About the Scholarship

This scholarship fund is established to recognize the importance of labor education, to encourage worker advocacy and activism in the labor movement and to provide assistance to students in financing their labor education at the Wayne State Labor School and/or Labor School graduates who go on to enroll in the Labor Studies Bachelor of Arts program.

To make a donation to the Ethel Schwartz Memorial Scholarship for Labor Education Fund, please contact our Office of Gift Processing at 313-577-2263 or fundoffice@lists.wayne.edu or use our secure online giving page.

Eligibility and Terms

1. Students enrolled in either the Labor Studies Center's Labor School (non-credit certificate program) or graduates of the Labor School who go on to enroll in the Labor Studies BA (credit) program will be eligible for awards.
2. A minimum GPA is not required.
3. Applicants need not demonstrate financial need.
4. Recipients may use awards for tuition and other educational expenses.
5. Recipients may retain this award provided they continue to meet all criteria in this agreement, but renewal of this award is not automatic. Recipients must reapply and be reevaluated in order to receive a renewal of this award.

Link to Application

About Ethel Schwartz

As a teenager, Ethel Schwartz was quickly fired from her job at a small grocery store on Detroit's east side when her boss learned she was organizing discussions with fellow workers about improving their working conditions. It was her introduction into worker-management issues and the birth of a labor activist.

Family members and friends recalled Mrs. Schwartz's lifelong dedication to improving the quality of life for workers and battling unfair labor practices. Mrs. Schwartz, who was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Gray Panthers banquet on Sunday, May 6, 2012, in Madison Heights, died Tuesday, May 8, 2012, of heart failure at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital. The Novi resident was 94.

A longtime friend, Dave Elsila, who accepted the award on Mrs. Schwartz's behalf because she could not attend because of her health, remembered her as a perpetual voice for fairness and equality. "Ethel was on the front lines of any cause that was just, from civil rights to labor demonstrations and women's issues," he said. "Besides having a strong social conscience, she was of the belief that if you saw something wrong, you had to take action and do something about it."

In June 1963, Mrs. Schwartz was among the crowd who joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and labor leaders in a march of 100,000 down Woodward Avenue to Cobo Hall. Two months later, she sat in the vast crowd on the Mall in Washington, D.C., when King gave his famed "I Have a Dream" speech. Also that summer, she was among the ranks of an NAACP-led demonstration in Redford Township to protest housing discrimination.

"My mother was a very positive person who was always joining some worthy cause for a better society," said her daughter Judy Vocino. "She had a passion to improve the lives of others, and there was nothing phony about her."

Born Ethel Baskin on Sept. 11, 1917, in Toledo, she came with her parents to Detroit when she was 2 years old. After graduating from Northern High School, she was hired into a temporary clerical position at UAW Local 157. She eventually became a full-time secretary at $25 a week and remained there for 50 years. She retired in 1982.

Her husband of 64 years, Perry Schwartz, the owner of a dry goods business in Southfield, died in 2004. Besides her daughter, survivors include another daughter, Joan Wheaton, and two grandchildren. Her body was donated to Wayne State University's School of Medicine.