ILHOP

Iowa History as Told by the Workers Who Made It

Collection Guide

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13 September

Collection Guide

Overview

ILHOP contains approximately 1,500 audio oral history interviews collected between the late 1970s and the present. Interviews focus on the experience of Iowa workers and their organizations. They provide particularly rich descriptions of the labor and working-class history of Iowa and the Midwest, along with workers’ perspectives on a wide range of topics, including race, gender, sexuality, migration, architecture, childhood, religion, sports, public institutions, technology, and the history and culture of a host of other states, regions, and nations around the world.

Taken as a whole, the collection documents Iowa workers’ over one hundred and fifty year struggle to define “free” labor and “good” jobs since the Civil War. The collection’s earliest interviews are set in the confluence of agriculture and industry forged in Iowa in the wake of Indian removal (although, as the collection reminds us, Native Americans persisted in the face of violence, discrimination, and dislocation, and could be found working and living in Iowa throughout its history).

The oldest interviewee, railroad worker Mike Dillon, was born in Clinton, Iowa, in 1878, and some interviewees, including former ILHOP interviewer Merle Davis, told stories about parents and grandparents who had been born in the decades before the Civil War. For example, Velma Adamson recalled that one of her grandfathers, John W. Murphy, had been born in Ohio in 1825 and migrated to Iowa by stagecoach in the 1850s.

The collection’s earliest interviews document the rise of Iowa’s meatpacking, farm equipment manufacturing, grain milling, transportation, and construction industries between the 1910s and the 1960s. They emphasize the ways in which these industries were grounded not only in farming but also a much broader extractive and mineral-based economy that included the mining of lead, coal, and gypsum. Beyond this core grew a wide range of secondary businesses–from machine shops and warehouses to garment, button, furniture, and brick and tile factories; packing plants, leather goods producers, bakeries, and canneries; newspapers; grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, taverns, and barbershops. Alongside these local and regional businesses were other industries–including communication, utility, and transit companies, and electronics, ordnance, and parts suppliers–all of which took advantage of Iowa’s location at the center of Midwestern and North American transportation hubs. This industrial growth was particularly intense during and after World War II, a period which also saw the expansion of government and social services, from county road crews to prisons, employment agencies, public schools, federal post offices, and state universities.

Further fueling this industrial growth were waves of migration from across the US and around the world. As ILHOP reveals, from the outset, Iowa was embedded within networks at once transregional and transnational. Many early ILHOP interviewees were the children or grandchildren of European immigrants, especially from Germany, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, and parts of Scandinavia and Central Europe. During the first half of the twentieth century, these Euro-American workers and their children traveled in search of work along paths that stretched from Pennsylvania steel mills and Wisconsin forests to as far as the Canadian plains, West Coast shipyards, and merchant marine vessels plying the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. At the same time, Black and white southerners moved north into Iowa, sometimes in ways that forged enduring, multi-generational ties, and Mexican and Mexican American workers followed the harvests and rail lines out of the Southwest and into Iowa and surrounding states.

But, of course, growth did not necessarily equal prosperity, let alone dignity or empowerment. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Iowa workers organized a trade union movement grounded in the state’s railroad shops, coal camps, farm fields, and construction sites. Over time, they took this movement with them into expanding factories and into the transportation, retail, service, and public sectors. Their stories reveal the ways in which the experience of Iowa workers was both distinct from and tied to broader patterns and changes. They include such themes as:

  • The twentieth-century labor movement’s origins in earlier forms of unionism and mutual aid
  • The limits and opportunities of World War I, including the postwar strike wave, especially in meatpacking, coal, and among railroad workers
  • The persistence of the Industrial Workers of the World and its continuing influence during the 1920s and 1930s
  • The critical role of union coal miners and their family members in organizing Iowa industries during the 1930s and 1940s
  • The role of local-level labor militancy in sustaining organizing prior to the National Labor Relations Act and in enforcing the act after its passage
  • The persistence and diversity of shop-floor activism, including wild cat strikes, during and after WWII
  • Local variations in the relationship between AFL and CIO unions throughout the period between the 1930s and the 1950s
  • The long struggles of Iowa’s Black, women, immigrant, and Indigenous workers for power and rights, in and outside of their unions.

Another important theme of the interviews is labor and politics. Throughout the twentieth century, Iowa’s labor movement engaged with Republicans and Democrats, as well as Socialists and other political groups, especially at the local level. The interviews reveal various attempts at farmer-labor coalition politics, labor’s role in the revival of the state’s Democratic Party after World War II, and the movement’s part in sustaining a meaningful liberal Republican tradition. Indeed, as the collection documents, labor’s influence on the Republican Party was critical to passage of a 1974 law providing for public-sector collective bargaining–a law that arguably helped sustain both the labor movement and labor-liberal politics in Iowa longer than suggested in national narratives. Moreover, many of the early interviews were conducted during the late 1970s and early 1980s, at a time when Communist Party membership was still a highly charged political issue. These interviews reveal the ways that red-baiting and anti-radicalism split the labor movement as well as the methodological challenges of recording stories about political repression.

More recent interviews document the period since the 1960s. Particular areas of emphasis include:

  • The early role of local private sector unions in organizing the public sector
  • The public-sector strikes of the late 1960s and early 1970s
  • The legislative and administrative history of public-sector collective bargaining in Iowa
  • The continuing struggle of women workers for dignity and rights, especially in male dominated industries
  • The impact of plant closings and the union merger movement of the late 1960s-1990s
  • Struggles against concessionary bargaining during the 1970s-90s, especially in meatpacking, construction, tire manufacturing, and grain milling
  • Labor’s deployment of community and social service networks to respond to deindustrialization
  • Retirees’ struggles over healthcare and pensions
  • The major public-sector organizing campaigns of the 1990s (especially at the University of Iowa)
  • The struggles of LGBTQ workers
  • Recent waves of immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Asia
  • Iowa-based organizing beyond the state’s borders (ex. federal Indian Health Service workers)
  • The persistence of the importance of skill
  • The impact of modern organizing techniques and the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute
  • International solidarity work
  • Attacks on public-sector collective bargaining since the Great Recession
  • The history of the state’s only workers’ center, the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa
  • Organizing by undergraduate student workers at Grinnell College
  • The COVID-19 pandemic in the longer context of struggles around health and safety
  • The anti-concessionary strikes of the early 2020s


NOTE: This overview reflects the collection at the time of this writing (September 2021). ILHOP is a living collection, with new interviews added every year. As the collection grows and changes, so do its themes and directions. If you have questions about the collection, including recommendations for new interviews, please contact project staff.

Interview Structure, Metadata, and Format

Most ILHOP interviews were and are conducted by professional historians and follow a broadly social scientific style, with a researcher asking questions of one or more interviewees. Throughout the project’s history, interviewers have been guided by questions and/or themes developed by and in consultation with the ILHOP advisory committee (see Project History). At the same time, interviewers often adapted these lists and/or themes to fit their own interests, purposes, and style. Researchers and other users will find broad similarities across time as well as different approaches and areas of emphasis that define the interviews collected by a particular interviewer.

Most interviewers during the project’s first phase (c. 1977-2000) collected some demographic information through a questionnaire. After 2013, the project adopted a more comprehensive Interviewee Data Sheet that collected a range of demographic, biographical, and contact information. These forms are not available online but can be requested through the State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City.

ILHOP interviews have been recorded on 7″ reel tapes, cassette tapes, and (since 2011) SD cards. While many interviews have a very high audio quality, others contain various artifacts of the recording process (from ticking clocks, televisions and radio noise, people talking in the background, to, at times, piercing microphone feedback). Despite these artifacts and imperfections, taken as a whole, the audio recordings permit researchers and other listeners to hear dialects and ways of speaking that stretch back over one hundred years and across continents and cultures, including fragments of work songs and poetry.

Transcription Policy

Prior to 2013, ILHOP did not have a clearly articulated transcription policy. Most transcripts appear to have been produced toward the goal of maximizing readability (i.e., with few crutch words or false starts) but with relatively little editing for content (with the exception that, in some cases, proper names were omitted (presumably to avoid spelling errors) as have some curse words (see Sensitive Materials Statement below).

The following policy applies to all transcripts produced since 2018 (including those transcripts to pre-2013 interviews produced since 2018).

Verbatim and time coded transcripts produced by transcriptionist(s) employed by vendor (Rev.com). Project staff have avoided significant intervention in or annotation of verbatim transcripts with the following exceptions: 1.) Project staff have edited transcripts for clarity to limit crutch words, false starts, abbreviations, and repetitions. 2.) Silent corrections have been made in some situations in which references with clear and recognizable errors of fact would likely confuse users. In other cases, the editorial sic has been employed to denote passages that can be inferred with confidence but whose irregularities are nonetheless likely to be seriously misleading. 3.) If auditing or editing is conjectural or doubtful, the word or words in question have been underlined and two question marks added. When project staff cannot decipher a word or phrase by either inference or conjecture, the words or phrases in question have been denoted by an underline. For brief notes or clarifications, we have used brackets in the text; for references requiring more detailed notes or clarification, we have used sequential footnotes. 5.) Sounds in the recording other than spoken words have been represented by brief descriptions in parentheses [i.e., (laughs)]. 6.) Quotation marks have been used to denote direct speech by an individual. Otherwise, we have sought to render all words as spoken. All efforts have been made to produce an accurate and authoritative transcript, but we encourage users to consult the original audio file(s), especially when using interviews in a publication or other professional or public setting. Regarding rights, see the release form associated with the interview in question. Releases and other related documents are maintained by the State Historical Society of Iowa’s Iowa City Research Center. (Sources: Baylor University Institute for Oral History Style Guide: A Quick Reference for Editing Oral History Transcripts (2018), and “Editorial Method,” in Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, ser. 3, vol. 1, [UNC Press, 2008] pp. xix-xxiv.)

Access, Copyright Notice, and Conditions Governing Use

Except in certain cases described below, ILHOP release forms convey copyright over interviews and associated materials to ILHOP, Inc., a private non-profit maintained by the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and its agents. Most interviews include signed release forms, but, in some cases, interviewees either did not sign release forms or placed additional restrictions on the release. During the project’s first phase, interviewees had the option of signing distinct “unrestricted” or “restricted” release forms. These restricted forms provided for “no further use of any kind whatsoever” of transcripts or recordings without an interviewee’s “prior written consent or such consent by . . . [a deceased interviewee’s] heirs or legal representatives.” Release forms for interviews conducted during and after 2013 provide for closing an interview to the public for a specified period of time. Except in extraordinary circumstances (for example, circumstances that might compromise an interviewee’s safety or security), interviews without release forms or those that are otherwise restricted appear in the Finding Aid but are not available through the Iowa Digital Library. If you have questions regarding restricted materials, contact project staff or the State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City.

Preferred Citation Style for Interviews and Transcripts Accessed through the Iowa Digital Library

Interviewee Surname, Interviewee Given Name, Geographic Identifier. Interview by Interviewer’s Given Name and Surname, Date of Interview in Month Day, Year. Iowa Labor History Oral Project, University of Iowa (UI) Labor Center and Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Records held jointly by State Historical Society of Iowa (Iowa City) and the UI Libraries. Iowa Digital Library, URL. Accessed Month Day, Year.

Example: Harris, Don, Des Moines. Interview by Merle Davis, August 20, 1982. Iowa Labor History Oral Project, University of Iowa (UI) Labor Center and Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Records held jointly by State Historical Society of Iowa (Iowa City) and UI Libraries. Iowa Digital Library, https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Ailhop_979. Accessed January 1, 2021.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Some ILHOP interviews contain frank, explicit, or offensive language, including racial slurs and descriptions of various forms of violence or situations of a sexual nature. Although ILHOP has never had a policy to edit out such language or descriptions from transcripts, some transcriptionists did so during the period before 2013. All transcripts produced after 2013 have retained such language and descriptions except in extraordinary circumstances. Original audio recordings (analog and digital) have not been edited for content except in extraordinary circumstances.

Searching the Collection

Navigating a collection of this size and scope can be challenging, and this guide and website are designed to assist people in making the most out of what ILHOP has to offer. Below you will find more information regarding four ways that you can browse or search ILHOP in conjunction with the materials on this website.

1. ILHOP Digital Finding Aid:
The finding aid is a good place to start if you want to browse the collection as a whole, or if you want to browse by interviewee name, date of interview, or type of work a person performed.

2. Iowa Digital Library (IDL):
IDL is a good place to start if want to hear audio recordings or read transcripts, especially when you already know what interview(s) you want to explore in more detail.

3. Master Transcript Index (MTI):
The MTI is a good place to start if you want to browse the collection by subject, discover relationships between subjects, or find transcript page numbers associated with a specific subject.

4. Access the Physical Collection:
The physical collection is a good place to start if you want to access analog materials, materials that have not been digitized, or related manuscript or archival materials.

Photo caption: Tens of thousands of union members and their supporters gather at the state capitol in Des Moines to protest passage of the state’s “right-to-work” law in April 1947. Source: State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. For examples of stories from the protest, see the interviews with George Ashlock and James Sappenfield.
Photo caption: Mexican beet field workers. Pennington County, South Dakota, May 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Source: Library of Congress. For stories from Mexican and other immigrant farm workers in the early twentieth-century, see the interviews with John Serrano and George and Mary Ashlock. For more recent immigrant farm workers, see the interview with Zabdiel Morales Algandar.
Photo caption: The Duceys, a coalmining family, Brazil, Iowa, c. 1890s. Source: The State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. For this family’s story, see the interview with John Ducey and Jennie Ducey.
Photo caption: Railroad workers. Cropped. Source: State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. For stories from Latino railroad workers, see the interview with Fidel C. Alvarez, Sebastian Alvarez, and Frank Reyes.
Photo caption: Farmall workers, Moline, Illinois, c. 1952. Source: State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. For stories from Moline farm equipment workers and the politics of the 1940s and 1950s, see the interview with Sam Grogg and Carroll Wright.
Photo caption: Striking John Deere workers and their families in Ottumwa, Iowa, 2021. Source: John McKerley.
Photo caption: Workers at the Iowa Central Railroad shop in Marshalltown, Iowa, c. 1889. Source: State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. For stories from North Central Iowa railroad workers, see the interview with A. P. Butts.
Photo caption: Sign painter, Sioux City, Iowa. Photo by Russell Lee. Source: Library of Congress. For stories from union painters, see the interview with Wayne Usher, Ray Muffler, and John Cooper.
Photo caption: Packinghouse workers on strike in Mason City, Iowa, c. 1948. Photo by Orlando Belseth. Source: State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. For an example of stories from this strike in Mason City, see the interview with Abe Meacham. For stories regarding the struggles of women of color in Iowa packinghouses, see the interview with Anna Mea Weems.
Photo caption: Women [sic] ironing in utility building for workers at Burlington ordnance plant. 1942 Feb. Burlington, Iowa. Photo by John Vachon for US Farm Security Administration. Source: Library of Congress.
Photo caption: Members of the Communications Workers of America at Northwestern Bell in Des Moines, Iowa, c. 1970. Cropped. Source: State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. For stories from Northwestern Bell in Des Moines during this period, see the interview with Midge Slater.