DESCRIPTION: “This one-hour documentary is beautifully focused on the role of African-American laborers throughout the history of the steel industry. It is suffused with the filmmaker’s passion for revealing what had been deliberately overlooked: that black laborers most often had the grittiest, most dangerous jobs in the mines and the mills, and they never rose up through the ranks into management. This is independent filmmaking at its very best, simply produced by a retired steelworker with a mission and his filmmaker friend.”

“This documentary tells the forgotten story of the African-American struggle for equality in the U.S. steel industry (based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). In a series of interviews intermixed with archival footage and stills, we learn how these workers faced and overcame discrimination that came from white workers, the big steel companies, and even from their own unions” (Martin Lewison).

SEE ALSO:

Oral History Interviews: Black Steelworkers in Aliquippa 

About Struggles In Steel

Facilitator Guide: Struggles in Steel

RETURN TO THE LISTENING LIBRARY: BEAVER COUNTY

The Listening Library of Beaver County (LLBC) is curated by The Social Voice Project. It is a publicly and privately sourced audio/visual archive of voices and stories related to Beaver County, Pennsylvania and surrounding region. Disclaimer: LLBC is intended for educational and historical purposes. This collection of audio-visual content contains digital media items and playlists already made publicly available (but not necessarily in the public domain) by their creators via internet platforms such as YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Media presented here link directly back to these platforms and original content. Content creators retain all legal responsibility for copyright control over their media, including location, manner of access, aesthetic quality, and editorial point of view. LLBC assumes no legal or financial responsibility for this publicly available content, it makes no claim of ownership, and it respects the right of content creators to remove or modify their media at any time from their publicly accessible platforms.