COM 400: Communication and Labor: Finding Primary Sources

A University of Washington research guide to primary and secondary sources for labor history.

The Southern Labor Archives is the official repository for hundreds of local and regional union offices, as well as the national offices of the IAM, National Federation of Federal Employees, United Garment Workers of America, United Furniture Workers of America, PATCO, and the United Textile Workers of America as well as many other union offices and state federations of labor, including the Georgia AFL-CIO.

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. Search for labor materials; some may be restricted.

These images from Washington State University document the Latino experience in the Yakima Valley and agricultural protest movements in Washington state between 1967 and 1976, and approximately 100 of those images are currently presented here in this digital collection. The images in the collection explore Latino life in and around migrant worker labor camps and in the agricultural fields, and depict labor activist Cesar Chavez visiting the Yakima Valley on several occasions. The collection also depicts figures that were eventually involved in protests in and around Seattle and the University of Washington, protesting grape boycotts and other issues relating to agricultural workers.

A selection of digitized items drawn from the Labor Archives of Washington Collections and UW Libraries Special Collections including records documenting the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, Filipino and Asian American cannery unionism, labor espionage and spies, labor and the New Deal, the Everett Massacre and Centralia Tragedy, and WTO protests Seattle.

An online exhibit that includes photographs, a timeline, even a model of the floor where the fire broke out. From Cornell University's Kheel Center.

Library and Archives at Wayne State University in Detroit offers digital images and audio clips of strikes in the United States, United Auto Workers (UAW), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Air Line Pilots Association, American Federation of Teachers, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), National Association of Letter Carriers, United Farm Workers, and the 1932 Ford Hunger March.

Audio clips can be found at: http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/audio/user

A virtual museum that gathers, identifies, and displays images of the cultural artifacts of working people and their organizations.

155 photographs documenting America's business and industrial history.

An interpretive online exhibit examining the historical and cultural context of the the Industrial Workers of the World Photograph Collection at the Labor Archives of Washington State, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.