Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1869. At 2:47 pm a one-word telegram was sent from Promontory Summit, Utah.  The message read simply, “done.”  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1970.   On that day workers and the US labor movement lost a leading voice in a tragic plane crash. 

If you are a member of a union, how well do you know your union’s history? You might be surprised to find out how far back that history goes. Such is the case with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1867. That was the day that shoemakers founded the labor union the Knights of St. Crispin, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  St. Crispin is the patron saint of cobblers.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1937.  That was the year that 400 black women who worked as tobacco stemmers walked off the job at I.N. Vaughn and Company in Richmond, VA. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1852. It was the last day of a three-day convention held in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Printers who worked for newspapers and other publications from fourteen cities had converged to decide if they wanted to form a union.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1886. This was one of the most significant days in US labor history. 

A mass meeting of workers was called for that night in Chicago’s Haymarket Square.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1886. A little after three o’clock on that Monday, in Chicago, radical labor activist and newspaper man August Spies climbed onto a box car to give a speech about the fight for the eight hour day. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1968. That was the day the administration shut down the Paris University at Naterre. Student protests at the school had begun weeks before around the ideas of a sexual revolution, or the right of young people to sleep together if they chose to without adult interference or moralizing.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1886. This was the day that began events in Chicago that would make May First the most important day on the calendar for the labor movement across the world.