Talk: "Lucha Obrera: Latinos and their Unions in Mid-Twentieth-Century San Francisco"

Historian Eduardo Contreras will discuss the centrality of unions and labor organizing in Latino life from the 1930s to the 1950s. Drawing on material from his new book, Latinos and the Liberal City: Politics and Protest in San Francisco (UPenn Press, 2019), Contreras will explain how unionization transformed Latinos into political actors and how the pursuit of rights, power, and recognition emanated -- first and foremost -- from their unions. Contreras conducted a considerable amount of research for this book at the Labor Archives and Research Center (LARC) at San Francisco State University.