August 13, 2011, Saturday - Women’s Work: History Player Eva Valesh Tour at Mill City Museum
Time: 1:00pm
Location: Mill City Museum, 704 2nd Street South
Fee: $14 adults, $12 seniors and college students, $10 ages 6-17 and MHS members.
Reservations: required, call 612-341-7555
A costumed actor portraying labor writer Eva Valesh will lead a walking tour highlighting the factories whose working conditions were exposed by Valesh in series of newspaper articles in 1888 and 1889. Jobs available to women in the 19th and early-20th century and some of the key events in women’s labor history in Minneapolis will be discussed. Valesh was a labor writer and orator who was also known by the pen name Eva Gay. Among the riverfront factories singled out by "Eva Gay" was the North Star Woolen Mill, still standing two blocks from Mill City Museum. Valesh served as labor editor for the Saint Paul Globe and the Minneapolis Tribune. She went on to national acclaim, working for Samuel Gompers as Assistant Editor of the American Federationist.