Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Abstract

After flourishing in the late twentieth century, community labor history projects have languished in recent decades.1 Perhaps not anticipating the new spark of labor mobilization of the past few years, labor historians and local museums and historical societies have missed opportunities to document the stories of ordinary workers and their unions and educate and inspire others through public exhibits and programs.Both public historians and their academic partners have faced new challenges in presenting stories about American workers. This is partly due to the neoliberal political economy, as editors Thomas Klubock and Paulo Fontes conclude in their introduction to a special issue of International Labor and Working-Class History on labor and public history, but also because of new priorities within museum and academic cultures.2 Richard Anderson recently noted this disconnect between labor and labor historians and stated that making labor scholarship accessible is key to forming “a deep reservoir of inspiration and guidance” for current labor struggles, even as the demands of the academy require scholars to publish in more obscure journals and monographs.3 Public history institutions have always faced funding challenges, but in recent decades they have confronted more scrutiny into the content of their collections and programming efforts. Smaller museums in particular face pressures from local governments, boards, and members; lack consistent funding and sufficient professional staff; and must cater to the interests of granting agencies and donors. As a result, they are reluctant to tackle projects that either will not garner financial support or might be viewed as too “political” or “controversial.”4For museums in communities that may lack a well-known or celebrated labor past, public and labor historians face even more difficulties as they try to develop projects that document and present the history of workers and their popular protests. Earlier scholarship and public history projects have focused on famous sites of struggle, such as in New York City, Pittsburgh, Homestead, Lowell, or Chicago.5 Deindustrialization spurred local efforts to collect archival materials, oral histories, and artifacts to be presented in exhibits, publications, and commemorations—mostly in the industrial heartland of the northeastern and midwestern states, the landscapes of focus of so much labor history. Whereas the labor history of these places may be the most familiar to the public, the histories of smaller cities and suburbs can illuminate the ways that workers formed and participated in unions and interacted with both their employers and their communities in the years when a union presence was commonplace.This essay focuses on a local public history project that overcame these challenges and succeeded in documenting one county’s hidden labor movement history, creating new partnerships, and attracting new enthusiastic constituencies to museum programs. Spearheaded by the Clark County Historical Museum (CCHM) in Vancouver, Washington, this collaborative public history project involved museum staff and volunteers, professors and students from Washington State University Vancouver, the Vancouver Community Library (part of the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District), and various local unions. The Northwest Labor Press, the Southwest Washington Central Labor Council, and the Labor Roundtable of Southwest Washington also provided critical support. A local nonunion business contributed critical financial resources to help fund the exhibit. In one year, we produced a major exhibition, a walking tour, new oral histories and other collections, as well as a variety of public programs including a book discussion series. The project also generated new long-term relationships with diverse communities, provided instruction that is ongoing, and created an inclusive funding model that would be used for later CCHM projects. The project demonstrated that by focusing on a single county’s labor history and drawing on the expertise of community members, professional staff, and scholars, a museum can successfully document an important but neglected aspect of a place’s history, educate a community about that history, and expand public history audiences by developing new exhibits and programming.Until the late twentieth century, entire communities—including Vancouver, Washougal, and Camas in Clark County, Washington—supported union workers because they depended on union wages to support local businesses, taxes, and middle-class aspirations. Clark County is now the northern suburb of the larger metro area of Portland, Oregon, separated by the Columbia River; but it was once a blue-collar and union bastion in Washington state, with its own flourishing industries and labor movement. From the late nineteenth through most of the twentieth centuries, Vancouver epitomized the Northwest economy with its reliance on lumber and paper mills, railroad yards, small manufacturing, wartime shipyards, an aluminum plant dependent on cheap power from Columbia River dams, and seasonal farming, forestry, and fishing. Like other small cities in the region, it also hosted a thriving labor movement that represented a range of workers from wood products industries to restaurants, schools, and offices. As our exhibit and accompanying public programs revealed, many residents and museumgoers were surprised by this story. However, it is one that history museums are obligated to tell as part of their mission to explore a community’s past and to find and interpret the stories of working people that are often forgotten, neglected, or hidden.The storied, militant written labor history of the Pacific Northwest has mirrored the national focus on male-dominated unions and industrial heritage, with the bulk of scholarship and archival efforts focused on the urban centers of Seattle and Portland. The vitality of this scholarship and interest is reflected in the annual conferences of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association, which since 1968 has attracted scholars, students, union members, and public historians from British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon to participate in its programs. Since 2005, the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, launched and directed by Professor James Gregory and his students at the University of Washington (UW), has created significant digital labor history resources. In 2008, the UW Libraries—with funding and support from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Washington State Labor Council, and UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies—launched the Labor Archives of Washington to collect and curate labor collections. The Oregon Historical Society has also sponsored a major labor oral history project, and its hundreds of hours of interviews have added to the public knowledge about the region’s history.6However, many communities have been overlooked in this documentation effort and have forgotten or even avoided their labor past. When historian Aaron Goings sought to find material for his research on labor in southwest Washington, he discovered that the Aberdeen History Museum had large labor history collections, particularly from local trade unions and the International Woodworkers of America (IWA).7 However, the museum staff made no effort to process or publicize the collections, and even placed a “do not catalog” sign on top of the labor materials. Tragically, the materials were never digitized, and in June of 2018, the Aberdeen Historical Museum was destroyed by a fire that took the entire labor history collection—and many others—with it. Thousands of unique items from the IWA, Cooks & Waiters’ Union, and local labor council burned in the fire.8Although the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or “Wobblies”) have received much attention from labor historians, many communities where the IWW was active from 1905 to 1920 have either ignored or mischaracterized the union’s popularity and its roles in lumber and agricultural industry strikes in their local historical publications, collections, and historic sites. For example, for seventy years, the town of Centralia had commemorated only one side of the 1919 Legionnaires Armistice Day parade, the attack on the IWW hall, and the subsequent lynching of Wobbly Wesley Everest. In 1924, the town erected a towering bronze statue named The Sentinel to memorialize the four slain legionnaires as a permanent symbol against labor radicalism. However, in the 1990s, local teachers, a visiting public historian, and new residents sought an honest reckoning by soliciting new research and public conversations. This resulted in the successful nomination of two Centralia sites (the Sentinel statue and Wesley Everest’s grave) to the National Register of Historic Places.9 A committee of union members, businesspeople, educators, and other residents met through 1996 to consider commissioning a mural to depict Centralia’s labor past to complement the Sentinel statue. The committee also raised funds, and local business owner John Regan donated his storefront—in the building that housed the former Elks Lodge, overlooking the town square—for the mural. In December of 1997, artist Mike Alewitz unveiled The Resurrection of Wesley Everest, a giant mural depicting references to the area’s past and present labor struggles, which serves as a visible commentary to visitors and residents alike.10Lacking a colorful or controversial labor story from its past, a place like Clark County is a less obvious but equally important subject for public historians and institutions. Many deindustrialized cities of the eastern US have saved elements of their industrial and labor history built environment, but in the Pacific Northwest, many urban areas such as Vancouver have dismantled physical reminders of this history.11 Even as Clark County’s population mushroomed as it became part of the Northwest’s Silicon Forest and a sprawling bedroom community for the expanding Portland metro area, labor union density has declined, and landmarks such as local union halls closed their doors and combined with sister Portland locals.The area’s labor orientation and history was nearly forgotten until September 2011, when a dramatic strike among ILWU dockworkers in nearby Longview, Washington, brought attention to the labor movement again.12 As local press and community perceptions turned negative, Susan Tissot, executive director of the Clark County Historical Museum in Vancouver and a former member of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, recognized the community’s widespread unfamiliarity with labor’s history. At the same time, her collaboration on another timely exhibit project with Laurie Mercier, professor of history at WSUV, helped hatch the idea for a labor history exhibition.Since Tissot became executive director in 2003 (where she served until 2014), the CCHM has played an outsized role in Washington’s third-largest city as the major local heritage institution. The museum created professionalized exhibits and collections, hired professional staff, and developed partnerships with other area institutions, artists, scholars, and businesses. It also began exploring formerly ignored topics, including the Indigenous history of the region, foodways, agriculture, the experiences of women and African Americans, organizations such as the NAACP, and the arts. Even with its small physical footprint, the museum fulfils its mission by engaging in strong community outreach through carefully curated exhibitions and engaging public programs. With a small budget and staff, CCHM has also been creative in expanding institutional connections; for example, it joined with Washington State University librarians and professors to digitize newspapers and other collections. As a trained anthropologist and public historian, Tissot recognized the need to include academic historians in museum planning and projects. Bradley Richardson, current executive director and former museum experience coordinator, continued Tissot’s efforts to make programs relevant and accessible through partnership with academic historians.In 2011, Tissot and Mercier collaborated on an exhibition entitled Bridging the Gap which brought together museum staff, scholars, and students to document the history of the Interstate-5 bridge, which crosses the Columbia River and connects Washington and Oregon, linking the West Coast’s economy. Created in the midst of a controversial proposal by Washington and Oregon to reconstruct and expand the bridge, the exhibition told the long story of efforts to construct, fund, and modify the bridge since its erection in 1917. With funding from Humanities Washington, CCHM seized the opportunity to provide historical context for debates and discussions surrounding the bridge’s proposed expansion. In conjunction with the exhibit the museum provided a series of public programs with architects, geographers, urban planners, and environmental historians. The opening program, a panel moderated by a Clark County Superior Court Judge, featured both supporters and opponents of the bridge reconstruction. The panel took written questions from audience members, allowing for a civil dialogue between supporters and opponents. This project demonstrated that the museum could uncover a history that both supporters and opponents of the contemporary bridge project knew little about, and it attracted appreciative and thoughtful audiences to what might be perceived as a controversial topic typically avoided in the museum world.13 The exhibit, programming, and collaboration helped lay the groundwork for the labor history project.Much like the bridge issue that sparked our interest in uncovering the deeper history of a current controversy, the ILWU strike in nearby Longview and the public criticism it received reminded us that there was a need for public education about the history of the area’s labor movement. CCHM staff member Sheri Baur, whose husband Mike was an active ILWU member and had coordinated ILWU volunteers to move CCHM collections offsite into a new storage facility, had already helped educate staff about labor issues.As we made plans for the labor exhibit in 2012, we quickly discovered two major challenges that compelled us to reach out to the community for assistance. First, we found little information about Clark County’s labor history in the museum’s collections or in state, regional, and local archives and libraries. Although we did find useful material in local newspapers, those sources invariably focused on dramatic events such as strikes and work stoppages; they were often not sympathetic to labor and rarely included details about workers’ daily work and perspectives. CCHM staff identified materials in the museum’s holdings that could be useful—tools, union buttons, and a few collections such as from the Western Washington Teachers Association—but they soon realized that community outreach was necessary in order to gather adequate materials to tell the story.Finding funding for the exhibit and programs proved to be another challenge. We were surprised to discover that traditional funding sources and agencies expressed reluctance and declined to fund a labor project because of its “controversial” subject matter. “Our board would not touch this,” said one foundation representative. The fact that funders shied away from labor history topics revealed just how marginalized a once-mainstream institution in American life had become. Just as labor had lost power in American politics and workplaces in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it had lost a voice in media, local governments, and on boards where people were often afraid to offend corporate employers and funders.However, labor unions and their members helped us overcome these major obstacles by providing research materials, artifacts, memories, and funding. All community projects begin with reaching out to key people in that community and then gradually widening the circle of contacts. As Tissot recalled, “you can’t just start knocking on doors cold turkey and expect people to embrace you.” Many people directed her to Ed Barnes, the retired president and business representative of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 48. As an active labor leader in Vancouver and the larger region, Barnes connected CCHM to various unions and compiled a list of people who should be interviewed. He also served as an important link to individuals and both local and state labor councils. Oglala Lakota activist (enrolled Pine Ridge) and labor leader Roben White was also critical to the project. As president of the International Union of Painters & Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 10 and a board member of the Southwest Washington Central Labor Council, White became a cheerleader for the exhibit and a liaison between the museum and the labor community. He was an instrumental fundraiser for the exhibit and got us in the door so that we could borrow union materials. In addition to soliciting union-related contributions, White landed a significant cash donation from a local business owner, who had not previously financially supported the museum. Other key individuals within labor unions and councils also persuaded their members to support the project.Unlike many museums which are reluctant to produce an exhibit without significant collections, CCHM actively looked for the materials to display with the help of local unions. We wrote letters and emails asking for participation, gave presentations, and made requests at local union and labor council meetings. The Northwest Labor Press, which reaches over fifty thousand members of more than eighty unions in Oregon and Southwest Washington, put out calls for its readers to participate in the project and potentially loan photographs, ephemera, and other objects. What we and the unions quickly learned was that for the most part, locals had not recognized the significance of their records, which became another critical point of the project’s development. Ordinary workers rarely leave behind accounts of their activities because they do not realize the significance of their history. Meanwhile, unions either fail to preserve their archives or are very protective about sharing them with others.14 This led to museum staff having more meaningful discussions with local unions about the importance of their own history by preserving meeting minutes, scrapbooks, photographs, and objects for historical research, and about how these materials can both reshape the narratives about labor’s past and inform their own members. Tissot and Richardson made appeals for items to be donated to local archives.15 For example, frustrated by the difficulty in finding a locally significant ordinary punch-in time clock to use in the exhibit, Roben White acknowledged the importance of collecting “the stuff” that is “our soul.” To solve the time clock issue, the museum purchased one with no provenance from Ebay and printed custom timecards so visitors could experience clocking in and out of the exhibition. The popularity and educational value of the time clock reminds us that flexibility and improvisation can help public history efforts when collections are not available.Many individuals and unions had the foresight to keep a few artifacts and photographs in union halls or former members’ homes, which became cherished reminders of a local’s history and a key to mounting the exhibit. Following its outreach, the CCHM received a wide variety of objects and materials. For example, from the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, the museum received a strike garment, early carpentry tools, and a ballot box; from the National Association of Letter Carriers Local 1104, a set of photographs; from the Floor Coverers Local 123, a set of knee kickers for laying carpet, some dating back to the 1890s; from the Sheet Metal Institute in Portland, contemporary students’ work and a hundred-year-old soldering iron; and from the Baker’s Union, a jacket adorned with union pins. The museum also received a strike sign from John Zavodsky, who during one of his terms as president of the Evergreen Education Association was arrested during the 1973 teachers strike. The Northwest Labor Press, IBEW Local 48, and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Local 10 also contributed materials.In addition to loaning or donating objects, ultimately over fifty individuals and labor-related organizations from Clark County, Portland, and the surrounding region contributed financial assistance, making this a truly grassroots funding effort. It marked the first time so many individuals and small organizations had contributed to an exhibition, providing a model for how the CCHM would fund its future projects. Furthermore, incentive to complete the exhibit by mid-July was leveraged by a major supporter. After hearing about the planned exhibit, the state AFL-CIO approached Tissot about possibly holding its opening reception at the museum when the Washington State Labor Council met in Vancouver on July 25. After Tissot embraced the idea, the labor body helped push fundraising and interest to its members around the state. Many union members who were unfamiliar with and had never visited the museum contributed financial support.Although it was generally difficult to find materials about Clark County workers and unions, it was even more challenging to find images and materials about women and workers of color. This reflected the white male dominance of Pacific Northwest industries and unions, as well as the entire American labor movement. However, since the 1970s, Vancouver’s unions have reflected the economic changes of other small cities across the nation, bringing broader representation. Its largest employers—health care, education, and the service sector—reflect the rising percentage of unionized workers in those fields and provided a way to tell their stories. In fact, as we neared completion of the project in May of 2012, Vancouver Hilton workers reached a collective bargaining agreement to increase wages and improve access to medical care. The 116 low-wage workers, including many immigrant women, had affiliated with UNITE HERE Local 9 soon after the hotel opened in 2006. In its long struggle to win an agreement, the union had enlisted the aid of community members, clergy, the Portland Jobs with Justice chapter, and other unions to assist the workers and apply pressure on both the city government and the hotel.16 The union’s victory in Vancouver reflected new labor activism in the twenty-first century led by women, immigrants, people of color, and low-wage workers, and it helped link past stories about the area’s labor history to the present.Unsurprisingly, since historians often rely on oral history to uncover the history of marginalized groups, interviews became central to the research and the exhibition. Interviews provided content for post-World War II history and perspectives on how individuals both remembered and shaped area labor history. Oral interviews provided critical perspectives, and they represented one of the ways we collaborated with the workers we were documenting. As we progressed through the original list of important labor figures provided by Ed Barnes, interviewees eagerly suggested additional candidates. This greatly expanded the number of interviewees and the diversity of the unions we drew into the project. These interviews demonstrated one of the key features of public history outlined by historian Richard Anderson—that we talk with, listen to, and incorporate into our research the perspectives of the workers we documented and presented.17We also involved students in the project to introduce them to both labor history and the history of their community, as well as to give them the opportunity to participate in the production of oral histories and other exhibition materials. Tissot taught a public history course at WSUV, in which her students interviewed a variety of union members as part of their coursework. However, both Mercier and Tissot found that because of students’ unfamiliarity with the labor movement, they struggled with asking the right questions, focusing their research, and understanding the material they encountered. To make up for this Tissot and Richardson interviewed additional workers from the trades, industrial unions, and from teacher and service unions. Mercier noted that throughout over twenty years of teaching southwest Washington college students, there had been a steady decline in the numbers of students who have either belonged to unions or knew about them through their parents’ work. As a result, we spent classroom time helping students understand the basic function of unions before exploring national and local labor history. Still, students were enthusiastic about their experiences, learned a lot, and took pride in the fact that what they had produced had been incorporated into the exhibit and archived at both CCHM and WSUV libraries.Mercier’s senior history research seminars at WSUV in 2012 and 2013 focused on Clark County’s labor history, and students’ original research papers were incorporated into the exhibit or used as background material. Some of the student projects contributed new research about forgotten stories such as the 1913 women’s walkout at the Camas bag factory, the 1930s jurisdictional conflict among brewery workers, and the Evergreen teachers’ strike of 1973. Half a dozen students even presented their work at the Pacific Northwest Labor History conference held in Tacoma in 2012 and in Portland in 2013. After hearing students question why they had never been exposed to labor history in their prior education, Mercier was motivated to begin offering a labor history course in her regular teaching rotation at WSUV.We knew that the story of Clark County workers paralleled the national story about the rise and fall of unionization, but we also wanted to highlight local and regional milestones and distinctive elements. As local historical societies and museums are fully aware, linking national stories to local events engages residents more deeply with the past. We wrestled with how to tell a story that had been invisible to its residents. To guide our research, the exhibit team developed some key questions: How, when, and why did workers create and join labor unions in southwest Washington? What were their impacts and roles in Clark County during the twentieth century? How did the local area’s unique characteristics shape work and unions? In what ways has the state and national context influenced local unions? We compiled and interpreted our findings in twelve chronological and thematic exhibit panels, with accompanying images, artifacts, ephemera, and audio/visual materials. Through our research we uncovered new insights about regional labor history, and we encourage other public historians and institutions to pursue this work.The area’s natural features—the Columbia River, rich soils, and lush forests—shaped the lives of Indigenous peoples for millennia, as well as the later enterprises that drew other workers to the area. In 1824, the British Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort Vancouver as its headquarters and agricultural supply depot for its extensive global fur-trading operation. The company employed and traded with the densely populated local Chinook, Cowlitz, and Klickitat Native peoples, as well as with other Native, Hawaiian, and European laborers in an extensive network of two dozen trading posts.18By the late nineteenth century, Vancouver—incorporated in 1857 as an American town—had become home to a growing number of workers who were affiliating with labor unions to try to match the growing power of capital. By 1901, the Vancouver Federated Trades Assembly represented twenty-nine craft unions, as seasonal male workers in surrounding agricultural and timber industries attempted to organize fields and forests.19One powerful local industry illustrated local environmental influences, sex-segregated jobs, and early unionization efforts. Workers at the Crown Willamette Paper Company in Camas—the largest employer in Clark County and the second largest manufacturer of paper products in the US—tried intermittently to organize a union but were not successful until the late 1930s. In 1913, women in the bag factory walked off their jobs demanding higher wages and better working conditions. After striking for three weeks, they won a small pay raise and ventilation improvements inside the factory. In November of 1917, the year the US entered World War I, workers in Camas struck for higher wages and better conditions following a wave of IWW-led strikes in timber communities throughout the region. However, the paper company stubbornly refused to recognize the union, labeled strikers as subversives, and hired replacement workers, essentially blocking labor organizing for the next twenty years.20Although shipyard, railroad, and longshore workers periodically struck in the 1920s to improve their conditions, a wave of strikes in Clark County in the 1930s marked a new era for the labor movement as it did in the rest of the country. Influenced by new federal labor legislation, the creation of the CIO (dedicated to organizing unorganized workers), and the militant 1934 West Coast Longshoremen’s strike, men and women throughout the county began to form workplace unions. This energized labor culture was reflected in the creation of a new labor temple and café in Vancouver, a labor publication called the Clark County Union, and thousands of new union members that included retail clerks, WPA workers, and laborers in canneries and woolen and lumber mills. Vancouver even witnessed dramatic “beer wars” in 1935, when Teamsters and Brewery Workers Union membe