Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1971. That was a day of tragedy for the workers at the Thiokol Chemical Corporation plant in southeastern Georgia.  An explosion killed twenty-seven workers, and injured dozens more. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1821. That was the birthday of the first woman to earn her medical degree in the United States. Her name was Elizabeth Blackwell.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1960.  That was the day that four black freshmen students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina sat down to make a stand for justice.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1865. That was the day that the US Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the constitution, abolishing slavery. President Lincoln had already issued the Emancipation Proclamation. But there was worry that the proclamation, an emergency wartime measure, would not stand up in the courts after the war had ended.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1992. That was the day that the gravediggers of Chicago ended their forty-three day strike.  The United Press International’s headline declared, “The dead will rest in peace now that Chicago-area gravediggers have reached a tentative contract.” The gravediggers were part of Service Employees International Union Local 106.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1834. That was the first time in United States history that a President called in federal troops to settle a labor dispute and It would certainly not be the last. President Andrew Jackson ordered federal troops to quiet the workers on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1932. That was the day the first unemployment insurance law in was established in the United States. 

It happened in Wisconsin.  Governor Phillip LaFollette signed the Unemployment Compensation Act.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1950. The cost of a first-class stamp was three cents. 

And starting on this day, one of the options for first class postage bore the image of US labor leader Samuel Gompers. 

The British-born Gompers was a founder and long-time head of the American Federation of Labor. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1907. That was the day that President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law an effort to get corporate money out of national politics. The law was called the Tillman Act. The act was named after its sponsor, Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1787. That was the day known as Shays’ Rebellion.

The United States was a new nation, and the Constitution had not yet been written. 

The revolutionary army had won the war with Britain, but the young nation was mired in debt.