THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Vicky Starr
December 22, 1916 – November 26, 2009
“There’s some tremendous potential in people, in labor people, in working people and in union people… They are very democratic… There’s a tremendous militancy that’s below the surface and that will rise and come up.”
Union organizer, socialist. At 17, became a “colonizer” – an underground union organizer – at a meatpacking plant in Chicago. A leading activist in the United Packinghouse Workers of America, helped negotiate contracts for thousands of workers. Helped organize clerical workers at University of Chicago into Local 743 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 1970s and ’80s. Active member, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, 1970s. Subject of 1978 Academy Award-nominated documentary “Union Maids.” using the name Stella Nowicki.
More About Vicky:
- Victoria Starr Obituary (2009), Chicago, IL, Chicago Tribune, November 30, 2009
- “Vicky Starr of ‘Union Maids’: Working Class Hero,” The Rag Blog
- A Fighting “Union Maid,” Socialist Worker.org
- Staughton Lynd Remembers a Working Class Organizer, Vicky Starr.
- “Vicky Starr: Union Maid and Democratic Socialist,” Talking Union, 2010
- Vicky Starr, “Stella Nowicki,” Back of the Yards, 1973
- “Union Maids“ film, directed and produced by James Klein, Miles Mogulescu and Julia Reichert. Features the oral histories of 3 women labor activists involved in the workers’ movements in the early 1930s: Kate Hyndman, Stella Nowicki and Sylvia Woods. Nominated for an Oscar in 1978 for best feature documentary and winner in 1978 of the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics’ “Critics Award” for Best Short.
- Victoria Starr Papers, Chicago Public Library
- Cited in Barbara Love’s Book, Feminists Who Changed America, 1963 – 1975, page 440