Today's Labor History

This week’s Labor History Today podcast: 2020 Great Labor Arts Exchange contest winners!. Plus, Joe Glazer’s "Solidarity Forever" from the Songs of Work and Freedom album, and the Meany Archives gang brings us the July 4th, 1964 issue of the AFL CIO news, which featured the signing of the Civil Rights Act and Ben and Allen tie that into the ongoing protests for social justice.
Last week’s show: Why America’s most radical union shut down ports on Juneteenth.

July 10
Mary McLeod Bethune, educator and civil rights activist, born - 1875

14,000 federal and state troops finally succeed in putting down the strike against the Pullman Palace Car Co., which had been peaceful until July 5, when federal troops intervened in Chicago, against the repeated protests of the Governor and Chicago’s mayor. Some 34 American Railway Union members were killed by troops over the course of the strike - 1894

A powerful explosion rips through the Rolling Mill coal mine in Johnstown, Pa., killing 112 miners, 83 of whom were immigrants from Poland and Slovakia - 1902

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce holds a mass meeting of more than 2,000 merchants to organize what was to become a frontal assault on union strength and the closed shop. The failure of wages to keep up with inflation after the 1906 earthquake had spurred multiple strikes in the city - 1916

July 11
Striking coal miners in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho dynamite barracks housing Pinkerton management thugs - 1892

A nine-year strike, the longest in the history of the United Auto Workers, began at the Ohio Crankshaft Division of Park-Ohio Industries Inc. in Cuyahoga Heights, Ohio. Despite scabs, arrests and firings, UAW Local 91 members hung tough and in 1992 won a fair contract - 1983

July 12
Bisbee, Ariz. deports Wobblies (photo); 1,186 miners sent into desert in manure-laden boxcars. They had been fighting for improved safety and working conditions - 1917

The Screen Actors Guild holds its first meeting. Among those attending: future horror movie star (Frankenstein’s Monster) and union activist Boris Karloff - 1933

- David Prosten

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