Struggle in Smugtown Video Study Guide

To facilitate use of the Struggle in Smugtown video we have prepared this Study Guide for educators. The guide is organized in the same sequence as the video: there is one page of exercises for each of the video's 15 sections, including:

questions - intended to provoke critical thinking and classroom discussion, based on students' opinions, of issues raised by the section's visual and narrative information
activities - intended to spur student research on specific issues, events, people, and sites covered in the section
vocabulary - intended to invite students to use a dictionary to define unfamiliar words used in the section's narrative
glossary - intended to provide simple definitions of special terms, specific organizations, etc. which students may amplify by consulting an encyclopedia
resources - selected published works related to topics covered in the section; also, references to related sections of the Rochester Labor History Map/Guide.

USING THE GUIDE

The content of each video segment is summarized in the list below. To view the Study Guide exercise for each segment, click on the associated Exercise link. To view the segment of the video online, click on the link to Video Segment.

Flour City Digging the Erie Canal, constructing aqueducts; boatbuilding and barrel-making; flour mills make Rochester America's bread-basket; the coming of the railroad.	Exercise	Video Segment
Flower City Nurseries replace mills, flowers replace flour; nursery workers organize; nursery land becomes Highland Park, a refuge for urban workers.	Exercise	Video Segment
Activists Fugitive slave Frederick Douglass publishes The North Star, fights for black workers' rights; Lewis Henry Morgan studies Iroquois culture, develops theories of social organization; Susan B. Anthony advocates for women's suffrage, equal pay for equal work.	Exercise	Video Segment
Schools Rochester's early struggles over integration; vocational education, the Mechanics Institute; the training of teachers and disparity in their pay. Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, the Rochester Central Trades and Labor Council, the Building Trades Council.	Exercise	Video Segment
Early Unions workers join the Rochester Workingmen's Assembly, the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, the Rochester Central Trades and Labor Council, the Building Trades Council.	Exercise	Video Segment
Transportation first horse-drawn,then electric streetcars facilitate Rochester's growth and connect the city to its region; street railway workers' struggles.	Exercise	Video Segment
Shoes & Cigarettes Threatened by mechanized production, workers in the "leather swamp" join the Knights of St. Crispin, the Knights of Labor, the Boot and Shoe Workers Union. Women at Kimball's cigarette factory organize and strike.	Exercise	Video Segment
Lenses & Film skilled optical workers at Bausch & Lomb, Kodak; Lewis Hine photographs child labor.	Exercise	Video Segment
Clothing thousands of immigrant workers in sweatshops and factories struggle, organize; Ida Breiman, striker, murdered; Rochester's button industry.	Exercise	Video Segment
Socialists Anarchist Emma Goldman, socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs; discussions at Labor Lyceum; settlement houses "Americanize" immigrant workers.	Exercise	Video Segment
War, Depression, New Deal WWI, repression of immigrant workers; the Great Depression, relief efforts for city's unemployed; recognition of workers' right to unionize spurs CIO organizing drives.	Exercise	Video Segment
Post-war Prosperity Workers' struggles following WWII; city's municipal workers organize, are fired, conduct General Strike; economic development; newspapers, both union and anti-union.	Exercise	Video Segment
Civil Rights Workplace and housing discrimination lead to 1964 race riot; FIGHT takes on Kodak.	Exercise	Video Segment
Shifting Economies Job-flight to South and abroad threatens manufacturing; public employees and health care workers organize; struggles over privatization, plant-closings, safety and health in the workplace.	Exercise	Video Segment
Commitment to Community Organized labor’s role in sustaining a viable Rochester through a Living Wage, community support campaigns, labor-based cultural programs, political action	Exercise	Video Segment

The Video Study Guide was produced by the Rochester Education Alliance of Labor (REAL) — A collaboration of Rochester educators and other workers, with the support of the John F. Wegman Fund, the Ronald G. Pettengill Labor Education Fund, and the Rochester Labor Council, AFL-CIO.