Historicizing Heritage

This object is a cherished piece of ephemera that links me to my grandmother. My grandmother’s father was an assimilated Jew, his family having immigrated to the USA via Ellis Island, and worked as a union organizer with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. My grandmother grew up moving to and living in many different cities across America until she and my grandfather married and moved to London, Ontario, Canada, where I was born. This is a union promoting item - a plastic hair covering in a case - emblazoned to urge consumers to not cross the picket line for a boycott that was organized by the ILGWU, exactly when and exactly where I do not know. 

I discovered this item in the course of going through my grandmother’s house just before her death from COVID-19, which she contracted in her Long-Term Care Home in January 2021. My partner and I were in quarantine in her home in Fall 2020 in order to visit with family in the constraints of the pandemic, and I found this amazingly still extant piece of ephemera, that now sits on my bookshelf in Brooklyn. Not so surprising that it still exists -- owing to its being made of plastic -- but amazing to find this item in such condition that so clearly demonstrates my familial heritage of labor organizing.