Louis Jones - Activist Archivist, Detroit
The Kitchen Sisters Present
The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
Louis Jones is a keeper— working as a Field Archivist at the Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, he cares for the largest labor archive in North America. Home to numerous union and labor collections from around the country, the Reuther Library also actively collects material documenting Detroit’s civil rights movement, women’s struggles in the workplace, the LGBTQ Archive of Detroit and more.
Born in New York City, the grandson of a Pullman porter, Jones takes us through the archives with stories of the United Auto Workers, Cesar Chavez, Utah Phillips, A. Philip Randolph, the Civil Rights Movement, the 1967 Detroit uprising, and how archivists are examining and re-imagining their roles in the midst of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Special thanks to the Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; Nancy Beaumont and the Society of American Archivists (SAA); Paulina Hartono; The National Endowment for the Humanities; and supporters of The Kitchen Sisters Productions.
Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell.
The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | RadioTopia. Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters present. |
| 0:04.0 | We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson, and Nikki Silva. |
| 0:10.9 | Have you ever wondered why is the Internet like that? That's the question that folks at NeverPost try to answer in each episode. |
| 0:20.1 | NeverPost is a multi-award winning podcast for and about |
| 0:23.7 | the internet. New Luddism, Etsy Witches, AI as the dominant aesthetic of new American fascism. |
| 0:31.6 | NeverPost talks to journalists, anthropologists, lawyers, game designers, comedians, linguists, |
| 0:37.1 | and more about our current tech |
| 0:39.1 | and media moment. Episodes every week at nevropos.st, and wherever you find your podcasts. |
| 0:50.1 | Today, the Kitchen Sisters present Lewis Jones, activist, archivist, Detroit. |
| 0:59.8 | My name is Louis Jones. I'm an archivist at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. |
| 1:05.4 | We have the Walter Luther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. That's what we're known for at Union Records. I'm the field archivist there, and so it's essentially convinced people to give us their stuff, you know. |
| 1:15.6 | So that's what I do. |
| 1:16.6 | I go out and do various leads, or if I just have an idea in my head, so long as it fits within our collecting scope. |
| 1:23.6 | We have the American Federation of Teachers, the Airline Pilots Association, the American |
| 1:28.6 | Farisian State County Municipal Employees, United Auto Workers. |
| 1:32.6 | Have you ever asked yourselves what the UAW is? |
| 1:35.5 | Auto workers, aircraft workers, metal workers, 1,500,000 members. |
| 1:39.8 | UAW is a democratic union, men and women, Negro and largest in America, if not in the entire world. |
| 1:46.2 | We're in Detroit, right? |
| 1:48.0 | In 1958, the founding director of the archives, Phil Mason, realizes this gap in the collection |
| 1:54.5 | connected with organized labor. |
| 1:56.8 | He started nurturing relationships with the folks at the UAW, with Walter Ruther and the International Executive Board, convinced them that they needed to have an archive and that archive needed to be at Wayne State, and so they donated their collection. |
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