Labor leader's granddaughter endows union collection


Rachel Philipson
Ryna Segal in the Kheel Center.

As a child, Ryna Segal was unfazed that her grandfather, the legendary union leader David Dubinsky, associated with the most famous politicians, artists and intellectuals of his day, from John F. Kennedy to Puerto Rican poet and statesman Luis Muñoz Marín.

“My grandfather was just my grandfather,” Segal said. “We met a lot of incredible people, but all of this seemed so normal to me.”

As she grew older, she gained a broader understanding of Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union for more than 30 years, and what made his work so important.

“He had tentacles far beyond what I ever realized,” said Segal, who visited Cornell in October after arranging a $100,000 endowment from her mother’s estate to support the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union collection at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, part of Cornell University Library.

The bequest from Segal’s mother, Jean Dubinsky Appleton, who died at age 95 in 2015, will help pay for fellowships for schoolteachers, travel expenses for students using the collection for research and dissertations, funds to conduct oral histories with former union officials, and digitization and preservation of collections materials.

The endowment also will support translations of collection materials in Yiddish, spoken by many union workers in the needle trades, as well as by Dubinsky, who emigrated to the United States from Russia.

On her visit, Segal met with ILR School Dean Kevin Hallock and toured the Kheel Center archives with its director, Cheryl Beredo, and archivist, Patrizia Sione.

“Labor history played an incredibly important role in raising generations of people into the middle class,” Segal said. “Without the reforms that labor brought, you might still have sweatshop conditions. People are still exploited all over the world. If someone is interested in bettering conditions for the exploited, these documents have a great relevance.”

- Melanie Lefkowitz