Minneapolis Teamsters Strike:
75th Anniversary

Labor Review, Hennepin County Library will sponsor two events to commemorate 75th anniversary of 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike

From the Minneapolis Labor Review, June 25, 2009

By Steve Share, Labor Review editor

MINNEAPOLIS —  Two free events at the Downtown Central Library will explore the history of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike and its continuing legacy.

A program July 23 will hear from historians and labor activists, three days after 75th anniversary of one of the bloodiest conflicts from the 1934 strike.

A walking tour August 6 will visit sites important to the 1934 strike.

Hennepin County Library is partnering with the Minneapolis Labor Review to present the free programs.

July 23: Program

Thursday, July 23 at 7:00 p.m., a program in the Central Library’s Pohlad Hall will feature a presentation by William Millikan, author of A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947.

Millikan is an independent scholar who lives in Minneapolis. His exhaustively researched book, published in 2001 by the Minnesota Historical Society, is widely considered the definitive history of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike. The book details how Teamster organizers used innovative tactics to take on the business-backed Citizens Alliance, which for years had successfully defeated union organizing in Minneapolis. Until 1934.

A panel will respond to Millikan’s remarks, including Mary Wingerd, Associate Professor of History at St. Cloud State University. Wingerd is author of North Country: The Making of Minnesota, to be published in 2010 by the University of Minnesota Press.

Also speaking on the panel, Brad A. Slawson, Jr., president of Teamsters Local 120, the successor union to Teamsters Local 574, which waged the 1934 strike. Slawson will discuss Teamsters Local 120’s current union organizing efforts and also highlight the Employee Free Choice Act, current legislation now before Congress.

The Employee Free Choice Act aims to reverse the erosion in the right to organize that has taken place since the historic struggles of the 1930s and the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.

Labor Review editor Steve Share will moderate the panel. In 2007, Share edited  a 10-part history of Minneapolis labor for the Labor Review centennial which won two awards from the International Labor Communications Association.

The evening will begin with a screening of a new abridged version of the documentary film, “Labor’s Turning Point,” a film about the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike produced in 1981 by the Labor Education Service at the University of Minnesota.

The new, shorter version of the film, was commissioned by Education Minnesota — the statewide teachers union — to be used as part of a new secondary school curriculum in labor history.

Refreshments will be served.

August 6: Walking tour

Thursday, August 6 at 6:30 p.m., a walking tour will leave from the Central Library to visit sites important to the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike in the former Market District (now Minneapolis Warehouse District).

Meet the tour a few minutes before 6:30 p.m. in the library’s Central Hall.

The tour leader will be David Riehle, local labor historian and member of the United Transportation Union.

Riehle regularly leads labor history tours in the Twin Cities.

The tour will proceed rain or shine. Total walking distance: about two miles.

The Downtown Central Library is located at 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis.

For more information on the programs, or for a reading list on Minneapolis labor history, visit www.minneapolisunions.org.

Questions about the programs may be directed to 612-379-4725.

Directions and parking information for events at Downtown Central Library

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