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Rose Pesotta

Content type
Collection
Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History
March 11, 2011

10 Things You Should Know About Fannia Cohn

Leah Berkenwald

Her life offers evidence of the possibilities and limitations of women’s activism in the American labor movement.”

Topics: Community Organizing, Labor Rights, Unions, Education, Schools, Immigration, Organizations and Institutions
https://jwa.org/blog/10-things-you-should-know-about-fannia-cohn
Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History
March 1, 2011

10 Things You Should Know About Rose Pesotta

Leah Berkenwald

Rakhel Peisoty, who later changed her name to Rose Pesotta, was born in 1896 in a Ukrainian railroad town that was then part of the Russian Empire. Even as a child, she had the passionate convictions that would guide her later life as a labor activist and anarchist. Rose’s older sister, who belonged to an underground anarchist group, encouraged her to read the works of social revolutionaries. Rose attended a school for girls that taught a standard Russian curriculum, while offering secret lessons in Jewish history and Hebrew.

Topics: Community Organizing, Labor Rights, Unions, Organizations and Institutions, Memoirs
https://jwa.org/blog/10-things-you-should-know-about-rose-pesotta
Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History
March 1, 2011

The Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History

Leah Berkenwald

Though we at JWA celebrate women’s history all year round, March brings us the great opportunity of Women’s History Month.

Topics: Activism, Labor Rights, Jewish History
https://jwa.org/blog/top-10-jewish-women-in-labor-history
Rose Pesotta, 1965

Labor activist Rose Pesotta organizes in Akron, Ohio

February 25, 1936

In 1936, in the midst of nationwide union organizing drives, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) se

https://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/25/1936/rose-pesotta
Triangle Fire in Der Groyser Kundes

Socialism in the United States

Disproportionate numbers of Jewish immigrant women in America were associated with socialism in the first decades of the twentieth century. Their ideological commitment was expressed mainly in activism in left-leaning garment workers' unions. Their radicalism grew out of the same sources as male radicalism (changes experienced in late 19th century Europe and America, including proletarianization and secularization), but Jewish working women's radical consciousness and collective action emerged in the face of additional and different obstacles.
Rose Pesotta, 1965

Rose Pesotta

Rose Pesotta was an iconic labor organizer and president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in the early twentieth century. Pesotta saw her union organizing as an opportunity to fulfill the anarchist mandate “to be among the people and teach them our ideal in practice.”

Working Women's Education in the United States

Although young immigrant Jewish women had always been especially motivated to become educated public-school students, the workers’ education movement in the 1910s and 1920s tried to teach workers specifically about social activism. Organizations such as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union created summer schools at colleges to educate women workers about trade unionism.

Labor Demonstration, 1915

Labor Movement in the United States

Jewish American women have played a central role in the American labor movement since the beginning of the twentieth century. As women, they brought to trade unions their sensibilities about the organizing process and encouraged labor to support government regulation to protect women in the workforce.

Triangle Fire in Der Groyser Kundes

International Ladies Garment Workers Union

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was founded in 1900 by eleven Jewish men who represented seven local East Coast unions with heavy Jewish immigrant populations. Initially excluded from the union, women began organizing and eventually developed bargaining power after the Uprising of the 20,000 in 1909.

Lillian Wald

Feminism in the United States

Jewish women participated in and propelled all aspects of the women's rights movement, from suffrage in the nineteenth century to women's liberation in the twentieth. Despite occasional instances of antisemitism in the general feminist movement, Jewish women were passionate advocates of feminist goals.
Cards Created for JWA's Commemoration of the Centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Fannia M. Cohn

Fannia M. Cohn was one of the leading Jewish women trade union activists in the United States. Drawing on her Russian Jewish cultural traditions, she pioneered the development of educational programs within the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).

Mollie Steimer

Anarchists, American Jewish Women

The anarchist movement was based on a struggle against the tyranny of capitalism, on social equality and individual liberty, and on the promotion of positive communitarian ideals. American Jewish women were at the forefront of this movement and were active participants in labor organization.
February 26, 2009

Rubber workers, anarchists, and little Jewish ladies

Judith Rosenbaum

I was reading today about Rose Pesotta, a veteran unionorganizer with the ILGWU, who in February of 1936 went to Akron, Ohio to helpworkers striking at the Goodyear Rubber factory. She was sent to raise supportfor the strike among the workers' wives and daughters, but she was alsosuccessful in connecting with the workers themselves, ultimately helping to endthe strike with a negotiated settlement.

Topics: Labor Rights, Unions
https://jwa.org/blog/Rose_Emma

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