Labor History in 2:00

On this day in Labor History the year was 1980. That was the day that Ida Mae Stull passed away.

She is widely considered to be the first woman coal miner in United States history.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 2011. 

That was the day the labor movement lost one of its most poignant voices. 

Hazel Dickens was born in Mercer County, West Virginia in 1935.  It was coal country. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1894. The nation was in the grip of deep depression. 

Unemployment soared. Workers wages and hours were cut dramatically in virtually every industry.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1914 the bloody anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre. 

11,000 miners had gone on strike against the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation, owned by one of the wealthiest men in the world, John D. Rockefeller.  

This marks the day one of the most horrendous acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. History occurred in Oklahoma City. 

A truck bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building killing 168 people

You have more than likely heard of Rosa Parks, and how she heroically sat down on a bus to help end segregation in Montgomery, Alabama.  But did you know discrimination often barred black bus drivers, even in northern cities? 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1911. This marks the day that more than 4,000 furniture makers walked off the job in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1947. 

The day dawned unseasonably cool in Texas City, TX, a port city forty miles south of Houston on the Gulf of Mexico.  

On this day in Labor History the year was 1947. 

It was opening day of a truly new baseball season. 

On this day in Labor History the year was 1939.  This was the day readers were first introduced to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.