The New Bedford Labor History Mural Project began at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Arnold M. Dubin Labor Education Center. The Center provides leadership which supports union and community activists create public art in their honor. This mural was created in October 2001 by Dan Devenny, noted muralist from Belfast, Ireland. It is located near the corner of Sixth and Spring Streets. Funding came from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, the UMass Dartmouth Arnold M. Dubin Labor Education Center, the Community Building Mini-grants Program, the company and workers of Riverside Clothing and many labor unions and individuals. Thanks to the many volunteers and our state senator.
New Bedford is a city of immigrant workers who arrived speaking Portuguese, English, French, Crioulo, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish and Quiche (Mayan) to build a vibrant community. Their extraordinary labor on the oceans, the waterfront, the mills, and the land has built our city and dignified their work. These workers joined in a community that has defended runaway slaves and fought against runaway jobs in a society whose legal systems helped both the slave catchers and the corporations. Through unions, churches and clubs they continue to build a more diverse community. This mural stands as a lasting memorial to one of New Bedford's most noted residents and other lesser-known leaders and workers who have had such a tremendous impact on our city's past and present.
On September 17, 1838, the escaped slave and skilled ship caulker the world came to know as Frederick Douglass stepped from a stagecoach onto Seventh Street in New Bedford where he would come to make his first home in freedom with Nathan and Polly Johnson. Located at 21 Seventh Street, just a block from this mural, it is now a National Historical Landmark and headquarters of the New Bedford Historical Society. The fugitive's work among the city's abolitionists and politically aware community of color honed his skills as a thinker and an orator. When he left New Bedford in 1843, Douglass was becoming the century's most admired and respected African American.
Whaling merchant Rodney French hired Douglass as a caulker, but white caulkers on New Bedford's waterfront refused to work alongside him. Instead, Douglass worked as a wharf laborer and stevedore, a sawyer, a steward, and a general laborer digging cellars, shoveling coal, and cleaning yards about town. He worked in one of the city's candle-works and also pumped the bellows at the Richmond Brass Foundry.
Soon after settling in New Bedford, Douglass began reading the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. He attended and spoke at antislavery lectures and meetings. Douglass was invited to speak before a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society meeting on Nantucket in 1841. That presentation launched his career as a public advocate of civil rights.
In 1845, Douglass visited Ireland for a series of abolitionist lectures. He saw that country during the famine that reduced the population by a quarter, and he acknowledged the oppression leading to this horror. He noted the lack of racial prejudice in Ireland. 'I find myself not treated as a color, but as a man'. His experiences in Belfast helped form his abolitionist message as he spoke out against the slave-owners who called themselves Christians.
The mural border is composed of two symbols. At the bottom is a Celtic design depicting the unbroken knot in the Book of Kells and on ancient Irish monuments. And at the top the chains that bound Douglass, unlike the Celtic knot, are breakable and broken.
The elegant woman in the upper left corner of the mural is Margaret (Duggan) Ryckebusch. She was born into a prominent Irish/American family in New Bedford. She chose to teach language arts at Bristol Community College in Fall River where she became a fearless advocate for all workers at the college. Margaret was elected president of her local union, a chapter of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (M.T.A).
Looking over her shoulder is Arnold Dubin who arrived in New Bedford from Philadelphia in 1962 to manage Local 361 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (I.L.G.W.U.). He was a pugnacious Jewish Socialist from a working class family and served in the U.S. Army. He graduated from Temple University. Arnold was an aggressive organizer and negotiator who believed strongly in workers' education and UMass Dartmouth. Without him there would be no Labor Education Center at UMass Dartmouth.
Margaret and Arnold believed that language, literature and the arts were necessary for working people. They taught and acted on their beliefs. Margaret and Arnold knew that nothing happened if workers did not organize. They both died too young. They both left their marks on this community.
The face of Frank "Parky" Grace is in the upper left side of the doorway in the mural. He was a New Bedford native who served in Vietnam. He became active in the Vietnam antiwar and civil rights movements in New Bedford and Fall River when he was a student at Bristol Community College in the late 196os. He spent 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. He was in the New Bedford branch of the Black Panther Party. Parky died at age 56 in Boston while the New Bedford mural was being painted.
The whales symbolize the work of our waterfront which created great wealth in the city through whaling, fishing and fish processing. The images within the whales represent people from Portugal, Cape Verde, Norway and later arrivals from Guatemala.
New Bedford's working people have often been threatened with plant closings and mass layoffs as profitable companies ran away in search of greater profits. Aided in the 1990s by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), these companies faced few barriers to their flight.
Despite this, workers in New Bedford have refused to accept "business as usual." In the 198os and 90s the United Electrical Workers and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) waged public campaigns to "Keep Jobs in New Bedford." They were joined by their children, small shopkeepers, church leaders and city officials. Union members demonstrated and picketed on street corners and in boardrooms to confront corporate greed. They argued that the companies had no right to wreak havoc on the lives of working people of New Bedford. Each campaign had different outcomes, but in each New Bedford workers established and fought for their dignity.
Augusto Pinto was a Textile Mill Committee strike captain during the Strike of 1928. The strike was precipitated when mill owners announced a 10% cut in wages. Pinto was arrested on the picket lines 22 times and, after the strike, was deported to Portugal for his strike activities. He reportedly died en route to prison in Cape Verde.
This is a famous photograph called "Portuguese Spinner". Lewis Hine, social reformer and photographer, took this picture in 1916 in Fall River. He is most famous for documenting child labor. He portrayed women as statuesque and beautiful, handling their machines like artists.
In 1876, the whaling bark Catalpa, captained by the daring George Anthony of New Bedford, rescued 7 Fenians from an Australian prison. The Fenian Brotherhood was a secret society committed to an independent Ireland. A group of men from New Bedford took extraordinary risks to free the Fenians from this penal colony with the British in hot pursuit.
