Labor Review Centennial, 1907-2007
To learn more: Minneapolis Labor History 101 reading list

From the Minneapolis Labor Review, May 24, 2007

By Steve Share, Labor Review editor

MINNEAPOLIS — If this issue of the Labor Review whets your appetite to learn more about Minneapolis labor history, here are several titles to get you started:

Farrell Dobbs, Teamster Rebellion (Pathfinder Press, 1973).

Farrell Dobbs was a participant in the 1934 Teamsters strike who emerged as a leader. This book is his first-hand account of the organizing and struggles that took place. Teamster Rebellion is the first of four books Dobbs wrote about his organizing with the Teamsters.

Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

Elizabeth Faue’s extensively- researched book is a social history that gives special attention to the role of women in the growth of the Minneapolis  economy and the city’s labor movement. A Minneapolis native, Faue is professor of history at Wayne State University.

William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001).

An independent scholar, Millikan spent 12 years researching the Citizens Alliance and its long-successful efforts to keep Minneapolis an “open shop” town. This book provides the most detailed account of the years that led to the transformation of Minneapolis into a union town. The book includes lists of the businesses and business leaders of the Citizens Alliance’s anti-union effort, which still read like a “Who’s Who” of the city’s business establishment.

Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis (First published in 1937, reissued by University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

Charles Rumford Walker was a journalist who spent a year in Minneapolis in 1936 to write this contemporary account of the labor struggles of the era. His book, first published in 1937, colors the story with the close perspective of someone who got to know the participants.

back to top