John W. Bennett Labor Collection

Labor historian John W. Bennett ’52 has researched the history of the labor movement since his days as an undergraduate at the UMass Amherst. A born collector, he began accumulating memorabilia associated with unions, drawn to their potential as a visual record of labor iconography and self-representation. In 2005, Dr. Bennett donated his collection to UMass Amherst, where it resides in our strong holdings in the history of organized labor, work, and industry. The collection includes buttons, lapel pins, convention badges, watch fobs, and other artifacts dating back to the 1880s.