Connecticut Humanities Council Awards Grant to GNHLHA for First Phase of Winchester Workers' Exhibit
Calling Former Winchester Workers (Read article from the New Haven Independent)
The Connecticut Humanities Council has awarded a $6000 planning
grant to the Greater New Haven Labor History Association to prepare images for
the Association’s upcoming exhibit on workers at the old Olin-Winchester Plant
in the Newhallville section of New Haven.
The images, including photographs and newspaper articles, will be
digitized and re-mastered to exhibit quality by internationally acclaimed new
media artist Cynthia Beth Rubin.
“The plant closed in 2006, but the stories of its workers
throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries have yet to
be told,” said Labor History Association Director and Archivist Joan Cavanagh. “An
entire culture developed within the plant among workers. Everyone in the
community knew or was related to someone who worked there.”
Labor History Association Board members Lula White, Dorothy
Johnson, James Hoffecker and Mary Johnson have been conducting oral histories
with retired Winchester workers since the early spring of this year.
Information from those interviews will help create the text of the exhibit,
which will be produced by the end of 2010.
The core of the exhibit will be based on photographs and documents
from the International Association of Machinists Local 609 collection held in
the Labor History Association’s archives. Local 609 represented workers at the
plant from 1956 until its closure. Images from earlier years as well as images
of the workers’ lives in the community will be culled from personal
memorabilia. GNHLHA encourages anyone with relevant photographs, documents or
newspaper articles to be in contact by calling 203-777-2756, ext. 2 or sending
an email to joan@laborhistory.org.
Please be in touch right away as we are in the process now of digitizing the
images to be used and writing the text for the exhibit.