Citizens Alliance Records.
Clippings, reports, bulletins, printed materials, and some correspondence kept by John W. Schroeder, executive director of the Citizens Alliance, formed by a group of business and professional men in 1903 to promote "industrial peace" and steady employment, and to support the "open-shop" principle. The Alliance also ran a free employment service from 1919 to 1936. The records consist primarily of topical subject files of newspaper clippings and printed ephemera on labor-related topics (1920s-1930s): unions, strikes, political activity, political parties and radical movements, personalities, employment, legislation, government agencies and policies, and other businessmen's organizations.
MNHS call number: See finding aid in the library (M465).
Vince A. Day Papers.
This collection includes correspondence, speeches, clippings, printed materials, scrapbooks, and other papers of Day, who was private secretary to Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson (1931-1935). Day's papers as Governor Olson's secretary provide data on many aspects of labor problems and strikes, especially the Minneapolis truck drivers' strike in 1934.
MNHS call number: Digital Finding Aid
Socialist Workers Party, Minnesota Section, Party Records.
This archival collection (1914-1980) includes campaign literature, scrapbooks, form letters, bulletins, issues of party newspapers, pamphlets, and other materials generated or collected by the Socialist Workers Party. Included are data on many subjects of concern to the Socialist movement; political campaigns, efforts to protect the civil rights of persons dismissed from positions because of party membership; and labor unions, particularly the Motor Transport and Allied Workers Industrial Union, Local No. 544, which was involved in the Minneapolis truck drivers' strike in 1934. Information is especially full on the trial, conviction, and appeals (1941-1944) of Local No. 544 officers accused of sedition, including Grant, Miles, and Vincent Dunne, Grace Carlson, and Carl Skoglund.
MNHS call number: Digital Finding Aid
Charles R. Walker Papers.
Research and interview notes, chapter drafts, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and other printed materials compiled or created by Walker for his book American City: a Rank-and-File History (1937), which deals with the economic, political, and social conditions in Minneapolis culminating in the truck drivers' strike of July 1934.
MNHS call number: Digital Finding Aid
American Federation of Labor, Correspondence with Local Affiliates, 1933-1947.
The largest section concerns the Minneapolis Central Labor Union (1935-1946), especially in the aftermath of the 1934 truck drivers’ strike. There is considerable correspondence concerning the 1935-1936 work of AFL field representative Meyer L. Lewis to restore AFL control over the body and to rid it of communist influence.
MNHS call number: Microfilm M509
General Drivers, Helpers and Inside Workers Union. Local 574, Minneapolis Teamsters Strike, 1934: Selected documents.
Correspondence, telegrams, clippings, reports, speeches, legal agreements, broadsides, and other printed matter documenting the 1934 Minneapolis teamsters strike. The documents, selected by former Local 574 secretary-treasurer Farrell Dobbs from among his personal papers, give information on the history of Local 574, a Minneapolis teamsters affiliate, and the organizing events that led to the 1934 strikes. The majority of the documents concern the events during May-August, 1934, during which two tumultuous drivers’ strikes were called by Local 574, that ended in death and injury and the imposition of martial law in Minneapolis.
MNHS call number: Microfilm M494
Oral History Interview with Vincent Raymond Dunne, April 27, 1969.
2 sound cassettes (60 min. each)
Dunne discusses his early work experiences and his involvement with the IWW and the Communist Party in the 1920s, philosophical differences between the Trotskyites and the Communists, the Socialist Workers Party, the 1934 Truckers’ Strike in Minneapolis, and organizing radical labor groups.
MNHS call number: Digital Audio and Transcripts
Gale Family Library
Minnesota Historical Society Library
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