A previous blog post recounted CatholicU’s Gilded Age and Progressive Era Labor Collections, part of Special Collections that includes materials from the New Deal and Postwar Era. These include the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 1935-1955; three high ranking CIO officials, Phillip Murray, John Brophy, and Harry C. Read; and Joseph Daniel Keenan of the Read More

The novel coronavirus pandemic has left record numbers of Americans jobless—inviting comparisons between now and the Great Depression almost one hundred years ago. The Archives at the Catholic University of America (CatholicU) is well positioned to offer a historical perspective on current events. Two particular collecting strengths from the Depression era, relating to Catholic views Read More

Yes, a “labor priest” is a thing.  His origins can be found in the intersection of the rise of the modern working class in the nineteenth century and the issuance of the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891.  The labor priest usually materialized from a working class community, often with immigrant roots, and often possessed an Read More

Though there was a museum at The Catholic University of America (CUA) going back to the university’s founding in the late 19th century, the Archives at CUA originated much later as shortly before World War II Msgr. Francis Haas began collecting the papers of important Catholic labor leaders such as Terence Powderly, head of the Read More