O' Farrell, Brigid

In 1975, Joyce Kornbluh initiated the oral history project "The Twentieth Century Trade Union Woman: Vehicle for Social Change" through the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Michigan. This project compiled interviews of women involved with the labor movement between 1900 and 1970. One of the interviewers during this project was Brigid O'Farrell, then with the Women's Research Center at Wellesley College. The desire to reach a broader audience with the information and insights provided by the interviews brought O'Farrell and Kornbluh together in the early 1990s to begin work on a book that would accomplish this goal. The book, Rocking the Boat: Union Women's Voices, 1915-1975 , combines interviews conducted during that original oral history project with follow-up interviews conducted by O'Farrell and Kornbluh in the early 1990s into an edited volume that highlights some of the many faces involved with the labor movement of the 20th century.