Labor History
The F.B.I. Files of Richard T. Gosser
In the history of labor in Toledo, no figure stands taller than Richard T. Gosser. Gosser's life both spanned and reflected the major trends of labor in the Twentieth Century. Born at the dawn of the century, on Dec. 13, 1900, Gosser ran with a tough crowd in his youth. Toledo in the early 1920s was a wide-open city with open defiance of Prohibition, slot machines blatantly displayed in drug stores, and a red light district that operated under the watchful but winking eye of the local police. [Exhibit link]
Toledo Women in World War II
The Great Depression of the 1930s had thrown America into flux. The American family did not escape unscathed as jobs became scarce. With the continual drop in family incomes, which in turn led to a drop in the birth and marriage rates, the battle over the place of woman in the household and her place in the work force raged. [Exhibit link]