etc., and their survival strategies.
HD6095 .W62 1994 Wise, Nancy Baker, and Christy Wise. A Mouthful of Rivets: Women at Work in World War II. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994. Oral histories of around one hundred women who discuss their experiences in industrial, clerical, professional, and service work during WWII.
For additional documentary material on women workers, see also:
HD8066 .M34 1991 Boris, Eileen, and Nelson Lichtenstein. Major Problems in the History of American Workers: Documents and Essays. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1991.
HD8081.A65 B55 1989 Foner, Philip S., and Ronald L. Lewis, eds. Black Workers: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.