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The Labor Movement in the U.S. South: Black Labor Activism

Archival Resources

Leah Wise Papers
Papers, audio recordings, and photographs documenting the social justice activities of Durham, N.C., African American activist Leah Wise, including her work with global social justice organizations and in community action groups. There is particular focus on African and African American issues, workers' rights, anti-racism and anti-Ku Klux Klan groups, women's rights, and agricultural and agriculture workers' issues. The collection also contains audio recordings compiled by Leah Wise, including interviews with African American leaders and Southern Tenant Farmers Union members.

Marsha Tinnen's Housekeepers Association Collection, 1991-2003
Marsha Tinnen's collection of photographs, publications, signs, articles, and newspaper clippings relating to the Housekeepers Association's efforts to organize for better working conditions, pay, and benefits at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during the 1990s and 2000s.

Myron Howard Ross Papers
Myron Howard Ross of Chapel Hill, N.C., was a United Mine Workers leader. The collection consists of papers collected by Ross relating to two predominantly black labor unions in Winston-Salem, N.C.: Local 22 of the Tobacco Workers Union, an affiliate of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union of America; and Local 420 of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union, which also included laundry workers. The papers consist principally of mimeographed letters, reports, broadsides, and clippings, and relate to the Tobacco Workers Union campaign to organize workers in Winston-Salem; relations with the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company; and strikes in 1946 against local laundries, the Piedmont Leaf Tobacco Company, and the Winston Leaf Tobacco Company.

Southeast Regional Economic Justice Network Records
The Southeast Regional Economic Justice Network (REJN) Records, 1990s-2010s, document the organization's administrative activities; social, economic, environmental, and racial justice programs; and its resource library. Topics include working women, organized farm labor, race and globalization, 2010 census work, voting rights protection and advocacy, NAFTA, the Hamlet Response Coalition, Bhopal victims, industrial revitalization, youth, and African American and Latino alliance building. Southeast Regional Economic Justice Network (REJN), founded by African American activist Leah Wise in 1989, is a local, regional, and international network of individuals and organizations working on social, economic, environmental, and racial justice issues in workplaces, families and communities.

Southerners for Economic Justice Records, 1977-2001
"Southerners for Economic Justice (SEJ) was founded in 1976 during a successful campaign to help J. P. Stevens textile workers unionize. Since then, SEJ has focused on empowering the unemployed and working poor to develop community-based strategies to solve social problems associated with economic crisis. Records, 1977-2001, of Southerners for Economic Justice document the organization under the leadership of its first three directors: James Sessions, Leah Wise, and Cynthia D. Brown.[...]

Published Resources