Title: Muriel Tuteur Collection Size: 12 linear feet/12 Storage Boxes |
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Scope & Contents
Muriel Friedman “Manny” Tuteur (b. 1922) spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of women and children, minorities and workers. Her work for a wide range of social improvements, from child care to a higher minimum wage, won her an equally wide range of honors and recognition over the years, including the Coalition of Labor Union Women’s Florence Criley Award in 1982, the National Council of Jewish Women’s Hannah G. Solomon Award in 1988, and induction into the Chicago Women's Hall of Fame in 1989. Muriel Tuteur has built a career around dedication to child welfare, social justice, and the labor movement.
Muriel Tuteur’s involvement in the labor movement dates back to the 1940s when, as a University of Chicago student, she decided to work in the steel mills as part of the war effort (she received her B.A. in Sociology in 1943). From 1943-44, she worked as a milling machine operator at the U.S. Steel, South Works plant in Chicago. At that time, she met and married Charles Tuteur—a German Jew who had escaped to the U.S. a day before Hitler’s Kristallnacht—and the couple moved to Vancouver, Washington in 1944. While in Vancouver, she worked as a shiplifter in the Kaiser Shipyards, from 1944-45. Both Muriel and Charles Tuteur enlisted in the Armed Forces in 1944—Muriel was accepted into the Women's Army Corps and received training at the Parachute Training School at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Returning to Chicago after the war, Tuteur worked as a caseworker for the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare, and as a teacher for several Jewish Community Center preschools. Her interest in developing quality day care programs for working families led her to apply for a job with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). In 1969, the ACTWU hired her to start the first union-sponsored day care center in the country: the Amalgamated Day Care and Health Center operated from 1969-1983, with Muriel Tuteur serving as Director throughout that entire period.
In addition to leadership in the field of child care and early childhood development, Muriel Tuteur's life reveals a commitment to women in the labor movement. An active member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), both the national organization and the CLUW Chicago Chapter, Tuteur has served as co-chair of CLUW’s National Child Care Task Force, and as a member of CLUW's National Executive Board. In 1983, she was appointed Assistant Director of Education and Political Action for the Chicago and Central States Joint Board of the ACTWU, serving in that capacity for over a decade. As the assistant director, she has worked to protect the rights of textile workers. Muriel Tuteur has also served as an advisor to a variety of committees, national and local, related to women's, children's, and family issues, including the National Implementation Task Force of the White House Conference on Families, the Illinois Women's Agenda, and Women for Economic Justice.
The Muriel Tuteur Collection at the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs is a collection of her speeches and personal subject files, documenting her interests and involvement in union-sponsored childcare, women's issues, politics, the labor movement, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, union organizing, and early childhood education.
Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
Amalgamated Day Care and Health Center
Child care—United States
Civil Rights
Coalition of Labor Union Women
Consumer Protection
Democratic Party
Discrimination in Employment
Equal Pay for Equal Work
Equal Rights Amendment
Feminism
Free Trade
Illinois Women’s Agenda
NAFTA
Political activism—Illinois—Chicago
Political parties—Illinois
Politics—Illinois
Senior Citizens
Sex Discrimination against Women
Sweatshops
Trade-unions and child care
Trade-unions and education
Trade-unions—Textile Workers
Trade-unions—Organizing
Women in politics—Illinois
Women in politics—United States
Women in the labor movement—Illinois
Women in the labor movement—United States
Women in trade-unions—United States
Women labor leaders—Illinois
Women—Employment—United States
Women’s Rights—Illinois
Women’s Rights—Societies, etc.
Women’s Rights—United States
Working Class—Education—United States
Working Class Women—United States
Youth—Employment
A few photographs and memorabilia have been removed from the papers and placed in the Archives Audiovisual Collection.
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