[Uwhistory] Fw: Events on Civil Rights & the United Farmworkers

[Cheryl Fisk]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Labor Center 
To: Labor Center 
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 10:10 AM
Subject: Events on Civil Rights & the United Farmworkers


Please circulate

Labor Center events on Seattle Labor and Civil Rights Project and theUnited Farmworkers in Washington State!

1)  HBCLS Labor Studies Colloquia presents Jim Gregory and Trevor Griffey, 
UW Department of History, discussing the "Seattle Civil Rights and Labor 
History Project."

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is a multi-media web site that explores Seattle's history of social movements for racial and economic justice. The project represents a unique collaboration involving UW students and faculty, community and labor groups, and K-12 teachers. We will also be using this event to plan the next phase of the Project.

  Thursday April 7th, 3-4:30 pm, Gowen 1A


2)  Launch of a New Labor History Website on the History of the United Farm 
Workers (UFW) in Washington State!!

Researchers from the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies have been working for over a year to compile interviews with important UFW activists and still photographs of major UFW campaigns and events. These materials have now been formatted into a website that can be found at http://depts.washington.edu/pcls/ufw/.  We invite you to join us to officially launch the website.

  Saturday April 9th, 2-5 pm, Smith Hall 105, UW Seattle campus

    This event will include presentations, a panel discussion and refreshments.

(Detailed descriptions of these projects appear below)

________________________________________________________________________


The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
  See the web site:   http://faculty.washington.edu/gregoryj/civilrights

Mission Statement:

Seattle has a unique Civil Rights history that challenges the way we think about race, civil rights, and the Pacific Northwest. Seattle's civil rights movements started well before the celebrated struggles in the South in the 1950s, and included not just African American activists but also Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. The region's labor movements also played a pivotal role. From the 1910s through the 1970s, labor and civil rights were linked in complicated ways, with some unions and radical organizations providing critical support to struggles for racial justice, while others stood in the way.

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project brings this vital history to life in a multi-media web site with streaming-video interviews, rare publications, documentary images, movement histories, and personal biographies.Here is what we have accomplished so far:

-Streaming-video interviews: So far we have conducted 27 interviews with former civil rights activists from the African-American, Filipino-American, Chinese- and Japanese- American, and Latino 
communities. Streaming-video excerpts of many of them are already on the website and more will be ready soon.

- A unit on "Segregated Seattle" which tracks the history of housing segregation and other forms of discrimination. When it is finished it will have a clickable map that allows you to check the deed restrictions and housing covenants for neighborhoods throughout King County. We have some of the restrictive covenants posted already. This is attracting a lot of interest in part because the racial restrictions are still part of the official deeds on properties through out the region.

- A student project on the School Boycott of 1966; among other elements of this project we have online images of letters that 4th graders who attended the Freedom School wrote during the school boycott.

--Two more students have done ground breaking work on the Filipino-led Cannery Workers union that was founded in 1933. This unit has been developed in collaboration with the Filipino American National Historical Society.

- We have a huge collection of materials and interviews on Tyree Scott and the United Construction Workers campaigns to integrate the construction trades in the late 1960s. This unit has been developed in collaboration with the UCWA History Project of the Northwest Labor and Employment Law Office (NW LELO)

-     Other research reports include one the beginnings of Chicano student activism at UW; biographies of Suzie Revels Cayton, and her son Revels Cayton; a fine historical account of the attempts to pass an anti-miscegenation law in 1935 and 1937 and the early civil rights coalition that blocked it.

-      We will soon have a section on Seattle's Ethnic Press, profiling the many different newspapers that over the years have served the different communities of color.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


UFW in Washington State
Panelists include Rosalinda Guillen, and Tomás A. Villanueva whose interviews appear on the website, as well as researcher Maria Cuevas from Washington State University and Eastern Washington members of the farm worker community, April and Morena Ortiz. Panelists will share their personal stories of struggle for Farm Worker rights in Washington State. The grape boycott of the 1960s, the 
strike and success at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery, and current concerns about legal health protections and unionization of other farm workers are some of the topics that will be discussed.

.           We are thrilled to be collaborating with colleagues from other colleges around the state on this launch. In addition to Maria Cuevas, Washington State University faculty member Jose Alamillo is involved as is Dr. Bernal Baca from Yakima Valley Community College. In order to make sure that this project is accessible to the communities that it is about, as well as here at the UW, this launch will also be presented at WSU on April 16th and YCVV on April 30th. Please contact us for further details.

            This event is also co-sponsored by the Washington State American Federation of Teachers.



Sarah Laslett
Director
Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies
University of Washington
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/uwhistory/attachments/20050331/c2901a6c/attachment-0001.htm