New York Journeymen Tailors

One of the earliest extant banners from the garment industry, this banner represents the Journeymen Tailors Protective and Benevolent Union, “probably the oldest continuing local in the Amalgamated… first organized as a separate local in 1806,” according to a 1940 union history.

The very tattered banner is of blue silk with gold lettering and a realistic gold eagle holding a shield with red and white stripes and a blue field with stars, with laurel both at the bottom of the shield and in the eagle’s beak.

The shield and the eagle evoke strong themes of patriotism and of protection, referring to the union’s efforts to insure members against illness, accident and death, and the immigrants’ assertion of their new identity as proud American citizens.

From the Labor Arts exhibit “We Love a Parade: Union Banners Then and Now”