Mining Labor is focus of upcoming presentation

The Michigan Tech Archival Speaker Series will feature visiting
scholar Dr. Aaron Goings at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 17, in the East
Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Tech
campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Goings will discuss labor history in Michigan’s Copper Country,
focusing on working conditions, labor unions, and labor struggles in
the years leading up to the 1913 Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike. His
presentation will highlight earlier labor disputes, as well as the
day-to-day struggles between workers and employers in the Copper
Country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Dr. Aaron Goings is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Saint
Martin’s University in Washington State. He earned his PhD from Simon
Fraser University, where his dissertation addressed class and
community issues in Grays Harbor, Washington. Goings is currently
working with co-author Gary Kaunonen on a book to be published in 2013
by Michigan State University Press which argues that the 1913-1914
strike was the culmination of decades of regional labor struggles. The
talk will conclude by discussing the national significance of this
important labor event and reasons it has drifted from public memory
outside of the Copper Country.

Going’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel
grant from the Friends of the Van Pelt Library. Since 1998, the
Michigan Tech Archives Travel Grant program has helped scholars
advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript
collections at the Archives.