Mill Stories: Deindustrialization as Public History

Sat, 21 Nov 2015 19:42:46 -0500

Public historians at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) accepted the challenge of collecting video oral histories of workers associated with Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point, Maryland plant, and company town right after the plant’s owner went bankrupt and closed it in 2012. Led by folklorist Michelle Stefano, visiting assistant professor of American Studies, and videographer Bill Shewbridge, director of UMBC’s New Media Studio, the public history team, including successive groups of students, spoke with a widely diverse array of twenty-eight Sparrow’s Point workers about their experiences in the plant when it was operating and their lives in the associated mill town of Sparrows Point. The interviews focused heavily on the personal impact of plant closure and the on-going demolition of the industrial structures. The interviews also solicited steelworkers’ thoughts on how the largest and most productive steel plant in America failed and died.