
Last week’s show: A journey down the Working River
November 25
Some 10,000 New Orleans workers, black and white, participate in a solidarity parade of unions comprising the Central Trades and Labor Assembly. The parade was so successful it was repeated the following two years - 1883
November 26
Six young women burn to death and 19 more die when they leap from the fourth-story windows of a blazing factory in Newark, N.J. The floors and stairs were wooden; the only door from which the women could flee was locked - 1910
November 27
The pro-labor musical revue, “Pins & Needles,” opens on Broadway with a cast of International Ladies Garment Workers Union members. The show ran on Friday and Saturday nights only, because of the casts’ regular jobs. It ran for 1,108 performances before closing - 1937
November 28
Some 400 New York City photoengravers working for the city’s newspapers, supported by 20,000 other newspaper unionists, begin what is to become an 11-day strike, shutting down the papers - 1953
November 29
Clerks, teamsters and building service workers at Boston Stores in Milwaukee strike at the beginning of the Christmas rush. The strike won widespread support – at one point 10,000 pickets jammed the sidewalks around the main store – but ultimately was lost. Workers returned to the job in mid-January with a small pay raise and no union recognition - 1934
November 30
“Fighting Mary” Eliza McDowell, also known as the “Angel of the Stockyards,” born in Chicago. As a social worker she helped organize the first women’s local of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in 1902 – 1854
- David Prosten