United Automobile Workers of America, District 65 Photographs

ArchivalResource

United Automobile Workers of America, District 65 Photographs

1940s-1992

District Council 65, United Automobile Workers (UAW) was organized in 1933 by a group of Jewish workers employed in dry goods warehouses on New York's Lower East Side. In 1935 it became a local of the Wholesale Dry Goods Employees Union; subsequently, it affiliated with the Distributive Trades Council of New York and the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU); it joined with the UAW in 1979. The union went out of existence in 1994, when bankruptcy forced it to close. This Collection consists of photographs spanning the late 1930s through the early 1990s, with the bulk from the 1940s, 1950s and 1980s. Besides documenting the life and times of the union itself, these images provide especially strong documentation for left and liberal causes of the 1940s-1960s, including civil rights, rank and file participation in union activities, and working class leisure and recreational activities. This images in this collection were shot by District 65's own Camera Club, which functioned as staff photographers for the union's biweekly newspaper, the Distributive Worker.

27 Linear Feet

eng, Latn

Related Entities

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Robinson, Cleveland L. (Cleveland Lowellyn), 1914-1995

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6ps8kg9 (person)

Cleveland Robinson was born in 1914 in Swabys Hope, a rural parish of Jamaica. After serving as a local constable and an elementary school teacher, he emigrated to the United States in 1944. On arrival he took a job in a Manhattan dry goods store and very soon became active in District 65, Distributive Workers. After organizing his own shop in 1947, he went on to become a steward, and then a full-time organizer for the union. He was elected vice-president in 1950 and secretary-treasurer in 1952,...