On May Day 2019, the Museum of the City of New York unveiled “City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York,” an exhibition charting the history of workers organizing in Gotham over the past two centuries. Steven H. Jaffe curated the show, advised by a committee of labor historians headed by Joshua Freeman and drawing materials from the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University and the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. The exhibition told the stories of well-known labor leaders and rank-and-file organizers of myriad backgrounds, trades, and creeds. Exploring everything from Henry George's mayoral run to garment worker health centers to civil service career ladders, the show substantiated the argument in its title: labor movements have shaped the way New Yorkers work, and they have also refigured the politics of the city in ways...
