The Organization of American Historians

Abstract

Organization of American Historians met in Philadelphia in April 1987; I attended three labor-related sessions. The United Packinghouse Workers of America Oral History Project: Methods and Findings proved to be a tho roughly enjoyable panel, in part because of the information about the history of the militant, left-leaning United Packinghouse Workers (UPW), but also because of the attention to the practice of oral history. Roy Rosenzweig (George Mason) read a paper by James Cavanaugh, who was on the staff of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin when the project was undertaken. paper, which was both a history of the UPW and an explanation of how the oral history project was conceptualized and funded by the National En dowment for the Humanities in the era of Reagan. project's chief difficul ty and key strength was the decentralized nature of the UPW, which required oral historians to conduct interviews in local communities in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Texas, along with the major yards and plants in Chi cago. Most of the interviewees did not go on to become national leaders, but in stead spent their entire working careers inside packing plants. union paid varying but serious attention to matters of race and gender, attention that seems to have carried over into the conceptualization of the project itself. Rick Halpern and Roger Horowitz both pointed to the importance of race, local autonomy, and radicalism (particularly that of communists) in the formation and operation of these locals. Halpern's paper, Race and Radical ism in the Chicago Stockyards, detailed the historical basis for racial mistrust and hostility, and how workers overcame these divisions in the 1930s through militant direct action in the process of unionization. Blacks, who comprised 30 percent of the labor force, were at the very center of the UPW movement of the 1930s. Horowitz's paper, Official Policy versus Practice in the UPWA, looked at characteristics of the UPW nationally and locally that made it pro gressive?its enlightened race and gender policies (the latter was less admirable than the former) and its internal democracy. Commentators Roy Rosenzweig and Alice Hoffman raised questions about the roots of interracial alliance, the limits of internal union democracy, and issues of oral history methods such as the project's use of detailed abstracts rather than transcripts. session titled Samuel Gompers from Three Perspectives: A Reexam ination at Shop Floor, National, and International Range, was refreshing be