Chrysler Sit Down Strikes, Women’s Auxiliaries, and UAW Organizing in Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland, 1937

Chrysler Worker's Strike

Photograph

Chrysler worker strike photo archive depicting automobile labor actions across Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland in 1937, during the decisive year in which the United Automobile Workers forced its way into the major automobile corporations and established industrial unionism as a durable power in American manufacturing. The photographs record the Chrysler conflict in the immediate aftermath of the General Motors sit down strike, whose settlement on February 11 gave the UAW its breakthrough recognition within the automobile industry. Chrysler workers followed in March, occupying plants in metropolitan Detroit and confronting the corporation over union recognition, while related actions by automobile workers spread through other Midwestern production centers. Contemporary UAW records preserve demands, press releases, legal proceedings, strike publicity, and organizing material from the Chrysler strike through April 1937, placing these press photographs within one of the union's formative campaigns.

Photo archive of 5 silver gelatin photographs, each 8 x 10 inches, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland, 1937. The photographs show a mass of workers leaving an automobile plant; UAW members and a Women's Auxiliary Local 182 gathered beneath chandeliers with hands raised; office workers carrying placards reading "Local 889 UAW office workers on strike"; a crowd assembled outside a fenced factory complex; and workers gathered around musicians during a strike meeting or entertainment program. The Detroit images document the Chrysler sit down at Dodge Main and the activity surrounding workers occupying the plant, including the participation of women outside the factory, a role independently documented in contemporary photographs of the Dodge Main Women's Auxiliary. The versos retain their original press context through pasted wire service captions, editorial markings, publication instructions, date stamps, and agency credits including Acme, NEA, United Press International, and Chicago and Cleveland bureau markings. One caption describes Chrysler workers numbering sections of the Dodge plant fence so relatives and friends outside could locate particular workers inside; another records a church service held for sit down automobile workers at a Chrysler plant on March 14, 1937. A further caption announces the end of the Chrysler strike and reports that Governor Frank Murphy's office announced an agreement between Chrysler and the UAW, while another records more than 8,000 Chrysler workers forming a picket line after a walkout. The press captions and editorial stamps establish the photographs not simply as images of labor protest but as photographs produced and circulated through the contemporary news system while the strikes were unfolding.

The Chrysler confrontation belonged to the extraordinary succession of sit down actions that transformed automobile labor in 1937. On March 8, UAW locals initiated sit downs that closed Chrysler's nine Detroit plants; the conflict generated court orders demanding evacuation of occupied factories, demonstrations in Cadillac Square, negotiations involving Michigan Governor Frank Murphy, and sustained pressure on Walter P. Chrysler to recognize the union. Archival records at the Walter P. Reuther Library preserve the resulting Chrysler UAW agreement of April 1937, while contemporary photographs record Walter Chrysler signing the settlement in the presence of Murphy, John L. Lewis, and UAW leader Richard Frankensteen. The photographs here extend that history beyond negotiating tables to the mechanisms of the strike itself: occupied factories, mass walkouts, perimeter picketing, communication between workers inside and supporters outside, women's auxiliary activity, and the public gatherings through which workers sustained collective action. Light surface wear, handling marks, occasional creasing, toning and staining to versos, with press labels and editorial stamps intact; one print with a corner crease. Overall in good condition. A concentrated contemporary press record of the 1937 Chrysler labor conflict and the workers, families, picket lines, and sit down tactics through which the UAW secured recognition in the automobile industry.

Item #23834

Price: $450.00