Ruth Sergel: Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on its 100th anniversary, by 'chalking' names of the dead

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s OFF-SET questions is artist and filmmaker Ruth Sergel, founder of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, which is made up of over 240 partners participating in the March 25, 2011 centennial commemoration.

Sergel is an award-winning filmmaker whose works have aired on PBS and IFC and at numerous museums and film festivals. Her public art work includes "Voices of 9.11" - a people's video/oral history archive which recorded over 550 video testimonies in New York, PA and inside the Pentagon and was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the New York Historical Society.

One hundred years ago on Friday—on March 25,1911—a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City took the lives of 146 garment workers, many of whom were recent immigrants—mostly Jewish and Italian young women–between the ages of 16 to 23. Many of the workers jumped to their deaths from the 8^th, 9^th and 10^th floors because managers had locked the doors to stairwells and exits. Hundreds of thousands of people publicly mourned and protested following the tragedy and it led to improved factory safety rules.

Why does the fire mean so much to you personally?

I think because I am a born and bred New Yorker. I grew up with it.

Since 1994, “Chalk” has been an annual community commemoration of the infamous fire. How did you think it up?

I was thinking about it for such a long time—I had a lot of bad ideas at first.  But when the book "The Fire That Changed America" by David Von Drehle came out, he had a list of the names and ages and addresses of the victims, many of whom lived in the neighborhood that I lived in–and that’s when the idea first came to me. So I emailed about thirty friends and asked if they would pitch in on this crazy idea that I had.

And how does it work?

Volunteers email me that they want to participate, and then I send them names and addresses of the victims. They are responsible to go to the former homes on the anniversary of the fire, and on the sidewalk they write the name, the age, that they lived at this particular address and that they died on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.

It seems that a fair amount of information is known about the workers who died that day.

At that time, names were fairly fluid—the name that your family called you, the name that you arrived with-so it’s a work I progress. People are still refining the lists.

A lot of great-nieces survive. Many sisters worked at the factory. One sister may have survived and one did not. There are several family members who will be chalking their relatives. It’s wonderful for them to see all the other people who remember, to see that they are not alone in remembering the victims of the fire.

There is meaning in the fact that chalk is not a permanent medium, yes?

Absolutely, the chalk works the way communal memory works. There’s the outrage at what happened in the Triangle fire, and each year the chalk washes away. But the following year, we come back–and the year after that, and the year after that. We always return.

How many people are involved in “Chalk” this year?

So many people have wanted to participate this year. I am deeply honored to have so many people pitching in who are so passionate about remembering this event. There are only 146 names –so I had to turn people away this year.

Will you chalk on the 100^th anniversary?

Actually, I don’t get to chalk this year–I gave my name to someone who really wanted it.

The 100^th anniversary is coming at a time when a number of states—Wisconsin has received the most coverage—are trying to curtail the right to collective bargaining. In your view, what is the connection between the fire and what states are doing today to deal with looming budget deficits?

I think we look back at the fire and what’s amazing is what happened afterwards–the unity of purpose by very diverse communities to make sure it would never happen again. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the fire and later became the first woman appointed to the cabinet of a U.S. president as FDR’s Secretary of Labor-she said the New Deal was born in that fire.

We roll back those protections at risk of making another tragedy like this inevitable.  

FOR MORE ON THE STORY:

CNN will present the HBO documentary Triangle: Remembering the Fire Saturday, March 26 at 11:00 p.m. (ET)/8:00 p.m. (PT).

CLICK HERE to read the CNN.com interview with David Von Drehle, author of "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America."

CLICK HERE to read historian Steve Fraser's essay.

The 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. Fire this Friday should throw into sharp relief recent efforts by lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states in the industrial heartland to curtail collective-bargaining rights for state employees.