Clara Lemlich Shavelson

Clara Lemlich Shavelson (1886-1982) forced union leaders to acknowledge the importance of female workers in the labor force, and she organized important demonstrations for worker's rights and cost-of-living issues. Shavelson worked for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union organizing women in 1905, arguing that without women workers, any strike was doomed to failure. She forced her way into speaking at the 1909 strike meeting at Cooper Union. Her fiery speech set off the 'Uprising of the 20,000', the largest strike by women workers to that time.

Shavelson was blacklisted from factory work for a time. But, returned in 1917 to fight cost-of-living issues during the kosher meat boycott. And again in 1919 during the rent strike movement when a housing shortage raised rents. By 1929 she was helping found what became the Progressive Women's Council, which combat depredations of the Great Depression by running a meat boycott that shut down 4,500 butcher shops in New York. Shavelson continued her activism into her final years, organizing the orderlies at her nursing home.

Shavelson is well represented at Kheel in our IWO and ILGWU Collections.

Lemlich Photographs/AV materials

Collections below include images of Lemlich during her time with the ILGWU and in her later years. The AV materials contain Clara Lemlich: A Strike Leader's Diary [Le journal d'une meneuse de greve] and interviews conducted with Lemlich in 1974.

  1. #6131p Clara Lemlich Shavelson Photographs
  2. #5780/177 PILGWU Communications Department Biography File Photographs
  3. #5780-176p ILGWU Communications Department Photographs
  4. #5780p ILGWU Photographs
  5. Digital images on Flickr
  6. #6131av Clara Lemlich Shavelson Audio-Visual Materials
  7. #6118 AV Kheel Center AV Collection

Triangle Fire Digital Collections

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - This exhibit site includes original sources and information pertaining to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, an industrial fire that occurred in New York City in 1911 that took the lives of 146 people in 18 minutes. This pivotal moment in history led to the transformation of the labor code of New York State and to the adoption of fire safety measures that served as a model for the whole country. This site includes:

  1. Survivor Interviews and Audio Recording featuring oral history interview recordings with Max Hochfield, Dora Maisler, and Pauline Pepe; transcripts derived from the survivor interviews; Frances Perkins’ lectures; and the Triangle Fire 50th Anniversary Commemoration.
  2. Photos & Illustrations including topics including workers and working conditions, shirtwaist strikes, Triangle fire mourning and protest, victims and survivors, commemoration, and reporting and trial of Triangle factory owners. These images were digitized from photographic prints, negatives, newspaper accounts, lantern slides, and editorial cartoons. High resolution images can be found on the Kheel Center Flickr website.
  3. Testimonials including selections from Leon Stein’s publications featuring Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and other witnesses to the fire.
  4. Newspaper & Magazine Articles including excerpts about the fire from The New York Times, Chicago Sunday Tribune, Outlook, The Ladies Garment Worker, Literary Digest, and American Federationist.
  5. Reports including excerpts from the New York (State) Factory Investigating Commission, highlighting its creation, organization, scope, importance, and findings.
  6. Letters including correspondence from sweatshop reform activist Pauline Newman and journalist Charles Willis Thompson.
  7. Songs & Plays including "The Uprising of the Twenty Thousand"; the Ballad of the Triangle Fire; My Little Shirtwaist Fire; Episode V, The Triangle Fire from The Story of the ILGWU: A Radio Play in Six Episodes; and the Mournful Song of the Great Fire.
  8. Transcripts of Criminal Trial Against Triangle Owners consisting of full-text transcripts of the 1911 criminal trial against the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.

 

Lemlich IWO Digital Items

Documents from our IWO digital collections contain materials featuring Lemlich's work with organizational antecedents to the Emma Lazarus Division, founded in 1944 by the Women's Division of the Jewish People's Fraternal Order of the International Workers Order (IWO). The Division eventually became the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs (ELF)

Lemlich IWO/Emma Lazarus Committee digital materials