January 2024: Work and Labor History
Happy New Year! This month, we are highlighting teaching resources, recent scholarship, and children’s books that honor the histories of work and organized labor in the United States and internationally. By teaching these histories through such resources as those included below, students are able to investigate and discover the many ways that work and labor shape their experiences of the world. Students from different backgrounds and all grade levels benefit from these opportunities to connect their experiences to the past. We hope you'll find these resources useful in bringing labor history into your classroom year-round!
Featured Teaching Resources:
This lesson focuses on the topic of work and jobs to illuminate change over time. Kindergartners have some direct experiential knowledge of jobs today, which can be leveraged to learn about the differences and similarities of jobs and work in the past.
In this lesson, second-grade students will learn and discuss the multiple cultures and peoples that historically have contributed to the farms and produce of the United States. Students will compare and contrast how food was grown on the farm, who tilled the crops, and how produce is delivered to American grocers and markets.
This fifth-grade inquiry set examines how American settlers moved westward through a focus on transportation. These new technologies transformed the landscape of the West and the lives of the people who lived there. Students will learn about the laborers who helped construct the transcontinental railroad, as well as the ways in which the construction of the railroad and technological progress changed the state of American labor.
Maquiladoras in Northern Mexico
This inquiry set for tenth-grade students focuses on maquiladoras, factories for assembling exports that are owned by a foreign company and are generally located in the border towns of northern México. This case study offers students the opportunity to analyze a complex problem that has no easy solution. Its goal is to get them to view the costs and opportunities of globalization from the perspective of Mexico as a nation and from the individual perspectives of Mexican managers, workers, and activists.
This high-school inquiry set focuses on how ordinary people experienced the Great Depression. The sources focus on a relatively narrow topic - food - to expose much larger trends (like poverty, hunger, and government policy) of the 1930s. Sources will allow students to consider the human face of workers during the Great Depression, including the many California farm workers who came to the state as a result of the devastation of the Dust Bowl.
Labor Organizing in the Garment Industry
This high school economics lesson plan uses the garment industry as an example of why laborers organize for worker protections and how their struggles have varied across time and space. Students will respond to the inquiry question: how and why do workers organize?
Recent Scholarship:
Crystal Marie Moten, Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee (March 2023)
From Vanderbilt University Press:
“The book explores the job-related activism of Black Midwestern working women and uncovers the political and intellectual strategies they used to critique and resist employment discrimination, dismantle unjust structures, and transform their lives and the lives of those in their community. Moten emphasizes the ways in which Black women transformed the urban landscape by simultaneously occupying spaces from which they had been historically excluded and creating their own spaces. “
Joan Flores-Villalobos, The Silver Women: How Black Women’s Labor Made the Panama Canal (January 2023)
From University of Pennsylvania Press:
“Joan Flores-Villalobos argues that Black West Indian women made the canal construction possible by providing the indispensable everyday labor of social reproduction. West Indian women built a provisioning economy that fed, housed, and cared for the segregated Black West Indian labor force, in effect subsidizing the construction effort and the racial calculus that separated pay in silver for Black workers and gold for white Americans. But while also subject to racial discrimination and segregation, West Indian women mostly worked outside the umbrella of U.S. canal authorities. “
Aimee Loiselle, Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class (November 2023)
From UNC Press:
“In the late 1970s, Hollywood producers took the published biography of Crystal Lee Sutton, a white southern textile worker, and transformed it into a blockbuster 1979 film, Norma Rae, featuring Sally Field in the title role. This fascinating book reveals how the film and the popular icon it created each worked to efface the labor history that formed the foundation of the film's story. While Norma Rae constructed a powerful image of individual defiance by a white working-class woman, Loiselle demonstrates that female industrial workers across the country and from diverse racial backgrounds understood the significance of cultural representation and fought to tell their own stories.”
Lucia Carminati, Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1858-1906, (August 2023)
From UC Press:
“Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said probes migrant labor's role in shaping the history of the Suez Canal and modern Egypt. It maps the everyday life of Port Said's residents between 1859, when the town was founded as the Suez Canal's northern harbor, and 1906, when a railway connected it to the rest of Egypt.”
Amanda Lanzillo, Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India, (January 2024)
From UC Press:
“Centering the stories and experiences of metalsmiths, stonemasons, tailors, press workers, and carpenters, Pious Labor examines colonial-era social and technological changes through the perspectives of the workers themselves. As Amanda Lanzillo shows, the colonial marginalization of these artisans is intimately linked with the continued exclusion of laboring voices today.”
Picture Books (#KatesBookClub)
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin. When Farmer Brown's cows find a typewriter, they start making demands and go on strike to get what they want. Great way to introduce the power of collective bargaining. Even the littles will love this one and get the bigger message.
The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. Duncan arrives at school one morning to find his crayons have gone on strike, leaving him a stack of letters detailing their grievances about how he uses them.
Side by Side/Lado a Lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez/La Historia de Dolores Huerta y Cesar Chavez by Monica Brown. This bilingual book describes the long-standing partnership between Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez and their efforts to improve working and living conditions for migrant workers.
Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel. True story of how immigrant Clara Lemlich fought back against the poor treatment of her fellow factory workers and led the largest walkout of women workers in the country. Excellent background information about Clara and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire can be found here. Another great site for background information is from Cornell University
Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop! The Sanitation Strike of 1968 by Alice Faye Duncan. Story of a nine-year-old girl who marched in the Memphis sanitation strike with her parents. Includes details about the events leading up to the strike, the response of the local government, and the role of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the protest. So many opportunities for connections to today's students - economic instability, power of peaceful protest, government response. Also nice for students to understand the background for MLK's visit to Memphis.
Night Job by Karen Hesse. When the sun sets, Dad’s job as a school custodian is just beginning. What is it like to work on a Friday night while the rest of the city is asleep? Shooting baskets in the half-lit gym, sweeping the stage with the game on the radio, and reading out loud to his father in the library all help the boy’s time pass quickly. But what makes the night really special is being with Dad. Delightful story of a son's love and appreciation for his father.
Someone Builds the Dream by Lisa Wheeler. Gorgeously written and illustrated, this is an eye-opening exploration of the many types of work that go into building our world--from the making of a bridge to a wind farm, an amusement park, and even the very picture book that you are reading. An architect may dream up the plans for a house, but someone has to actually work the saws and pound the nails. A shout-out to all the workers in our lives, who don't often get the credit for the finished product, but who are essential to its completion.
These Hands by Margaret Mason. Joseph’s grandpa could do almost anything with his hands. He could play the piano, throw a curveball, and tie a triple bowline knot in three seconds flat. But in the 1950s and 60s, he could not bake bread at the Wonder Bread factory. Factory bosses said white people would not want to eat bread touched by the hands of the African Americans who worked there. True story of discrimination at the Wonder Bread Factories in Detroit, Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s.
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan. When Esperanza and her mother are forced to flee their home in Mexico and become farm workers in the United States, they find themselves living and working in harsh conditions. While not a picture book, every California student should read this book to appreciate the difficult conditions of migrant workers.