The Michigan Tech Archival Speaker Series will feature visiting scholar Dr. Aaron Goings at 6:30pm on Tuesday, July 17 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Tech campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Goings’ presentation, entitled “Class Struggle in the Copper Country: The Long View,” will discuss labor history in Michigan’s Copper Country. His work focuses on working conditions, labor unions, and labor struggles in the years leading up to the 1913 Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike. His presentation will highlight earlier labor disputes, as well as the day-to-day struggles between workers and employers in the Copper Country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Dr. Aaron Goings is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Saint Martin’s University in Washington State. He earned his PhD from Simon Fraser University, where his dissertation addressed class and community issues in Grays Harbor, Washington. Goings is currently working with co-author Gary Kaunonen on a book to be published in 2013 by Michigan State University Press which argues that the 1913-1914 strike was the culmination of decades of regional labor struggles. The talk will conclude by discussing the national significance of this important labor event and reasons it has drifted from public memory outside of the Copper Country.
Going’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Van Pelt Library. Since 1998, the Michigan Tech Archives Travel Grant program has helped scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the Archives.
For more information call the Michigan Tech Archives at 487-2505 or e-mail copper@mtu.edu.
Here are some photographs from the event, which attracted more than 75 attendees (click on individual photographs for larger versions).
