plants. Academic disciplines and categories were discussed and illustrated by Frank and the divisions of Humanities, Science, and Social Science were categorized. On January 13, 2016, the class met for the second time and was introduced to Rob, who was assigned to be the electronic tech taking care of lighting and the computer operations. The song of the day was Little Boxes; by Malvina Reynolds is a commentary of suburban homogeneity as all the houses are from the same cookie cutter architecture. The class also listened to The Working Class Go to Heaven, by Ennio Merricone. Rob is informed of all the class assignments, and the class will meet at the Walter Reuther Library on January 20, 2016, which has the collection of the United Farm Workers …show more content…
Highlights of the timeline were the Revolutionary War, The Civil War, The establishment of the Transcontinental Railroad, and the establishment of Labor Unions. Economic factors involved in the development of the railroad meant that there were technological advances such as the steam engine, refrigeration of railroad cars to preserve meat arriving from the slaughterhouses and meat factories. The immigration of over one million Irish immigrants from Ireland in the 1800’s due to the Potato Famine in 1840 was also discussed. The transcontinental Railroad ends at Niagara Falls was another fact that the class was informed by Frank the K. Later we were given a preview of Samuel Gompers who would become a giant in the labor movement which in the 1800’s were still using slave labor, and slave like condition is the …show more content…
Historians use the library as a primary source of material because of the vast amounts of original documents available, and they come from all over the country to do research. There is such a vast amount of material the archivist has to determine which material to use, and the unions help to fund the library. All research for Labor Studies begin with the Reuther Library, and the class was privileged to view on of the personal boxes of material of Grace Lee Boggs, the recently deceased activist, educator and great advocate for oppressed people throughout the world. Mr. Jones showed the class memorabilia from historical figures of Detroit like the great labor activist Mary Ellen Riordan and former mayor Coleman Young. The film room and the room with boxes of materials are booth refrigerated to help prevent deterioration of archives. The library contains over 12,000 book titles and different resource materials, vertical files, union activities, conventions, meetings etc. political organizations documents. The audio visual department has 1,000’s of photographs and movies related to the labor movement and the history of Detroit. Visiting the Reading Room where researchers peruse the documentation to use for the writing of history, was amazing as I felt that so mush history that has been documented and disseminated was started right in the Reading Room. As