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https://rozsixties.unl.edu/files/original/b3d0b3a4528a0edfd5ee557b5b643082.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buttons
Description
An account of the resource
Buttons were one of the most popular and pervasive forms of political messaging during the 1960s, combining brief messaging and memorable graphic designs. Buttons were inexpensive to produce on a mass basis and easy to distribute. They afforded any individual an opportunity to voice their opinions and, potentially, reach a broad audience. As Hunter Oatman-Stanford has written, “From discreet lapel pins to oversized buttons on purses or backpacks, pinbacks invite conversation by declaring potentially controversial viewpoints to complete strangers.” In this way, buttons were (and still are) a particularly democratic form of political propaganda.
As button collector, John Aisthorpe, has put it, buttons offer “a little snapshot of history.” During the 1960s, buttons were vital to the visual identity of a range of movements. “There were many protest groups who put their views on buttons,” Aisthorpe recalls, “from the early ’60s with the Free Speech Movement (FSM) to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and, later, the Veterans for Peace, the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, and the Yippies.” The political impact of buttons in the 1960s is hard to gauge, though their popularity suggests some modicum of significance. And, as Aisthorpe has asserted, “It’s hard to say what impact they had, but the text of buttons worn at protests were often used as antiwar chants, like ‘Hell no, we won’t go!’… They must have had some effect.” The buttons of the 1960s have remained some of the most enduring relics from this important past.
This collection includes buttons from a wide array of movements from the Sixties, including the student movement, civil rights and Black Power movements, women's liberation, environmentalism, the anti-nuclear movement, gay liberation, electoral politics, the Chicano movement, the labor movement and the counterculture, with a strong emphasis on the anti-war movement. In addition, a few buttons date from Roz Payne’s activist efforts in the 1970s and 1980s, including the early political campaigns of Vermont politician, Bernie Sanders.
Physical Object
An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
I Support UE Strikers in GE
Description
An account of the resource
The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) has a long history at General Electric. The UE local at the GE Plant in Schenectady, New York, was one of the first locals to join the more militant Congress of Industrial Unions in the 1930s. In 1946, the union mounted an effective strike resulting in pay increases for its members. Yet, by the late-1940s, the rising tide of McCarthyism had tainted the UE, which had left-wing associations, prompting the CIO to expel the UE and replace it with the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE). This resulted in roughly two decades of fragmentation among workers at GE and little progress, particularly during a fairly disastrous 1960 IUE strike. By the end of the 1960s, though, the UE and IUE began to work together and mounted a successful 103-day national strike in 1969-70. The UE and IUE led an alliance of unions which broke the back of “Boulwarism,” GE's aggressive 20-year-long policy of "take-it-or-leave-it" bargaining. Boulwarism was named for Lemuel Boulware, the company's vice president of labor and community relations, who devised the strategy in reaction to UE's success in their 1946 strike, and to capitalize on the bitter divisions in the ranks of GE union members after 1949.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Roz Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
ca. 1969-70
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Button
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Physical Object
Subject
The topic of the resource
Labor Movement
1946 strike
1960 strike
1969 strike
communism
Congress of Industrial Unions
General Electric
International Union of Electrical
labor movement
McCarthyism
New York
Radio and Machine Workers
Radio and Machine Workers of America
Schenectady
United Electrical