Any recent visitor to the Olin Library will notice that the library’s grandiose lobby is no longer its stark, empty self. Currently situated in the library’s entrance are displays about the industrial history of New Haven’s garment district, featuring photos, firsthand accounts, and copies of leaflets and advertisements from more than a century ago.
The exhibit, titled “New Haven’s Garment Workers: An Elm City Story,” illustrates the trials and tribulations of being a garment worker in New Haven, such as the 12-hour workday, miniscule wages, and incessant labor in dank, urban conditions. Several of the boards display photos from a massive fire that broke out in the factories and advertisements for union meetings.
“The Greater New Haven Labor History Association began in 1988, and one of the first things it did was to gather together over 300 retired garment workers from the industry in New Haven and bring them together to share their memories,” said the archivist and current director of the association, Joan Cavanagh ’83.
Over 40 retired garment workers were interviewed and their oral history made into a collection that became a traveling exhibit.
“Their recollections and the papers and artifacts of those locals were brought together,” Cavanagh said. “The idea to do a traveling exhibit was very popular, but for one reason or another, largely due to a lack of funding, it took quite a while for the project to actually come together.”
It was thanks to Cavanagh and her status as an alumnus that the exhibit found its way to the University.
“Joan Cavanagh got in touch with me over the summer, during July, and said that as both the director of the New Haven Labor History Association and an alum, she was very interested in the exhibit coming to Wesleyan,” said Patricia Tully, an Olin librarian. “It was an interesting idea and I was sort of looking for exhibits for the lobby, so we talked about when would be a good time during the academic year for the exhibit to come and decided on the fall.”
The exhibit, which will be on display in Olin until December 6, gives insight into a rich part of New Haven’s history. The evidence on display tells a fascinating story of discrimination, organization, and, on a larger scale, the role of the working class laborer in America in the twentieth century. The extensive research conducted for the project is evident not just in the wealth of primary sources, but also in the time it took to assemble the exhibit.
“It laid dormant from about the mid-nineties to the early 2000’s,” Cavanagh said. “So when I came on staff here in 2001, we picked it up with the plan for it to become a traveling exhibit and so that came to fruition in 2006.”
The exhibit has traveled to over 23 locations around New Haven.
“We have found so many people who have come up and said ‘My mother worked in such-and-such a plant,’ or they recognized a relative in one of the photos on display,” Cavanagh said. “This bit of history, we’ve found, really resonates with people in the area.
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