9to5, Atlanta Working Women Records, 1972-2009 (L2005-08)
Established in 1973, 9to5 Working Women focuses on creating and implementing family-friendly policies to help working people balance responsibilities at home and on the job, making nonstandard jobs voluntary and equitable so that those working part-time or temporary positions receive fair pay and benefits, eliminating workplace discrimination through education about legal rights on the job, monitoring enforcement agencies and expanding anti-discrimination laws, and opposing punitive welfare policies and backing those that allow women supporting their families to be self-sufficient. The Atlanta chapter was founded in 1983, providing resources to Atlanta's working women and building coalitions with these women and other activists to create social change on the state and national levels.
Maria Helena Dolan Papers (Q134)
Georgia Association for Women Lawyers Records, 1916-2016 (Bulk 1987-2016) (W151)
The Georgia Association for Women Lawyers (GAWL) is a nonprofit corporation serving to support the diverse interests and needs of women lawyers in Georgia. The collection consists of administrative files, programs, scrapbooks, and audio/visual materials ranging from 1916-2016.
Susan A. Millen Papers, 1979-1998 (W011)
Susan A. Millen has been an editor (Journal of Labor, 1979-1985), journalist, photographer, public relations specialist and communications consultant as well as a special education teacher and has been very active in organizations involving women's politics. The collection is organized to reflect Millen's activities with the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), the Georgia Women's Political Caucus (GWPC), and the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) from 1980-1988.
National Domestic Workers Union (U.S.) Records, 1965-1979 (L1979-24)
The collection consists of records of the United Domestic Workers Union (U.S) from 1965-1979. The correspondence (1965-1979) reflects Bolden's efforts in organizing the Union and includes such correspondents as Julian Bond, Senator Sam Nunn, Senator Herman Talmadge, Allen Williams, Andrew Young, and other Georgia and national political figures. The subject files (1967-1979) cover a myriad of topics illustrating the Union's involvement in the Black community, the Manpower Program, the Career Learning Center, the Homemaking Skills Training Program, Maids Honor Day, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), and various federal agencies. The collection contains minutes of the Union (1968-1971, 1978), the Citizen's Advisory Committee on Transportation (1970-1972), the Citizens Neighborhood Advisory Council (1972-1978), and MARTA (1973-1975). The collection also contains financial documents (1968-1979) including budgets, membership records, and files relating to Equal Opportunity Atlanta, which funded many of the Union's projects; and legal documents including agreements and contracts with Economic Opportunity Atlanta.
The General Textile Strike of 1934 was one of the largest labor strikes in the history of the United States. Half a million workers walked off their jobs in cotton mills across the South and up the Eastern seaboard, leading some company bosses to respond with violence. Some strikers were killed, others were imprisoned, and nearly all strikers were blacklisted and prevented from returning to work in the textile industry. The effects of the strikes and their consequences lingered in some communities for generations.
The Uprising of '34 is a documentary film, released in 1995, that tells the story of the General Textile Strike from the perspective of those who experienced it firsthand. During the film's production, over 300 hours of interviews were conducted with former mill workers, their children and grandchildren, labor organizers, mill owners, and others who experienced or were affected by the strikes.
Sarah Butler, October 23, 2004 (W008)
Sarah Butler was born in Atlanta, Georgia. The fourth of six children, her mother was a homemaker and her father was a barber. She graduated from the Girl's High School of Atlanta in 1939, and later attended Georgia Evening College, leaving in 1949 to marry Bob Butler. Butler had two children, and quit her work at Sears Roebuck to take care of them. Once the children were grown, Butler began her 18-year association with the labor movement, and in particular, the AFL-CIO. A member of the Office and Professional Employees Union, Butler was also involved with ERA Georgia, Inc., NOW, AARP, Southwest Atlantans for Progress, her PTA, and the Democratic Party. While her husband was president of the Atlanta Labor Council, she served as the secretary of the council. Soon after she retired, Butler was inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame. She was also honored as Woman of the Year in the Labor Movement. She now lives in Gainesville, Georgia.
Jean Davis, January 22, 2005 (W008)
Born in the segregated South to politically active parents, Jean Davis became politically aware as a young girl in Newnan, Georgia. Her early aspiration was to work as a missionary in Africa but instead, she attended Morris Brown College and taught public school in Atlanta. As a student at Morris Brown, Davis was involved in the Civil Rights Movement and participated in boycotts of Rich’s Department Store and sit-ins at Woolworth’s. Davis also worked with the A. Philip Randolph Institute as well as the Georgia AFL-CIO and the National AFL-CIO. Through her work with different union organizations and her activism in civil rights, Davis became interested in the Equal Rights Amendment. She felt strongly that the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was necessary in order to bring union women on board with the ERA and also to establish an organization that would place women in leadership positions. In addition to her work with the ERA, Davis worked on a number of campaigns from local school boards to notable politicians and continues the struggle for human rights.
Georgia Government Documentation Project Oral Histories, 1971-2002
Lynn Hesse, September 23, 2010 (W071)
Lynn Hesse is a former policewoman of Dekalb County, Georgia, as well as a playwright, dancer, and short story author. Born in 1951 in Chanute, Kansas, she moved with her parents to the Buckhead area of Atlanta when she was a pre-teenager. After reading The Feminist Mystique by Betty Friedan at the approximate age of 15, she self-identified as a feminist. Hesse graduated through Clayton County Academy and went to work for Georgia State University as a police officer (post-certified) in circa 1977, and subsequently became a DeKalb County police officer, rising through the ranks of Master Officer and Field Training Officer to Sergeant. During her tenure as a Dekalb County Police Officer, she was denied her application for promotional testing and her compensation for arrests was diverted to other male officers. She and several other female officers were equally discriminated against. When a class action suit could not be organized, policewoman Marsha Cofield filed an individual law suit, in which Lynne Hesse was actively involved. Cofield won her case. Following her law enforcement career, Hesse has focused on her artistic pursuits which include dance and writing. In 1996, she was graduated (cum laude) in Dance from Georgia State University. She has created an "oral history performed in dance," and play she wrote, based on her own short story, was staged at Emory's Schwartz Center.
Lynn Hesse, February 2, 2012 (W071)
Maria Getzinger Jones, June 8, 1998 (W008)
Maria Getzinger was born in 1919 into a German-American family in Woodcliff, South Georgia, where her father owned a cotton farm. In 1936, after graduating from high school, she spent two years in Germany with her father's family, then returned to the United States where she lived for a year on the family farm. In 1939, she took her first job at the Curtis Printing Company in Atlanta, Georgia, where she met her future husband Charles Jones, and where she joined the International Typographical Union -- the first non-discriminatory union that paid men and women the same salaries. In the late 1940's Jones and her husband transferred to the printing department of Park & Baird law firm in Los Angeles. Until her retirement in 1985, Maria Getzinger Jones worked in leading print shops such as Curtis, Stein, and Darby printing companies. Raised a Roman Catholic, Jones joined the Unitarian Universalist Church. Her political activism and interest in equal rights originated in her work experiences, as well as from the inspiration of local and national feminists and activists. In the late 1960's Jones became an early member of Atlanta NOW and was a founding member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). In the 1970's she served in various capacities and actively participated in conferences and events held by both NOW and CLUW, and in 1974 she represented the International Typographical Union on the CLUW National Coordinating Committee. Maria Getzinger Jones continued to be active as a member of NOW and other feminist organizations, attending the 1998 and 2000 NOW conferences and taking part in the events surrounding the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Declaration. Jones passed away in August 2005.
Maria Getzinger Jones, November 16, 1998 (W008)
Susan A. Millen, July 7 & 9, 1999 (W008)
Susan Ann Millen, activist, journalist, and producer, was born in Aurora, Illinois in 1951. She attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (journalism; BS, 1972), and Columbia College in Chicago (photography; BFA, 1978), after which she moved to Atlanta. Millen has been an editor (Journal of Labor, 1979-1985), journalist, photographer, public relations specialist and communications consultant as well as a special education teacher and has been very active in organizations involving women's politics. She was president of the Georgia chapter and a board member of the National Woman's Party (1981-1984), an organizing member and first vice-president of the Atlanta chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (1983-1985), and an officer of the Georgia Women's Political Caucus (1986-1990). In addition, she coordinated a Political Skills Workshop (1987) and the Georgia Women and the Law Conference (1987) for the GWPC; she produced a GWPC television series on prime cable that began in 1987; was a National Women's Political Caucus officer (1989); and was a board member of ERA Georgia, Inc. as well as editor of its Newsletter. Millen continues to be a community activist and teaches at Tucker High School in Dekalb County, Georgia. In 2004, she and her class were selected as an AT&T CARES Youth Service Action Award.
Working Women in Atlanta Oral History Project, 1987 (L1898-24)
Rebecca Sharpless interviewed ten women from Atlanta, Georgia, mostly from Spelman College, for a paper on "Atlanta Working Women." Records of the project consist of transcripts and audio tapes.
Mary Lynn Walker oral history interview, 2005-01-27
Walker discusses her background growing up in a large family at the end of the Depression, living on a farm and the responsibilities handed to the her as the eldest daughter, and her educational opportunities as a woman. On gender barriers that she had to break in order to become a key player within different unions, Walker explains how she proved a woman was capable of doing the job. She also talks about her work for AFGE during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with particular attention given to some of the executive orders and contracts negotiated under Kennedy, Nixon, and Carter. Walker addresses the changing regional attitude towards labor unions as well as outsourcing and other challenges facing the labor movement today.
Ruth Stanley oral history interview, 1995-07-07
In this interview, Stanley discusses her family and upbringing, including her family's union affiliation. She then thoroughly discusses her time working at the sheet metal workers' apprenticeship office. She discusses her work with labor unions, including holding offices, Local 21 OPEIU, and the Coalition of Labor Union Women. She also discusses her husband and family and how work affected her family life.
Faye Knight, Louise Warren, and Betty Bendimire oral history interview, 2010-03-31
Faye Knight with Louise Warren and Betty Bendimire (interviewed by Philip LaPorte) discuss their work at the Manhattan Shirt Company and their participation in the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, Local 226, in Americus, Georgia. The women detail their early years, education, and pre-union work history. They also talk about being union members: benefits, supporting their union, the difficulties of working in an anti-union town, the pressures of being union officers, and labor politics in the state of Georgia.
Women's Printed Collections: Periodicals
Women's Printed Collections: Pamphlets
Special Collections and Archives
Phone: (404) 413-2880
Fax: (404) 413-2881
E-Mail: archives@gsu.edu
Mailing Address:
Special Collections & Archives
Georgia State University Library
100 Decatur Street, SE
Atlanta, Georgia 30303-3202
In Person:
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