Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1893.  That was the day that Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael Schwab, who were imprisoned for their alleged role in the Haymarket bombing of 1886.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1893.  That was the day that Haymarket Martyrs Monument was dedicated at what is now Forest Home Cemetery, just west of Chicago.  The Haymarket Martyrs were eight men convicted of throwing a bomb at a workers rally in Chicago during the 1886 fight for the eight-hour day.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1971.  At 12:51 am Battalion 12 Chief Leo Najarian of Los Angeles heard that there had been a tunnel explosion. That February a 6.5 earthquake had killed 65 people in the area.  Now it seemed tragedy had struck again.  Just the night before Chief Najarian had been called out to the same address. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1947.  That was the day that many labor historians mark as the beginning of a long decline of the US labor movement.  The United States Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act.  The bill was named after Republican Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio.   

On this day in Labor History the year was 1969.  That was the day that the Cuyahoga River, which winds its way through Cleveland, Ohio caught on fire. Cleveland was once the sixth largest city in the nation. During the early twentieth century the city had a booming steel industry. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1877.  That was the day that ten Irish miners were hung in Pennsylvania. They were part of a group of twenty who had been sentenced to death for allegedly being part of the Molly Maguires, a group of alleged radical Irish miners. Miners were on strike in the Schuylkill County anthracite coal region.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1943. That was the day that would go down in the history books as the 1943 Detroit Race Riot. The violence started on Belle Isle, a large island park in the Detroit River. Both white and black Detroiters were visiting the park on that hot sunny summer Sunday afternoon.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1865.  That was the day that 2,000 Union soldiers marched into Galveston, Texas.  They carried with them the news that those enslaved were now free.  The Confederate General, Robert E. Lee had actually surrendered more than two months earlier.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1918. That was the day that the Saint Paul Federation of Women Teachers Local 28 received their charter from the American Federation of Teachers. The next February, the Minnesota Women’s Union was joined by the Saint Paul Federation of Men Teachers Local 42.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1972. That was the day that nine fire fighters gave their lives is Boston, Massachusetts. The tragedy occurred at the historic Hotel Vendome. Built 100 years earlier, the hotel stood in Boston’s Back Bay, one of the most historic neighborhoods in the city.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1836. That was the day that the London Working Men’s Association was founded.  Skilled craftsman started the organization. William Lovett a Cabinet Maker and a publisher by the name of Henry Hetherington were two of the original founders.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1908. That was the day that the Executive Board of the American Federation of Labor established its Metal Trades Department.  The goal was to coordinate the organizing and legislative efforts of those in the many metal trades. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1921. During that summer the battle waged over the efforts to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coal mines. The miners had been evicted from their company homes, and had established tent colonies. One was located at Lick Creek.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1914.  That was the day that the Miner’s Union Day parade was scheduled in Butte, Montana.  In spite of the festivities trouble was brewing down in the copper mines. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1904.  That was the day that 18,000 workers in the Chicago’s stockyards went out on strike.  Work in the stockyards was often brutal and dangerous. Thousands of workers toiled in the yards, many of them immigrants from Eastern Europe.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1969. That was the day that labor leader John L. Lewis died. Born to a Welsh-American Coal mining family in Iowa, Lewis became the leading champion of industrial unionism in the 1930s.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1946.  That was the day that the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that would have massive implication for American workers. The case was known as Anderson V. Mount Clemens Pottery.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1954.  That was the day that marked the public downfall of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Senator McCarthy had become the public face of anti-Communist hysteria during the Cold War.  He used his position as Senator to make wild accusations against alleged communists in the US Government.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1904. That was the day that John Carley, a union miner, was shot down in Dunnville, Colorado.  He was part of a strike in the Cripple Creek gold mining region.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1929. That was the day that Police Chief Orville Aderholt was shot and killed, at a camp of striking textile workers in Gastonia, North Carolina.  The textile mills had fallen on hard times in the 1920s.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1894.  That was the day that the Colorado state militia troops came to Cripple Creek to intervene in a mining strike. But unlike every other time in US mining history that a state militia was called out, the state troops did not have their guns pointed at the miners.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1947. That was the day that Secretary of State George Marshall delivered a speech at Harvard University.  In his speech Marshall made a call for the United States to send assistance to European countries devastated by World War II.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1904. That was the day when 900 Wisconsin paper makers walked off the job from Appleton to Menasha, from Combined Locks to Neenah.  They were members of the International Brotherhood of Paper Makers.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1900. That was the day that International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union was formed in New York City by seven local unions. While men held nearly all of the leadership roles in the early days of the union, most of the workers were Jewish women.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1916.  That was the day that John Greeni, an Italian immigrant miner, walked out the St. James Mine in Aurora, Minnesota.  The mine was part of the Mesabi Iron Range, the richest deposit of iron-ore in the United States. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1981.  That was the day that the “Cannery Murders” took place in Seattle, Washington.  Two union organizers, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes were gunned down at their labor hall.  They were working to reform the canning industry for Local 37 of the International Longshoreman’s and Warehousemen’s Union.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1987. That was the day that Rose Will Monroe, one of the women who came to be known as Rosie the Riveter, died in Clarksville, Indiana.  She was 77 years old.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1937.  That was the day that came to be known as the Republic Steel Massacre or the Memorial Day Massacre, in Chicago, Illinois. Workers had gathered to rally for a union at the Republic Steel Plant.  The crowd included men, women and children and began with a festive holiday atmosphere

Today in Labor History, May 29 Today in Labor History, May 29, the year was 1941.  That was the day that the animators at Walt Disney went out on strike.  Attempts to organize a union for cartoonists had begun a decade earlier, resulting in the formation of the Screen Cartoonists Guild in 1938. 

Today in Labor History, May 28, the year was 1882.  That was the day that John Muir, a Scottish American conservationist founded the Sierra Club in San Francisco California.  The Sierra Club’s purpose is to "explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth."  

Can you imagine if the earth beneath your hometown caught fire and kept on burning for more than half a century?  That is what happened in Centralia, Pennsylvania. Today in Labor History, May 27, the year was 1962.  Centralia was a mining town with 2,700 residents, built above a rich vein of anthracite coal.

Today in Labor History, May 26, the year was 1824.  That day was the first time when women workers in the United States left their jobs and walked out on strike.  It happened at the Slater Mill, part of New England’s rapidly growing textile industry. 

Today in Labor History, May 25, the year was 1986.  That was the day that more than five million people participated in “Hands Across America.” The event was organized to raise money to combat the problems of homelessness and hunger in the United States. 

Today in Labor History, May 24, the year was 1949.  That was the day a shot gun blast broke through a closed window and struck Victor Reuther, as he sat reading a newspaper in his living room. 

Today in Labor History, May 23, the year was 2003.  That was the day that the US Senate approved more than 300 billion dollars in tax cuts over the next decade.  The cuts barely passed.  Vice President Dick Cheney cast the deciding vote, 51-50.  

Today in Labor History, May 22, the year was 1969.  That was the day that began the first strike of the Chicago Teachers Union.  The strike lasted three days.  It won teachers a $100 per month pay raise. 

Today in Labor History, May 21, the year was 1946.  That was the day that Democratic President Harry Truman ordered government seizure of the nation’s bituminous coal mines.  800,000 United Mine Workers of America, led by John L. Lewis, had gone out on strike.  

Today in Labor History, May 20, the year was 1937.  That was the day that workers at the Jones and Laughlin plant in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania voted in the first ever union election in the United States’ steel industry under the National Labor Relations Board.  

Today in Labor History, May 19, the year was 1989.  That was the day that black author and Marxist theorist CLR James passed away.  James was born in Trinidad, at the time a Caribbean colony that was part of the British empire.    

Today in Labor History, May 18, the year was 1972.  That was the day that Maggie Kuhn stood before a group of reporters to tell them about her organization, the Gray Panthers.  The idea for the group had started two years earlier.  

Today in Labor History, May 17, the year was 1954.  That was the day the Supreme Court handed down their decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.  In the unanimous decision the court declared that racial segregation in public education was illegal.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1979.  That was the day we lost one of the giants of the US Labor Movement, A Philip Randolph.  A Philip Randolph spent his life working for black workers and the cause of labor.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1917.  That was the day of the founding that the Library Employees Union of Greater New York.  This was the first public library workers’ union in the United States.  From its beginning, one of the key efforts of the union was to fight for “equal rights of women and men in the library field.”  

Do you ever enjoy a cold beer after a long day’s work? Well if you were worker in the United States from 1920 to 1933, you would have to break the law to down a brew. On this day in Labor History the year was 1932.  That was the day that massive demonstrations for the re-legalization of beer were held in New York City and Detroit. Prohibition had lasted for more than a decade. 

On this day in Labor History the year was the 1968. That was the day at the workers across Paris joined students in a city-wide general strike.  College students had begun an occupation at the famed Sorbonne University earlier that May. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1856 workers of Melbourne, Australia marched to celebrate a victory in the campaign to win the eight-hour day. At the time it was common to work as long as twelve or fourteen hour days. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1894.  That was the first day of the Pullman Strike.  The strike started in the company of town of Pullman, on the south side of Chicago, where workers made luxury sleeping cars for passenger trains.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1980.  That was the day that as many as ninety thousand people rallied for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1972.  That was the day that employees at the Farah Manufacturing Company went out on strike.  The company was one of the top producers of men and boy’s pants in the country, and the second largest employer in El Paso.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1863. That was the day that Division One of the Brotherhood of the Footboards was founded in Detroit, Michigan.  By the next year they had changed their name to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.