Community Voices: Postville Project Oral Histories
Keywords
Rekow, Leigh--Interviews; Postville Immigration Raid, Postville, Iowa, 2008;
Genre
Oral History
Interview Description
Leigh Rekow has spent his whole life in the Postville area, attending Postville High School and making a career as a farmer between Postville and Luana. After his children took over the farm, Leigh spent time in the Peace Corps and traveling overseas using his agricultural experiences to help communities in Africa and Russia. Leigh has had a long political career. He spent one term as a state representative, fourteen years as a city council member, and at the time of the interview was serving as Mayor of Postville. In the interview, Leigh discusses his experiences with the above mentioned positions as well as the aftermath of the May12th, 2008 ICE raid, how the media has portrayed Postville, and his hopes for the future and the new owners of the processing plant Agristar.
Interview Number
13
Interview Date
11-19-2014
Interview Duration
23.04 minutes
File Format
audio/mp3
Disciplines
Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | United States History
Project Title
Community Voices: The Postville Oral History Project
Project Description
The Community Voices: Postville Oral History Project sought to capture the remembered past of those who experienced the “Postville story,” that is, the social context leading up to, including, and following the ICE immigration raid that occurred on May 12th, 2008. The Interviews available here showcase the unique memories of 16 interviewees living and working in or near Postville. The interviews will leave listeners with a sense of how a small town in rural Iowa has dealt with and continues to deal with vast demographic change and the aftermath of an ICE raid that threw Postville into the national conversation on immigration reform.
Publisher
Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
Copyright
©2014 The Postville Project
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Language
en
Recommended Citation
Rekow, Leigh, "Community Voices: The Postville Oral History Project Recording with Leigh Rekow" (2014). Community Voices: Postville Project Oral Histories. 4.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_oralhistory/4
Project Title
Community Voices: The Postville Oral History Project
Project Description
The Community Voices: Postville Oral History Project sought to capture the remembered past of those who experienced the “Postville story,” that is, the social context leading up to, including, and following the ICE immigration raid that occurred on May 12th, 2008. The Interviews available here showcase the unique memories of 16 interviewees living and working in or near Postville. The interviews will leave listeners with a sense of how a small town in rural Iowa has dealt with and continues to deal with vast demographic change and the aftermath of an ICE raid that threw Postville into the national conversation on immigration reform.
Comments
Click image to play interview:
Interview Conducted by RaeAnn Swanson-Evans
Interview Transcribed by RaeAnn Swanson-Evans