Today In Labor History—June 30

June 30, 1839 – Cinque led a successful slave revolt on the ship Amistad.

June 30, 1885 – The Chicago Streetcar Strike began on this day and continued through July 7.

June 30, 1912 – A Modern School, modeled after the ones started by Francisco Ferer in Spain, was created by the Grupo Luz in Mexico City.

June 30 1918 – Eugene Debs was arrested in Cleveland for interfering with army and navy recruiting.

June 30, 1922 – One million railway shop men struck.

(All from the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—June 25

June 25, 1825 – U.S. troops captured Bob Forbes, leader of the Maroons (blacks resisting slavery) in Virginia. (From the Daily Bleed)

A dramatization (1905) of Sitting Bull stabbing Custer (library of Congress)

 June 25, 1876 – Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes defeated Custer and the U.S. Army at Little Big Horn, Montana. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1878 – Despite mass protests, Ezra Heywood was sentenced to two years hard labor for advocating free love and sexual emancipation as part of women's rights. Heywood was an anarchist, feminist and abolitionist who was hounded and harassed by the moralist vigilante Anthony Comstock. His wife, Angela Tilton, was considered by many to be even more radical than he was. (From the Daily Bleed)

Haymarket Memorial

June 25, 1893 - The Haymarket Martyrs Monument was dedicated at Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago, to honor the 8 anarchists who were framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. More than 8,000 people attended. At the base of the monument are Haymarket martyr August Spies’ last words: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.” (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

Striking Pullman workers confront National Guard troops in Chicago, 1894

June 25, 1894 – Eugene Debs and his American Railway Union called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars during the now-famous Pullman Strike. Within days, 50,000 rail workers were participating, halting all railroad traffic out of Chicago. (From the Daily Bleed)

Robots in rebellion in 1922 performance of R.U.R.

June 25, 1921 -- Czech author Karel Capek's introduces the term robot in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in which robots, fed up with lousy work and pay, organize and rebel. The term comes from the Czech word “robota,” which referred to days in which peasants were forced to leave their own fields to work for free on the lands of the nobility. Even after feudalism had ended, the term was used to describe labor that was coerced, boring or uninteresting. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1938 - The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) act was passed, which banned child labor, set the 40-hour work week and set a national minimum wage. (From Workday Minnesota and Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1941 - A. Philip Randolph (president Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) called off the Negro march on Washington that had been planned for July 1 when President Roosevelt agreed to issue Executive Order 8802 banning racial discrimination in defense industries and government employment (creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee). (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

June 25, 1943—Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act allowing the government to take over critical industries affected by strikes, overriding President Roosevelt's veto. It also prevented unions from contributing to political campaigns. (From Shmoop Labor History)

June 25, 1968 – The 50,000 strong Poor People's Campaign March from Georgia to Washington D.C., concluded.

June 25, 1975 – Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal.

Today in Labor History—June 19

Juneteenth Celebration, Richmond Virginia, 1905

June 19, 1865 – Slaves were declared free in Texas, a date now celebrated each year as the holiday "Juneteenth." (From the Daily Bleed)

Juneteenth Celebration, Austin, Texas, 1900

 June 19, 1886 – The Kangaroo trial of eight anarchists for the Haymarket bombing began in Chicago on this date. (From the Daily Bleed)

The  Haymarket Martyrs

 June 19, 1888 – U.S. marines attacked Seoul, Korea, (to protect U.S. interests?)  (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1898 --Guam was bombarded by the U.S.S. Charleston (To steal Spanish interests?) (From the Daily Bleed)

IWW leaders Patrick Quinlan, Carlo Tresca, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Adolph Lessig, Big Bill Haywood, 1913

 June 19, 1902 –Silk workers struck in Paterson, New Jersey. The event escalated into a riot. Silk workers had struck several times in the 19^th century and again, in 1913, led by the IWW. (From the Daily Bleed)

Magonistas after capturing Mexicali

 June 19, 1911 – Federales and Maderistas retook Mexicali from the Magonista anarchist rebels, led by Ricardo Flores Magon. (From the Daily Bleed)

A Sandinista flag capture by U.S. marines

 June 19, 1930 – U.S. and Nicaraguan troops battled Sandinista forces. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1937 – The Women's Day Massacre: During the Great Ohio Steel Strike of 1937, there were numerous street battles between workers and police, including the Youngstown Riots & Poland Avenue Riot on June 21st. On June 19^th, there were smaller battles that some believe were initiated by the cops to test the likely extent of union resistance in a real fight.  When the cops in Youngstown couldn't find any union leaders to beat up, they went after women picketers who were sitting in chairs to support the strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1938 – Canada’s Bloody Sunday: The RCMP and Vancouver police attacked strikers with tear gas and clubs and battle unemployed workers at a Vancouver post office. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1953 – The Black community of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, began a bus boycott (2 ½ years before the more famous Montgomery, Alabama protest. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1953 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted in Sing Sing for their alleged sale of atomic secrets to the Russians. In a little known related story, the Rosenberg’s orphaned children were adopted by the poet and lyricist Abel Meeropol, who wrote the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit, later made famous by Billie Holliday. (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)

June 19, 1953 – The ILWU began a four day strike to protest the Smith Act convictions of Jack Hall and six others for suspicion of being communists (See Today in Labor History—June 16). (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1968 – Over 50,000 demonstrators participated in the Poor People's Campaign Solidarity Day March in Washington, D.C. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1981 – Soldiers killed 200 Mayas in Coy, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1985 – Gunmen opened fire on an outdoor restaurant in San Salvador’s upscale Zona Rosa, killing 13, including four U.S. Marines and two U.S. businessmen. A broadcast by Radio Venceremos, the FMLN’s pirate radio station, said:  "If U.S. Army members and CIA agents died in San Salvador, it was because they came to attack our people. No one had summoned them; they died as a result of the interventionist policy carried out by President Reagan, whose intervention grows day by day. Reagan will have to assume full responsibility for his deeds." (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1988 – Haiti’s civilian government was overthrown by a U.S.-backed military coup. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 19, 1996 – Large parts of the South Korea auto industry were shut down by workers at Kia, the country's second largest auto company, in a wage dispute. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—June 2

Gordon Riots Depicted by Charles Green

June 2, 1780 – The Gordon Riots began on this date in England and lasted through June 9. The riots began as a pogrom against Catholics. However, it grew into a mass worker insurrection that included ex-slaves, impressed sailors and debtors, English, Irish, Italians, Germans and Jews. The insurrectionists liberated two thousand prisoners and destroyed every major prison in London. Rioters also destroyed the homes members of the ruling elite, as well as toll houses and the Bank of England. The rich fled the city in terror. (From the Daily Bleed)

 

Harriet Tubman, c1885

June 2, 1863 – Backed by three gun boats, Harriet Tubman and her forces freed 750 slaves and set fire to the plantations from which they were liberated. (From the Daily Bleed)

 

Cananea

June 2, 1906 –U.S. rangers arrived at Cananea, Sonora, killing 22 striking Mexican miners. (From the Daily Bleed)

 

Bisbee Deportees Rounded Up in Ballpark

June 2, 1916 – The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) Mesabi Iron Range strike began in Minnesota. The Western Federation of Miners (WFM), which organized the 1907 Mesabi Range Strike, was uninterested in organizing miners in 1916, leaving a vacuum that the much more radical IWW gladly filled. The Wobblies sent many of their top organizers to help and succeeded in recruiting many of the people who served as strikebreakers in 1907 to join the current strike. Carlos Tresca, an IWW leader, was arrested for murder in conjunction with the strike, but was released without trial. Tresca went on to oppose Mussolini and the fascists, as well as the Stalinists in the USSR. He was assassinated in 1943. The Mesabi Strike was suppressed violently by police and vigilantes, with numerous strikers being jailed. The struggle was a precursor to the infamous labor deportations, in Bisbee, Arizona in July, 1917, in which 1,300 Wobblies, their supporters, and even innocent bystanders, were rounded up, forced into cattle cars, and dumped in the desert after 16 hours without food or water. (From the Daily Bleed, Minnesota Historical Society and Wikipedia)

 

Palmer Disciplining Labor

June 2, 1919 – Anarchists carried out a series of coordinated bombings across the Eastern United States, damaging the homes of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who had launched the first Red Hunt against unionists, commies and anarchists, as well as then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Rooselvel. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 2, 1921 – The IWW hall in Tampico was raided. In response the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) called a general strike, winning the right to have their hall. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 2, 1936 – Anastasio Somoza took over Nicaragua as dictator. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 2, 1952 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for President Truman to have the Army seize the nation’s steel mills to prevent a strike. 600,000 CIO steelworkers immediately began a 53-day strike. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

June 2, 1962 – 7,000 Russian workers marched in Novocherkassk to protest wage cuts and price increases. The military killed at least 24. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 2, 1977 – Native American activist Leonard Peltier was sentenced in Fargo, North Dakota, to two consecutive life terms for the killing of two FBI agents, despite the fact that there was no evidence linking him to the deaths. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 2, 1989 – 10,000 soldiers were blocked from entering Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, by 100,000 citizens protecting pro-democracy students. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 30

May 30, 1741 – 13 black men were burned at the stake, and 17 black men, two white men, and two white women were hanged, for their roles in a New York City slave revolt in. (From the Daily Bleed)

Mikhail Bakunin

 May 30, 1814 –Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin was born, Russia. (From the Daily Bleed)

Maxim Gorkey, 1906 (Library of Congress)

May 30, 1901 – Maxim Gorky, imprisoned for printing revolutionary literature, was released after Leo Tolstoy interceded on his behalf. Gorky later served a similar role, interceding on behalf of writers imprisoned by Stalin. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 30, 1912 – U.S. Marines invaded Nicaragua. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 30, 1937 - “Memorial Day massacre:” Police attacked striking steelworkers, shooting many in the back, killing 10 and wounding 100, at the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 30, 1968 – May Days continued in France, which was now in the midst of a giant general strike. Trains stopped running. Airports were shut down. Millions of workers barricaded themselves in their factories. Even soccer players occupied their stadiums. Politicians warned that they were on the verge of civil war or revolution. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 25

Anti-Slavery Medallion Produced by Josiah Wedgewood as a Jasper-Ware Cameo at his Pottery Factory

May 25, 1807 –The U.S. slave trade was abolished. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 25, 1871 – The “Bloody Week” assault on the Paris Commune continued. The Left Bank by this point was now in the hands of the reactionaries of Versailles, who were summarily executing the Communards with machine-guns. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 25, 1901 – The Federación Obrera Argentine (FOA) held its founding congress and was attended by workers, socialists and anarchists. (From the Daily Bleed)

Zapatistas in the Battle of Cuautla (1911)

May 25, 1911 --Mexican President Porfirio Díaz resigned after a popular uprising. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 25, 1925 – Labor “racketeers” blew up two “company” houses in which scab coal miners were living during a strike against the Glendale Gas & Coal Company in Wheeling, West Virginia. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 25, 1946 – The railroad strike was settled with terms imposed by President Harry Truman. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 25, 1968 —The May Uprisings were still going on in France, with negotiations beginning in Grenelle between the government and the trade unions. The government was so afraid that soldiers would abandon their posts and fight with the workers and students, that they called up reservists and kept the soldiers in isolation. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 23

May 23, 1827 –The first American nursery school was established in New York City as a way to “relieve parents of the laboring classes” and offer their children “protection from idleness” and other evils that typically infected the rabble. (From the Daily Bleed)

Statue of Sam Sharpe, Montego Bay (Image by Pozole, wikipedia)

May 23, 1832 – Jamaican national hero Samuel Sharpe was executed. He was an instigator of the 1831 Slave Rebellion which was largely instrumental in bringing about an end to slavery. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 23, 1838 – The second "Trail of Tears" began, resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 relocated Cherokee. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 23, 1871 – The "Bloody Week" (Semaine Sanglante) entered its third day, as the citizens of the The Paris Commune were slaughtered by government troops. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 23, 1903 – Thousands of children went on strike in the textile mills of Philadelphia. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 23, 1933 - The "Battle of Toledo" erupted when sheriffs' arrested picket leaders at the Auto-Lite plant in Toledo, Ohio, and beat an old man. 10,000 strikers blockaded the plant for seven hours, preventing strikebreakers from leaving. Ultimately, the crowd was broken up with tear gas and water cannons. The National Guard was called in the following day. The strikers held their ground against the troops, who shot and killed two of their members and wounding 15 others, winning union recognition and a 5% raise after two weeks on the picket line. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

May 23, 1963 – Congress passed the first law to ensure women equal pay for equal work. The legislation was originally submitted in 1947. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 23, 2006 – Angry garment workers in Bangladesh set fire to seven textile factories in and around the capital in the wake of the police killing of a worker during recent protests for better pay and working conditions. (From the Daily Bleed)

Utah Phillips at Haymarket Martyrs Memorial on 100th Anniversary, 1986

May 23, 2008 –Labor folk singer and IWW member U. Utah Phillips (1935-2008) died. (From the Daily Bleed)

 

 

Today in Labor History—May 17

May 17, 1838 - The first women’s anti-slavery conference was held in Philadelphia. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 17, 1858 –1,200 Coeur d'Alene, Palouse, Spokane & Skitswich Indians defeated Colonel Steptoe’s forces near Colfax, WA. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 17, 1900 – Following the relief of Mafeking, 26,000 Boer women and children died in the world's first concentration camps. (From the Daily Bleed)

Thomas Mooney, 1910

May 17, 1917 – Tom Mooney's scheduled date of execution was stayed while case was appealed. Mooney ultimately spent 22 years in prison for the San Francisco Preparedness Day Parade bombing in 1916, a crime he did not commit. Mooney, along with codefendant Warren Billings, were members of the IWW and were railroaded because of their union affiliation. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 17, 1947 –President Truman ended a nation-wide railroad strike by threatening to take over the railroads and send in the army. (From Shmoop Labor History website)

May 17, 1954 – In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas), the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public education was unconstitutional, and a violation of the 14th Amendment. The ruling reversed the 1896 "separate but equal" Plessy vs Ferguson decision. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 17, 1968 – Thousands of students marched for the second day in a row from the Sorbonne to the Renault works in spite of the opposition of the trade unions which were afraid of revolutionary contamination. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 17, 1968 – BOAC pilots in England began a work-to-rule, 48 hours earlier than originally planned. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 9

John Brown, c1856

May 9, 1800 – John Brown, anti-slavery freedom fighter, was born, Torrington, Connecticut. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 9, 1892 – A coal mine exploded at Roslyn, Washington, killing 45 mine workers. (From the Daily Bleed)

1900 – Striking tram workers blew up a tramcar during riots in St. Louis. (From the Daily Bleed)

1918 – Bolshevik troops opened fire on workers protesting food shortages in the town of Kolpino. (From the Daily Bleed)

1934 –Longshoremen began a strike for a union hiring hall and union recognition, ultimately leading to the San Francisco general strike. After World War One, West Coast long shore workers were poorly organized or represented by company unions. The IWW had tried to organize them and had some successes, like in San Pedro, in 1922, but they were ultimately crushed by injunctions, imprisonment, deportation and vigilante violence. While longshoremen lacked a well-organized union, they retained a syndicalist sentiment and militancy. Many Wobblies were still working the docks. On May 9, 1934, longshoremen walked off the job at ports up and down the West Coast, soon to be followed by sailors. Strikers were shot by the bosses’ goons in San Pedro. There was also violence in Oakland and San Francisco. Street battles between the cops and strikers continued in San Francisco, heating up on July 3, and culminating in Bloody Thursday, on July 5, when 3 workers were shot by police (two of them died). The attack led to a four-day general strike that effectively shut down commerce in San Francisco, despite police violence and attempts to weaken it by national unions. (From the Daily Bleed, Workday Minnesota and Wikipedia)

May 9, 1970 – Labor leader Walter Reuther and his wife May died suspiciously in an airplane crash. Repeated attempts had been made on Reuther’s live going back to 1938. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 9, 1972 – A general strike began in Quebec in protest of the jailing of three labor leaders, Louis Laberge, Marcel Pepin, Yvon Charbonneau. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History: April 22

day in Labor History: April 22

April 22, 1526 –The first known slave revolt in American occurred, just eight years after the first slaves were brought from Africa to the Americas. (From the Daily Bleed)

(From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1897 – The anarchist Pietro Acciarito attempted to stab the king of Italy in Rome. Acciarito was convicted and sentenced on May 28 to life in prison. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1938 –The Red Jacket Mine Explosion occurred on Keen Mountain, Virginia, killing 45 men. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1944 – 200 African-Americans began a sit-in that resulted in the desegregation of restaurants in Washington, D.C. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1952 – The first U.S. atmospheric nuclear bomb test occurred at Yucca Flat, Nevada. The test was observed by U.S. marines who were used as human guinea pigs to test the effects of radiation on humans. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1972 – 50,000 people marched in New York City against the wars in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Another 30,000 marched in San Francisco. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1996 – Nonviolent activists Tom & Donna Howard-Hastings cut down three power poles in Clam Lake, Wisconsin, preventing the launch of the U.S. Navy's first-strike nuclear submarine. (From the Daily Bleed)