Today in Labor History—May 2

It Is Forbidden to Forbid, May 1968, Paris

May 2, 1886 – Twenty-five hundred workers marched in Milwaukee for the 8-hour day. Governor Jeremiah Rusk supplied the Milwaukee National Guard headquarters with increased ammunition and the entire city police force with four companies of infantry & artillery. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1896 – U.S. Marines landed at Corrinto, Nicaragua, to "protect" US interests. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1911 - The nation’s first workers’ compensation law was passed in Wisconsin, providing benefits for employees injured in the workplace. (From the Daily Bleed)

Gustav Landauer, 1890s

May 2, 1919 – Gustav Landauer, Education Minister in the short-lived Bavarian workers Republic, was murdered by soldiers. Landauer was a signatory to the Ernst Joël Petition (1915), along with other leading cultural figures of the day, like Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, Kurt Eisner, S. Fischer, Alfred Kerr, Heinrich Mann, and Thomas Mann. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1919 – Beginning of a Brazilian General Strike that involved 50,000 workers throughout Sao Paulo. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1924 – The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the involuntary sterilization of mentally retarded persons. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1933 - Adolf Hitler abolished all labor unions, leading to the mass arrest and murder of thousands of communists, anarchists and labor activists. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1963 –Bull Connors jailed 958 children in Birmingham, Alabama. Those not jailed got blasted with fire hoses and attacked by dogs. (From the Daily Bleed)

Barricades, Paris, May 1968

May 2, 1968 – A Protest at University of Nanterre escalated into the French student strike. By May 20, six million workers were on strike, growing to ten million within a few days. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1968 – Though Martin Luther King, Jr. had recently been assassinated his Poor Peoples' March on Washington, D.C. proceeded as planned, led by successor Ralph Abernathy. 3,000 people erected Resurrection City on the Mall until the 17th. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 2, 1980 – Pink Floyd's hit single "Another Brick in the Wall," with its chorus of kids chanting "We don't need no education," was banned by the South African government. The song was adopted by striking black teachers and black children, upset about inferior education. The Apartheid government called the song is "prejudicial to the safety of the state." (From the Daily Bleed)

Paulo Freire, 1997 (Image by Slobodan Dimitrov

May 2, 1997 – Paulo Freire (1921-1997), Brazilian philosopher & educator, died of heart failure in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (From the Daily Bleed)