Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Escape on the Pearl; Black Labor Week 
DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton connects a historic escape attempt by slaves with today’s fight for DC statehood; AFGE’s Black Labor Week on “Black History, Race and Racism in America,” and on Labor History in 2: The Fight for Equality in 1830.
Last week’s show: Labor Day: no picnic in a pandemic
 
September 25
American photographer Lewis Hine born in Oshkosh, Wisc. - 1874
photo courtesy EHS Today

Two African-American sharecroppers are killed during an ultimately unsuccessful cotton-pickers strike in Lee County, Ark. By the time the strike had been suppressed, 15 African-Americans had died and another six had been imprisoned. A white plantation manager was killed as well - 1891

September 27
Striking textile workers in Fall River, Mass. demand bread for their starving children - 1875

The International Typographical Union renews a strike against the Los Angeles Times and begins a boycott that runs intermittently from 1896 to 1908. A local anti-Times committee in 1903 persuades William Randolph Hearst to start a rival paper, the Los Angeles Examiner.
- 1893

International Ladies' Garment Workers Union begins strike against Triangle Shirtwaist Co. This would become the "Uprising of the 20,000," resulting in 339 of 352 struck firms—but not Triangle—signing agreements with the union. The Triangle fire that killed 246 would occur less than two years later - 1909

Twenty-nine west coast ports lock out 10,500 workers in response to what management says is a worker slowdown in the midst of negotiations on a new contract. The ports are closed for 10 days, reopen when Pres. George W. Bush invokes the Taft-Hartley Act - 2002

- David Prosten

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