Victoria Starr Papers

 

Abstract

A social worker and union organizer beginning in the 1930s, Victoria Kramer Starr was one of the three women present at the 1937 founding of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee. Her papers include United Packinghouse Workers Union of America materials, oral history interviews and newspaper clippings.

Biographical /Historical

Victoria Kramer was born in Iowa and raised on a Michigan farm. Her father, a Croatian immigrant, worked as a coal miner. She migrated to Chicago when she was 17 years old and lodged with future UPWA leader, Herbert March, who encouraged her to join the Young Communist League.

Kramer lived in the Back of the Yards area and was instrumental in the formation of the Back of the Yards Youth Council which preceded Saul Alinsky’s Back of the Yard Council. She worked for meatpacking plants during the 1930-1940s. After organizing workers at several companies, Vickie Kramer was labeled a trouble-maker, forced to use several pseudonyms and eventually forced out of the meatpacking industry. When she left the meatpacking industry in 1945, she went to work fulltime for the Young Communist League.

When Kramer married Edward Starr in 1947, both were members of the Communist Party. She left the party over ideological differences in 1956. She and her husband had 4 children and separated in the 1970s. She went to work as a secretary at the University of Chicago in 1963 where she worked with Allison Davis, noted Black sociologist. She helped organize fellow clerical workers with Teamsters Local 743. Vicki Starr retired from the University of Chicago in the late 1970s.

Victoria Starr is the focus of several labor-union related books; Rank and File and Studs Terkel

The American Dreams: Lost and Found. She is documented in the 1976 documentary film Union Maids which tell of her 10 years as a union organizer in Chicago packing houses. Starr was also known as Stella Nowicki and Victoria Kramer.

Victoria Starr died in Evanston in 2009.

Sources

• Halpern, Rick. Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1940-54. University of Illinois Press, 1997.
• Lynd, Alice and Staughton, editors. Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-class Organizers, Beacon Press, [1973].

Scope and Contents

Victoria Starr Kramer was a labor activist who was on the ground floor of the founding of the United Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee in 1939 which was officially chartered as the United Packinghouse Workers (UPWA) of America in 1943.

Arrangement

This collection has 11 series: Biographical, Manuscripts, Correspondence, United Packinghouse Workers of American Oral History Project, Organizational History, Newspaper Clippings, Pamphlets, Programs, Serials, Memorabilia and Carol Mosley Braun.

Related Materials

Related materials at the Chicago Public Library include:

• Jesse Lee Albritton Papers
• Timuel D. Black Jr. Papers
• Charles A. Hayes Papers
• Herbert Hill Papers
• Chandler Owens Papers
• Rev. Addie and Rev. Claude Wyatt Papers

Related materials at other institutions include:

• Civil Rights History Project: UPWA oral history project interviews at the Library of Congress American Folklore Center

Collection Inventory

Series 1: Biographical, 1944, 1982

Scope and Contents

This series contains two newspaper clippings that shed light on her early career in the 1940s and the latter stage of her career in the 1980s.

Arrangement

This series is in chronological order.

Series 2: Manuscripts, 1968-1991, undated

Scope and Contents

This series includes an undated manuscript by Victoria Starr Kramer that documents African American women activism in the United Packinghouse Workers union in Chicago during the postwar decades. There are also manuscripts by Roger Horowitz, one of the two project directors of the Roosevelt University UPWA Oral History project in 1986 and Allison Davis, sociologist from the University of Chicago.

Arrangement

Manuscripts are in alphabetical order.

Series 3: Correspondence, 1942-1990

Scope and Contents

These is correspondence between Betty Burke and Victoria Starr which sheds light on the oral history projects from 1939 and 1986.

Arrangement

Correspondence series is in alphabetical order.

Series 4: UPWA Oral History tapes transcribed, 1939-1986

Scope and Contents

These oral history tapes from two different eras are transcribed and show the development of UPWA pre and post-World War II. There are two sub-series: UPWA Oral History tapes, 1939 and UPWA Oral History tapes, 1968, 1986.

Arrangement

Alphabetical

Series 4, Subseries A: UPWA Oral History tapes transcribed, 1939, undated

The oral history interviews are summaries of the live interviews with marginalia.

The 1939 interviews were conducted by Betty Burke [Elizabeth Burke] who was an interviewer for the Works Project Administration. Elizabeth Burke interviewed packing house workers at a critical time in labor history. The Congress of Industrial Organization was just organizing and offering hope to Chicago stockyard workers. The original transcripts are part of the Library of Congress’ American Memory Project.

Series 4, Subseries B: UPWA Oral History Project, 1969-1986

This sub-series contains an interview with Victoria Kramer [Stella Nowicki] conducted by Staughton Lynel while the 1986 oral history project interviews were conducted by Roger Horowitz and Rick Halpern. There is an excellent interview with Herbert March who was the principal Chicago leader behind the organizing of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee from 1937-1943.

Arrangement

This subseries is in alphabetical order.

Series 5: Organizational history, 1940-1979

Scope and Contents

This series contains the affidavit of a police raid on the Transport Workers Union of America, local 201 in 1940 and a retrospective history of Brown vs. Board of Education.

Arrangement

This series is in alphabetical order

Series 6: Newspaper Clippings, 1938-1997

Scope and Contents

These clippings give a good overview of early history of labor in Chicago. They also reflect Victoria Starr’s interest in Paul Robeson and Richard Wright.

Arrangement

This series is in chronological order

Series 7: Pamphlet, 1951

Scope and Contents

This series contains the UPWA Anti-Discrimination Department. “Action Against Jim Crow: UPWA’s fight for equal rights.” This pamphlet highlights problems faced by Black women trying to get jobs in the meatpacking industry versus how white women were treated.

Series 8: Programs, 1990

Scope and Contents

This series contains the labor panel program presented by Victoria Starr and chaired by Elizabeth Balanoff at the 75^th anniversary of the Association for the Study of Afro Life and History.

Series 9: Serials, 1938-1952

Scope and Contents

This series gives a good representation of early labor magazines.

Arrangement

This series is in alphabetical order.

Series 10: Memorabilia, 1969, 1976

Scope and Contents

This series highlights marketing information on two documentary films on the history of the meatpacking industry in Chicago. One is devoted to the 1904 strike and the other one is on the role of women in the meatpacking industry.

Arrangement

This series is in chronological order.

Series 11: Carol Mosley Braun, 1992-1997

Scope and Contents

All of the items pertain to the 1992-1993 Illinois Senate election that Carol Moseley Braun campaigned and won.

Arrangement

This series is in alphabetical order by subject.