Obligations to the Local: Solidarity as Method in LaToya Ruby Frazier’s The Last Cruze

In November 2019, Pamela Brown, Marilyn Moore, and Frances Turnage, three longtime members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 1112 Women’s Committee, held a public discussion with photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982) about their experiences in the labor movement. The conversation formed part of the public programming surrounding Frazier’s documentary project The Last Cruze, then installed at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. At one point, Frazier described an interaction she had earlier that year while sitting in Turnage’s living room. Turnage had pulled out a binder of newspaper clippings, one of which included a photograph of her alongside two of her fellow Local 1112 members in Columbus, Ohio, holding union signs in their hands; the trio of women stood amid a crowd of people protesting a piece of 2011 state legislation that would strip public employees of their collectivebargaining rights. Frazier produced a photograph of the clipping as if it were an icon, balanced upright on Turnage’s dining-room table, starkly illuminated against a near-black background (fig. 1). Such reverent treatment of this humble material signals Frazier’s recognition of the scrapbook as a site where personal stories are crafted and relayed to others through storytelling. The fact that the book contains scraps from Turnage’s union history is also significant. By sharing this object with Frazier and, by extension, allowing her to share it with her viewers, Turnage initiates Frazier into a local history long sustained by relations of obligation and struggle.