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Projects by Alice Kessler-Harris
“And that’s how we did in the mill” is based on excerpts from oral histories with the last generation of women to work in the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills, recorded by filmmaker Martha Norkunas in 1983.
The International Trade Union and Labour Memory Network is a collaborative international project by a group of historians and labour activists. We aim to examine the commemoriation of labour history by highlighting what kind of labour and trade union memory work is undertaken across the globe, how trade unions use history and memory as a resource, and discuss the problems and challenges involved in commemoration.
In 1820 Lowell, known as East Chelmsford, MA at the time, had a population of 200 and was a farming community. Thirty years later, the population had grown to 33,000 and one could find 32 textile mills in existence there. Lowell was an ideal location for these mills because it was located near the Merrimac River. The river supplied the water necessary to run these factories.