Voices from the Factory Floor aims to initiate the process of centering the history of Acme Steel, the regional steel economy, and the industrial, working-class heritage of the Calumet Region, from the factory floor outward. The primary goal is to develop narrative threads that will inspire further research, cataloging, and exploration of deindustrialization in the Calumet Region.
This grant has allowed us to build on the work made possible by a previous grant, which supported the inventory of the relocated collection and began the process of making it accessible to researchers and the public. The primary objectives of this funding fall into four key areas of continued engagement:
The plan is to conduct oral history interviews with former employees to enhance the usability and richness of the collection. This will provide the Calumet Heritage Partnership, the archivist team at Purdue University Northwest, and partners at the Field Museum an opportunity to engage additional stakeholders, such as the United Steelworkers District and re-engage initial partners in the collection effort, including Steelworkers on Active Retirement (SOAR) and the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum.
Collecting these histories will help contextualize the Acme Steel Company’s material collection while enriching the narrative of workers’ lives. The collection’s intrinsic value lies in its ability to tell the story from the inside out. These oral histories will be instrumental in highlighting Acme Steel, the regional industrial economy, and the working-class neighborhoods shaped by the factory floor. The focus is not entirely on Acme, but the steelworkers of the calumet Region.
In collaboration with SOAR and the United Steelworkers District, partners at Purdue University Northwest and the Calumet Heritage Partnership will identify 15–20 initial steelworkers to interview. This sample will include individuals from various departments with overlapping tenures at the mill. Through these initial interviews, we will also collect contact information for their colleagues to support additional interviews in a later phase and build a network of stakeholders and guests for future events related to the collection.
Joseph Coates is Assistant Professor of Practice/Assistant Director, University Library at Purdue University Northwest. His focus is public history, oral history and information literacy. His goal is to ensure students, faculty and staff understand information literacy concepts, the dangers of fake news and the preservation of institutional knowledge. A lifelong resident of Northwest Indiana and the son of steelworkers, he is active in the Society of Indiana Archivists, the Midwest Archives Conference and Academic Libraries of Indiana.
Emiliano Aguilar is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is a political and labor historian of the United States, with a particular interest in Latino History. A lifelong resident of the Calumet Region (Southeastern Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana), Emiliano has a keen interest in working to acknowledge the region’s national significance. Emiliano received an AB in History and English from Wabash College, an MA in History from Purdue University Northwest, and a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University.
