Federations and Fraternal Orders: The Place of Police Unions in the History of the Labor Movement

Aaron Bekemeyer, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University

This talk will examine the case of Baltimore in the 1960s and ‘70s, where two unions (AFSCME and the Fraternal Order of Police) went head-to-head to represent the officers of the city police department. This history will shed light on the relationship between police unions and the labor movement as a whole and reveal the contested, contingent, dynamic nature of that relationship over time.

Revisiting Saylesville: A Deeper Exploration of the Saylesville Massacre of 1934

Patrick Crowley, NEA-RI

In 1934, workers across Rhode Island went on strike as part of one of the largest industrial actions in American history – the General Textile Strike. In the mill village of Saylesville, workers fought with deputy sheriffs and eventually the national guard. Two workers were killed in an event known as “The Saylesville Massacre.”

Female Networks of Labor: Making a Living in Early 19th-Century Providence

Andrew Polta, Public Archaeology Lab

Click here to join via Zoom: https://aflcio.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYlfuigrDksHdfNWxIhXjycaQ7UEIrsDH6T

The conditions of men’s labor in a port like Providence pushed many women into the labor market during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Forced to provide a significant portion of their family’s income, these women faced a dilemma: prevailing gender norms depressed wages for the most readily available jobs, and truly lucrative work was often illicit, if not illegal. Both types of labor left women vulnerable to removal by the Providence Town Council, as either unwanted paupers or disorderly vagrants. Drawing on hundreds of interviews the town council conducted with ordinary Providence residents, we can reconstruct these women’s responses to their situation. The records show women who stubbornly refused to give up lives they had built for themselves and who formed neighborhood networks to help evade the attentions of Providence authorities. At the center of these networks were so-called disorderly houses, female-run boarding houses or brothels, which provided everything from work opportunities to a place to hide to even rudimentary social services for women in need.

Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island

Christy Clark-Pujara, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Drawing from her book Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (NYU Press, 2016), Dr. Clark-Pujara will examine how the business of slavery— economic activity that was directly related to the maintenance of slaveholding in the Americas, specifically the buying and selling of people, food, and goods— shaped the experience of slavery, the process of emancipation, and the realities of black freedom in Rhode Island from the colonial period through the American Civil War.

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