History Matters
 
 
 E-News from the Congregational Library & Archives
May, 2015  
 
Dick Lehr
BIRTH of a MOVEMENT
June 11, 2015    5:30

 In 1915, black journalist Monroe Trotter tried to get D.W. Griffith's troubling film banned in Boston, igniting a furious debate over racism, censorship, and free expression.

Prize winning journalist Dick Lehr joins us to tell the tale.

          In partnership with the

Boston African American National Historic Site.

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Stephen Marini and Norumbega Harmony fill the Reading Room with beautiful sounds.

 

 History Matters Series 

May 13

             

LABOR CRUSADER
 WASHINGTON GLADDEN
THE 19TH CENTURY LABOR QUESTION:
 A SOCIAL GOSPEL RESPONSE
 Rev. Norm Erlendson, Middletown, CT
 
The old adage, "the more things change, the more they remain the same" is certainly true of the plight of the working poor and their struggle for a living wage in the present day, as well as in the Gilded Age. Then, as now, the call by workers for increased wages and benefits did not usually receive a sympathetic hearing by employers or the general public. Then as now, the power of labor was weak in comparison to the power of capital. In the 1870's and' 80's the American Labor Movement began to gain momentum on a national scale around a list of demands to improve the lives of the millions of wage earning men and women across all trades and industries. Unionization was a response to cutthroat business practices which kept wages at rock bottom levels. They required long hours of repetitive, strenuous tasks, in factories where working conditions were unsafe and unsanitary.  Workers had absolutely no bargaining power because businesses pitted their employees against a steady stream of unemployed immigrants who flooded into American cities by the millions eager to find work. In fact, working men, women and children were caught in a perfect storm of social facts and forces that held them in the firm grip of subsistence level living in which their wealth was literally reckoned in nickels and dimes, and their tenement dwellings were squalid. Their plight  was made worse by severe fluctuations in the business cycle that threw millions out of work for months or years at a time, and downturns were seized upon by employers as opportunities to reduce the hours and wages of the laborers they continued to employ.  To make their situation worse, local and federal governments did not recognize the right of workers to organize or strike, so police and local militias were used as a first line of defense against strikers, and businesses also retained private agencies to provide them with an ample supply of armed guards to protect strikebreakers.   Learn more
  

Rick Taylor

Named

Director Emeritus

Longtime Congregational Library & Archives patron Rick Taylor served on its Board of Directors in the 1980's and resumed in 1999, stepping down in 2013. His work with the ACA is just one piece of Rick's active life in all things Congregational. Rick served as Vice President of the Congregational Christian Historical Society for over twenty years and was also Chair of the Historical Council of the UCC. Representing the UCC, Rick led the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies as president from 1997 to 2000. He has been a pastor for churches in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, and Rhode Island. Until 2009, he was also an active member of the Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality in Rhode Island.

 

Executive Director Peggy Bendroth praised his contribution to historical research:

Rick is passionate about the work of local church historians, and has devoted his life to studying the histories of local churches (in his four books).  He is also a lay historian, i.e., not an academic with an advanced degree but easily as knowledgeable and sophisticated in his understanding of American religious history as many I've come across.

  
                              TAPPAN SOCIETY
               A special commitment to our future                   
  
 JOIN RICK TAYLOR IN LEAVING A LEGACY.
  By providing for the Library & Archives in your estate planning, you show a special commitment to our future.
 
Please contact Cary Hewitt 617.523.0470 ext. 246