Bessie Hillman correspondence

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Bessie Hillman correspondence

1930-1970

https://catalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/3833852

Letters, cards, telegrams, and other items from Bessie Hillman's family, personal friends and admirers; from rank-and-file, joint boards, and union locals; and from labor leaders, authors, and politicians. There is also a diary kept by Bessie Hillman during her trip to Israel in 1952-1953, and a large collection of condolences that she received after her husband's death. The correspondence covers a number of political, social, union, and personal matters. There are letters from women organizers in the South; from leaders of locals and regional joint boards; from ACWA officials such as Jacob Potofsky and Joseph Schlossberg; and memoranda from the ACWA General Executive Board, reflecting Bessie Hillman's long service to the union as executive, organizer, and mentor, particularly to women. Correspondents also include union leaders outside of the ACWA, among them David Dubinsky, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther, and Leonard Woodcock. There is Hillman's reminiscence of Rose Schneiderman of the Women's Trade Union League. Letters from a number of leading political, cultural, and social figures, including Mary Anderson, Mary McLeod Bethume, Jacqueline Kennedy, Arthur Goldberg, Irving Ives, Lady Bird Johnson, Averell Harriman, Herbert Lehman, William O'Dwyer, Esther Peterson, Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Robert F. Wagner, Jr. make up another significant portion of the collection. These items reflect Bessie Hillman's long-standing involvement in social causes and political campaigns, particularly in civil rights issues, within the City and State of New York and throughout the United States. Other individuals and organizations represented in the collection include: Cornell ILR School professor Maurice F. Neufeld; Carl Sandberg; Chaim Weizmann; local unions and joint boards of the ACWA; the American Labor Education Service; the Democratic National Committee; the Hudson Shore School; the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions; the National Consumers League; the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Dept. of Labor; and the Women's Trade Union League. Topics include: administrative matters within the ACWA; civil rights; descriptions and reminiscences of travel to Israel; labor legislation at the local and national levels; political campaigns and activities, chiefly through the Democratic Party; union organizing; women in the union; and worker education.

6 linear ft.

yid, Hebr

eng, Latn

Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 7918962

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