Come celebrate National Women’s History Month by visiting the traveling exhibit “New Haven’s Garment Workers: An Elm City Story,” an exhibit produced by the Greater New Haven Labor History Association now on display at the DiMenna-Nyselius Library through April, 2010. Thank you to Cecelia Bucki, Professor of History, for arranging it to be brought to Fairfield University.

The exhibit includes photographs, artifacts, and written text highlighting the culture, lives, work and labor struggles of those employed in the local garment industry in the 20th century, the parents and grandparents of today’s generation of workers. This workforce included many Italian immigrant women and men who were the subjects of an extensive Oral History Project in New Haven in the 1980s. The exhibit was previously shown at the Ethnic Heritage Center of New Haven, the New Haven Public Library, and the Atrium of New Haven’s City Hall, and the Homer Babbidge Library University of Connecticut.

The exhibit was produced for the Labor History Association by Joan Cavanagh, the late Dennis Hamilton, C.M. Carton and Julie Hamilton.”

(Press release information from Greater New Haven Labor History Association)