Today in Labor History—September 4

September 4, 1894 – 12,000 un-unionized tailors launched a successful spontaneous strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

Cripple Creek 1900

 September 4, 1903 – Police and deputy sheriffs were relieved of their duties in Cripple Creek, Colorado, and all citizens were required to register their firearms, as mine owners attempted to bust the labor union. Governor Peabody sent in the militia. In 1904 they took over the local newspaper and rounded up strikers into "bullpens." Dozens were arrested without warrants.(From the Daily Bleed)

Captured British tank, Archangel

September 4, 1918 – American troops invaded the U.S.S.R., landing at Archangel, one year after the Russian Revolution. They were soundly defeated. (From the Daily Bleed)

September 4, 1920 – Hundreds of miners assembled at Lens Creek, West Virginia in response to rumors that women and children were being killed in Logan County by the anti-union mine owners and deputy sheriffs who were on their payroll. 5,000 miners had arrived by nightfall. Many of them were armed. (From Jeremy Brecher’s, Strike!, pp135-36 and the Daily Bleed)

Fables of Faubus, Charles Mingus

September 4, 1957 – Nine Negro students tried to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to block them. (From the Daily Bleed)

William Kunstler, 1989, by Joel Seidenstain

 September 4, 1995 – Radical lawyer William Kunstler (1919-1995) died. During his long career, Kunstler defended the Chicago Seven, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Lenny Bruce, H. Rap Brown, American Indian Movement activists after the siege at Pine Ridge, and Attica prisoners after the siege there. (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)