Mill Talk: Why are Workers’ Stories Missing at Historic Sites?

Mill Talk: Why are Workers’ Stories Missing at Historic Sites?

Show Me the Workers

The labor movement in the United States is a bulwark of democracy and a driving force for social and economic equality. Yet its stories remain largely unknown to Americans. Robert Forrant and Mary Anne Trasciatti edited a collection of essays focused on nationwide efforts to propel the history of labor and working people into mainstream narratives of US history. The book, Where Are the Workers?, shows how working-class perspectives can expand our historical memory and inform and inspire contemporary activism. The talk will explore lessons learned from nationwide efforts to promote our understanding of labor and working-class history.

Speaker Bio:

Robert Forrant is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Principal historian on numerous projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lowell National Historical Park, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, his newest book, co-edited with Mary Anne Trasciatti, Where are the Workers: Interpreting Labor and Working-Class History at Museums and Historic Sites, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2022. In early 2024 he published “‘No Avenging Gibet’: The 1860 Pemberton Mill Collapse” in The New England Quarterly.

Mill Talks at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation are free and open to the public and are made possible by the generous support of the .

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