Please join the Iowa Women’s Archives for a uniquely Iowan perspective celebrating the centennial of the 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile strike.

The March 6 event, run as part of Women’s History Month, will premiere the play, “Bread, Roses and Buttons: Pearl McGill and the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike,” written by Janet Schlapkohl, an MFA candidate in the University of Iowa Theater Arts Department.

One hundred years ago this month, seventeen-year-old Iowa labor activist Pearl McGill played a leading role in the work stoppage of 25,000 New England textile workers, famously known as the “Bread and Roses” strike. But the seeds of her activism were sown in Iowa’s pearl button industry in Muscatine where McGill advocated for the labor rights of 2,500 men, women, and children who faced poor wages and working conditions in the city’s numerous button factories.

This event will be held from noon to 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 6 in the 2nd-floor conference room (2032) of the UI Main Library (Madison and Burlington street).

The event is free and open to the public. For further information please contact janet-weaver@uiowa.edu

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the Iowa Women’s Archives by calling (319) 335-5068.