Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1931.  And Chicago public school teachers went home without a paycheck. The school system was broke.  Property owners out of work due to the Great Depression could not pay their property taxes, which were used to fund the public schools.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1899.  That was the day New York City newsboys went on strike.  A newspaper article noted:  “The Newsboys’ Union has decided to tie up the World and the Journal. They have struck for better rates on the evening editions of these papers, and their demands have been refused. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1848. That was the day the convention on woman’s rights began in Seneca Falls, New York.  The organizers of this convention brought together some of the leading woman’s activists of the day, such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1914.  That was the day IWW songwriter, Joe Hill, was sentenced to be executed in Utah. 

He was convicted of murder although the charges were likely trumped up.  Hill grew up in Sweden.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1944.  A crew of mostly black soldiers were loading munitions onto ships at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California, northeast of Oakland.  320 soldiers were killed by a munitions explosion that wounded another 390 people.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1894. Striking coal miners in Alabama killed a number of black miners. Both white and black miners were attempting to organize the southern bituminous coal fields during the 1890s. 

On this day in Labor History and we are going all the way back to the year of 1381. That was the day John Ball, the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in England was executed.  Due to the plague, the Black Death, in 1348, many peasants had died.

On this day in Labor History the year was 1877. That was the day that what would come to be known as the “Great Upheaval” or “Great Uprising” began in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  Railroad workers were angry.  They had seen their wages cut twice in six months by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1905. That was the day that revolutionary black scholar W.E.B. DuBois helped found the Niagara Movement.  It was named for the “mighty current” of change the group hoped to bring about.  The initial organizing meeting was held near Niagara Falls, New York. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1917. That was the day that miners in Bisbee, Arizona were rounded up, taken by train and left in the desert on the New Mexico/Arizona border.