Ready for Researchers: The Greater New Haven Labor History Association Collection at the UConn, Storrs

by Joan Cavanagh, Archivist and former Director, GNH Labor History Association

Thirteen groups of records, photographs, artifacts, newspaper articles, and audio and videotapes documenting slices of New Haven’s rich working class and union history are now available to researchers at the Greater New Haven Labor History Association Collection held in the Archives and Special Collections repository at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

The records include materials from New Haven’s garment workers’ unions; the Typographical Union of New Haven (ITU Local 47); the New Haven Federation of Teachers Local 933; the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Local 299; and selected papers of the preeminent labor historian David Montgomery, as well as memorabilia from the life of Nicholas Aiello, business agent and organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and Joseph Rourke, Secretary-Treasurer of the CT AFL-CIO from 1946 until the late 1950s.

The Collection also includes the organizational records of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association itself, from its founding in 1988 through 2016.

The finding guides for the Collection may be accessed at the following link: hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860317492.

For more information or to access any materials in the collection, contact Laura Katz Smith, Archivist, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library, (860) 486-2516, [email protected].

And don’t forget to check out the exhibit about Winchester workers, “Our Community at Winchester,” at exhibits.winchesterworkers.gnhlha.org. A book is currently in the works, and the physical exhibit will be on view at Southern Connecticut State University in the fall of 2018. Stay tuned!!