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Archives and Labor History Loss--Debra Bernhardt's Death



March 26, 2001

It is with great sadness that I tell you of the death of one of our most
active, talented, funny, supportive and outspoken archivist/historian
colleagues.  Debra Bernhardt died last Thursday, March 22, 200l after
fighting ovarian cancer for two years.   Her obituary is printed in today's
New York Times Metro section, page B6, and an earlier article in the Times
(Friday, Sept. 4, 1998--Metro section) talks about her work at NYU's Robert
F. Wagner Labor Archives and her push to have NYC's Union Square Park
designated a national historic landmark.

In the Times article in 1998 the reporter wrote:

"Dr. Bernhardt, 45, wears her politics on her sleeve, as a soft-spoken but
ardent child of labor who puts a union label on her business card, sings in
the NYC Labor Chorus, and is know to friends by the nickname of Debs, after
the socialist presidential candidate and labor leader.  But even though the
archives--a collection of hundreds of thousands of personal papers, books,
journals, badges and photographs--are a center for scholarly research on
anarchism, communism and labor socialism, she describes herself as a "Hubert
Humphrey Democrat," who was a Mo Udall delegate to the 1976 Democratic
convention.  "I'm a Democratic diaper baby from the Rust Belt," who was
infused with pro-labor sentiment from an early age, as many of her
Danish-American male relatives were iron miners in the upper-penisula town of
Iron River, Michigan, where she grew up.

Her dedication and drive to see Union Square Park designated as a National
Historic Land Mark grew out of her grounding in the importance of public
history in urban cities.  In 1998, she said: "We've lost so much of our
history.  No one realizes  that the eight-hour day was won by working people
on these streets, in this park.  We wanted to celebrate the fact that
ordinary people were able to express their rights to free speech and assembly
on this spot."

In 2000, Debra and her co-editor, Rachel Bernstein, published a wonderful
photo history of labor in New York City called "Ordinary People,
Extraordinary Lives--A Pictorial History of Working People in New York
City."(pub. by New York University Press, ISBN: 0-8147-9866-7/ $29.95 cloth
-- Customer service: 1-800-966-6987)