When students stream into the rebuilt Troup school this September, they’ll come face to face with 12 five-foot-tall panels of blended photographs of New Haven union activists across time.
The middle-schoolers probably won’t know the names of these men and women pictured, people who organized and marched and risked their livelihoods so that some of the students’ parents or grandparents at Yale or Winchester or the Board of Ed could make enough money to support their families decently. Many other adults will recognize these characters from modern New Haven history — even if takes a moment mentally to update their hair color or wardrobe. Take, for instance, these two people organizing the soon-to-become Local 34 clerical workers union at Yale: One would one day become a Democratic town chairwoman, the other, a labor leader and city alderman. (The new Troup’s auditorium is being named after the latter figure.)
The mural is the crowning piece of a stunning restoration of Troup, including 27 restored WPA-era murals like this one of the Amistad affair.
In honor of the Edgewood Avenue school’s namesake — labor journalist and organizer Augusta Lewis Troup — the city hired Brooklyn artist Susan Bowen to do the union history mural on the wall at the new back entrance, where buses will drop off the kids. Bowen pored through boxes and boxes of old photos to choose her 38 favorites. She worked with both negatives and prints to create a flowing, dynamic portrait that spans decades in a unifying spirit of triumph. Ten of the photos came from the Greater New Haven Labor History Association archives, with the help of Bill Berndtson (pictured here with Bowen in front of the mural.)
In Bowen’s initial research, one photographer’s name kept popping up: Virginia Blaisdell. “I kept saying, ‘This is a good one!’ — and running across her name,” said Bowen, 55, who finished installing the porcelain enamel panels last week. Nineteen of the 38 photos she ended up choosing for the mural were taken by Blaisdell, who has chronicled labor and social-justice history in the making in New Haven for four decades (and been an inspiration to reporters and photographers fortunate enough to have worked alongside her).
“I was mainly looking for things that had movement or action to them for the most part,” Bowen said. “I was mostly looking for interesting pictures, strong images,” rather than seeking a set list of events or unions to cover.
“I wanted to have a celebratory feel.” And lots of women’s faces, given that the mural is in honor of Augusta Troup. That wasn’t hard, given the focus of much New Haven labor organizing, from women-dominated garment factories a century go to pink-collar office workers in the 1980s. The images of the four women pictured here are the mural’s largest figures; they dominate the central panels that greet entrants to the building.
Recognize some of the faces and events in the photos?
Feel free to identify them by commenting below.
Any guesses which basketball team this was?