Serving it Up in the Capital City: Restaurants, Labor, and Culture in Lansing, Michigan, 1960s to 1990s is the first study of its kind to blend historiographies of United States labor, immigration, migration, race, and gender in order to weave a story of socio-cultural and economic change in a mid-sized Rust Belt city during the decades in which the economy was shifting from a Manufacturing base to one of Service. This dissertation examines this shift in Lansing via an analysis of the restaurant industry, which has received shamefully inadequate attention in the Labor History literature. Lansing has a unique history consisting of its own trends and cultural shifts while sharing many regional identities as part of the Rust Belt, the Great Lakes Region, and the Midwest. Lansing is the capital of Michigan–a state where local pride is entrenched within the automotive industry and adjacent industrial manufacturing. General Motors never left Lansing and continued to be a major employer in mid-Michigan, providing middle-class wages for blue-collar work. The resulting tastes are steeped in blue-collar aesthetics that favor pizza, burgers, and beer over cosmopolitan and “exotic” tastes of large U.S. cities like New York or Los Angeles. The service industry in Lansing developed in relation to these tastes and expectations that have become indicative of Middle American tastes, preferences, social beliefs, economics, and work. Crucially, the service industry of Lansing has been intertwined with the tumult of both the national and regional economy and therefore, the dissertation dives into a multitude of these dynamics.Each of the five chapters in Serving it Up in the Capital City present a different theme showcasing how a historical analysis of restaurants and bars in particular a place can reveal local, regional, national, and global changes. Chapter One tells the story of Greek-immigrant Jim Vlahakis and how he became a successful entrepreneur in Lansing through the restaurant industry. Through the development of his restaurant business we see an example of how cultural, social, and religious institutions helped Vlahakis advance economically and blend into the predominantly white population of mid-Michigan. Chapter Two uses a trove of historic restaurant menus and travel guides to discuss my original ideas of Midwestern tastes and preferences. I demonstrate the ways in which hyperproduction in the food industry led to the possibility of defining one’s individuality via their diet and taste preferences. Chapter Three argues that bars and restaurants were vibrant socio-cultural centers. Of course, restaurant owners made choices of who was allowed within the restaurant, but the customers also played a role in fighting for their right to use these spaces. In fact, this type of gate-keeping could turn violent, as was the case when the local chapter of the Gay Liberation Movement staged actions in the early 1970s. This chapter explores these types of dynamics. Chapter Four describes “the other NRA” as a political interest group that fought to maintain the subminimum wage and limit worker protections. The chapter forces scholars to grapple with the ways in which the NRA and its subsidiaries have worked to maintain the subminimum wage and championed legislation that minimized and/or dissolved worker protections. Chapter Five analyzes industry responses to national legislation regarding drinking and driving, underage drinking, limiting exposure to second-hand smoke, and protections for workers with disabilities and acute health challenges like HIV/AIDS. Together, these stories use restaurants and bars to examine significant social, cultural, legal, political, and economic changes in the late twentieth century.
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