Women Transforming Bethlehem, Then and Now: A Community Dialogue

WOMEN TRANSFORMING BETHLEHEM, THEN AND NOW:

A COMMUNITY DIALOGUE

Single Sisters House – 50 West Church St. in Bethlehem

Nov. 2, 2017 6-8pm

This program will provide an opportunity for the people of Bethlehem to reflect on our past and to imagine how we can create a city in which all women have full opportunities to succeed and flourish.

 

We will begin the dialogue by reflecting on two remarkable moments in our city’s history. Seth Moglen will give a 15-minute presentation about the Moravian women who helped to found the city of Bethlehem in the 1740s and 1750s. These immigrant women lived together in racially integrated, communal choir houses, had access to high quality education, free child care, health care and care for the elderly, and lived in a tight-knit community free from the fear of poverty.

 

Jill Schennum will then give a 15-minute presentation about the women who integrated the Bethlehem Steel plant after a 1974 Supreme Court consent decree forced the steel company to end a century of discriminatory hiring practices. These pioneering women took on a range of jobs in a traditionally male workplace, earning middle-class union wages and benefits. They faced many challenges at the Steel – and then, along with other steelworkers, the trauma of layoffs and plant closure.

 

Against the backdrop of this history, we will devote the bulk of the program (one hour) to an open community discussion of what challenges women face in Bethlehem today – and what changes we might make in the city to enable all to thrive and prosper. Women interviewed for the Women of Bethlehem Steel digital history project will play a leading role in our dialogue, sharing their experience and and helping us to understand how much progress we have made and what work remains before us.

 

Jill Schennum and Seth Moglen helped to organize the Women of Bethlehem Steel digital history project. Schennum teaches at County College of Morris, serves on the board of the Steelworkers Archives and is completing a book about Bethlehem steelworkers. Moglen teaches at Lehigh University and is completing a book about the history of Bethlehem, from Moravian founding to post-industrial present.

 

Event is free and open to the public.

Space is limited: reserve your seat at 1-800-360-TOUR or at HistoricBethlehem.org

Sponsored by Steelworkers’ Archives, Lehigh University South Side Initiative, Historic Bethlehem Museum &Sites