“Anne looked at these images and saw a rigid self-conscious hierarchy. Division of labor at its most proscribed by race, class and gender. Each in his place made obvious by clothing, gaze, and gesture.”
By Meg Hardick
Anne Lewis has spent her career documenting the monumental lives of labor, racial equality, and environmental leaders in this country. Her works Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, Mabel Parker Hardison Smith, and Evelyn Williams are invaluable narratives of resistance, solidarity, and the commonly held belief among them that poor Black and brown women are the key to the liberation of all peoples. In A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas), the newest work by Lewis and Associate Producer Laura Varela, she ruminates on two major, yet poorly covered moments in Texas labor history: the Pecan Shellers Strike of 1937 led by young communist Emma Tenayuca, and the Jobs With Justice campaign that coalesced around anti-Black racism at Stephen F. Austin University.
