Today in Labor History—June 21

June 21, 1852—Friedrich Froebel died. Froebel was a German pedagogue who coined the term “kindergarten” and produced the first educational toys, known as Froebel Gifts. Froebel was one of the first to recognize of the importance of activity and play in early childhood (Freiarbeit, or free work), as well as the notion that one learns by doing. Thus, kindergarten was not simply a poetic “garden” of children, but a literal garden for them to observe and interact with the natural world. Froebel’s kindergartens were suppressed by the Prussian government for its supposed denigration of religion and politics. He rejected the notion of original sin and promoted and practiced the coeducation of boys and girls. He also felt children should be able to grow and develop without the influence of arbitrary political and social priorities—ideas that would endear him to anarchists like Francisco Ferrer and others in the Modern School movement.

James McParland, Pinkerton private cop who claimed to have infiltrated the Molly Maguires

June 21, 1877 - Ten miners, allegedly members of the Molly Maguires, were hanged in Pennsylvania. Many historians argue that the Molly Maguires, a secret miners’ organization allegedly responsible for violence and social conflict in the coal regions, never really existed. The investigation into the miners’ involvement with the Molly Maguires was conducted by private detective agency. A private police force arrested them and coal company attornies prosecuted them. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1937 -- The Ohio Steel Strike of 1937 continued. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1943 – The Detroit race riots continued. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1964 - Civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan, who beat them to death with clubs and chaings. Their mangled bodies were later found by federal agents. (From Workday Minnesota)

June 21, 1994 – The UAW began a strike at Caterpillar plants in Peoria, Decatur, & Pontiac.
(From the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1997 – 100,000 marched in solidarity with striking newspaper labor workers in Detroit. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 7

Cops Escort Scab Street Car (From SF Public Library, via FoundSF)

May 7, 1907 – Bloody Tuesday occurred in San Francisco. The Street Carmen were among the most militant workers in San Francisco, a city that had one of the most organized and militant labor movements in the country in those days. The mayor, Eugene Schmitz, and two city supervisors were from the Union Labor Party. San Francisco workers, particularly the Carmen’s union, had struck in five of the six years from 1902 to 1907. Capitalists were starting to get sick of the power of the San Francisco unions and wanted to put a stop to them once and for all. Led by Rudolph Spreckels (the sugar magnate), they hired the Burns Detective agency and started by exposing Schmitz’ corruption as well as that of the Board of Supervisors. The corruption scandals dealt a serious blow to the unions’ political power, as their allies were up to their necks in legal troubles.  The violence occurred when strike breakers tried to run the streetcars, resulting in an exchange of gunfire between union carmen and scabs. (From the Daily Bleed and Death of a Union)

May 7, 1912 - The Hotel Workers Industrial Union struck New York City’s finest hotels and restaurants, including the Waldorf and Astoria hotels and the Plaza. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 7, 1965 – “Bloody Sunday" occurred in Selma, Alabama, with state troopers attacking civil rights marchers. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 7, 1975 – The Vietnam War officially ends. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 7, 1977 – The longest transit strike in Philadelphia's history, 44 days, ended on this day. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 7, 1985 – The city of Philadelphia bombed the house of the radical black group MOVE, killing 11 & destroying 62 others homes in neighborhood. Surviving MOVE members are still in prison. (From the Daily Bleed)

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)

Today in Labor History: April 22

day in Labor History: April 22

April 22, 1526 –The first known slave revolt in American occurred, just eight years after the first slaves were brought from Africa to the Americas. (From the Daily Bleed)

(From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1897 – The anarchist Pietro Acciarito attempted to stab the king of Italy in Rome. Acciarito was convicted and sentenced on May 28 to life in prison. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1938 –The Red Jacket Mine Explosion occurred on Keen Mountain, Virginia, killing 45 men. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1944 – 200 African-Americans began a sit-in that resulted in the desegregation of restaurants in Washington, D.C. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1952 – The first U.S. atmospheric nuclear bomb test occurred at Yucca Flat, Nevada. The test was observed by U.S. marines who were used as human guinea pigs to test the effects of radiation on humans. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1972 – 50,000 people marched in New York City against the wars in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Another 30,000 marched in San Francisco. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1996 – Nonviolent activists Tom & Donna Howard-Hastings cut down three power poles in Clam Lake, Wisconsin, preventing the launch of the U.S. Navy's first-strike nuclear submarine. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History: April 11

Luddites Smashing Looms (from Cotton Times)

April 11, 1812 – 300 Luddites attacked Wroe & Duncliffs Mfg., in Rawfords Hill, England, to destroy the machinery that was replacing them and throwing them out of work. Wroe & Duncliffs Mfg. was set ablaze, while Wm Cartwright's mill in Liversedge was attacked by mobs. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 11, 1934 - Frank Norman, who had the gall to organize all citrus workers, regardless of their race, was kidnapped from his home in Florida and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?history_9_04_11_2011

April 11, 1938 – Richard Whitney, the five-term president of the New York Stock Exchange, was sentenced to 5-10 years for grand larceny. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 11, 1941 - The Ford Motor Company signed its first contract with the United Auto Workers. (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1947 - Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player to play in the major leagues. (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1968 – the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law barring racial discrimination in housing & other areas. The Act also made it a crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot, giving the government a new tool to prosecute labor and other protest organizers. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 11, 1974 - United Mine Workers President W. A. "Tony" Boyle was found guilty of first-degree murder for ordering the 1969 assassination of union reformer Joseph A. "Jock" Yablonski.  (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1980 – Eleven-day strike by 34,000 New York City Transit Authority workers for higher wages ended with management agreeing to a 9% raise in the 1st year and 8% in the 2^nd. During this same year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prohibited sexual harassment of workers by supervisors in the workplace. (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1986 – 17 were arrested on felony riot charges after police tear-gas striking Hormel meatpacking workers in Austin, Minn. The following day, 6,000 people demonstrated against Hormel and the police (nearly one-third of the city’s entire population). The strike was eventually suppressed by Hormel, with the collaboration of the state, and the workers’ own union. (From The Daily Bleed and the Unionist)

April 11, 1997 - 25,000 people marched in Watsonville, CA in support of the United Farm Workers organizing campaign for strawberry workers. (From the Unionist)

Today in Labor History—March 21

March 21, 1927 –Shanghai workers launched an uprising, leading to the Shanghai Commune. The Commune lasted until April 12, when it was crushed by Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist troops with the help of Soviet arms, advisers and money. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 21, 1965 – 3,200 people began the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racial violence. Earlier efforts to hold the march had failed when police attacked demonstrators and a while minister was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites. The five-day walk ended March 26, when 20,000 people joined the marchers in front of the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery. Soon after, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (From Workday Minnesota)

March 21, 1970 – Day 2 of the national wildcat postal strike. In New York, an effigy of Gus Johnson, president of the letter carriers' union local, was hung at a meeting and the national union leaders were called "rats" & "creeps." Despite the anti-strike clause in the postal workers contract and federal injunctions against striking, postal workers walked out in over 200 cities. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—June 21

June 21, 1852—Friedrich Froebel died. Froebel was a German pedagogue who coined the term “kindergarten” and produced the first educational toys, known as Froebel Gifts. Froebel was one of the first to recognize of the importance of activity and play in early childhood (Freiarbeit, or free work), as well as the notion that one learns by doing. Thus, kindergarten was not simply a poetic “garden” of children, but a literal garden for them to observe and interact with the natural world. Froebel’s kindergartens were suppressed by the Prussian government for its supposed denigration of religion and politics. He rejected the notion of original sin and promoted and practiced the coeducation of boys and girls. He also felt children should be able to grow and develop without the influence of arbitrary political and social priorities—ideas that would endear him to anarchists like Francisco Ferrer and others in the Modern School movement.

James McParland, Pinkerton private cop who claimed to have infiltrated the Molly Maguires

June 21, 1877 - Ten miners, allegedly members of the Molly Maguires, were hanged in Pennsylvania. Many historians argue that the Molly Maguires, a secret miners’ organization allegedly responsible for violence and social conflict in the coal regions, never really existed. The investigation into the miners’ involvement with the Molly Maguires was conducted by private detective agency. A private police force arrested them and coal company attornies prosecuted them. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1937 -- The Ohio Steel Strike of 1937 continued. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1943 – The Detroit race riots continued. (From the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1964 - Civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan, who beat them to death with clubs and chaings. Their mangled bodies were later found by federal agents. (From Workday Minnesota)

June 21, 1994 – The UAW began a strike at Caterpillar plants in Peoria, Decatur, & Pontiac.
(From the Daily Bleed)

June 21, 1997 – 100,000 marched in solidarity with striking newspaper labor workers in Detroit. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 7

Cops Escort Scab Street Car (From SF Public Library, via FoundSF)

May 7, 1907 – Bloody Tuesday occurred in San Francisco. The Street Carmen were among the most militant workers in San Francisco, a city that had one of the most organized and militant labor movements in the country in those days. The mayor, Eugene Schmitz, and two city supervisors were from the Union Labor Party. San Francisco workers, particularly the Carmen’s union, had struck in five of the six years from 1902 to 1907. Capitalists were starting to get sick of the power of the San Francisco unions and wanted to put a stop to them once and for all. Led by Rudolph Spreckels (the sugar magnate), they hired the Burns Detective agency and started by exposing Schmitz’ corruption as well as that of the Board of Supervisors. The corruption scandals dealt a serious blow to the unions’ political power, as their allies were up to their necks in legal troubles.  The violence occurred when strike breakers tried to run the streetcars, resulting in an exchange of gunfire between union carmen and scabs. (From the Daily Bleed and Death of a Union)

May 7, 1912 - The Hotel Workers Industrial Union struck New York City’s finest hotels and restaurants, including the Waldorf and Astoria hotels and the Plaza. (From Workday Minnesota)

May 7, 1965 – “Bloody Sunday" occurred in Selma, Alabama, with state troopers attacking civil rights marchers. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 7, 1975 – The Vietnam War officially ends. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 7, 1977 – The longest transit strike in Philadelphia's history, 44 days, ended on this day. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 7, 1985 – The city of Philadelphia bombed the house of the radical black group MOVE, killing 11 & destroying 62 others homes in neighborhood. Surviving MOVE members are still in prison. (From the Daily Bleed)

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)

Today in Labor History: April 22

April 22, 1526 –The first known slave revolt in American occurred, just eight years after the first slaves were brought from Africa to the Americas. (From the Daily Bleed)

(From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1897 – The anarchist Pietro Acciarito attempted to stab the king of Italy in Rome. Acciarito was convicted and sentenced on May 28 to life in prison. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1938 –The Red Jacket Mine Explosion occurred on Keen Mountain, Virginia, killing 45 men. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1944 – 200 African-Americans began a sit-in that resulted in the desegregation of restaurants in Washington, D.C. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1952 – The first U.S. atmospheric nuclear bomb test occurred at Yucca Flat, Nevada. The test was observed by U.S. marines who were used as human guinea pigs to test the effects of radiation on humans. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1972 – 50,000 people marched in New York City against the wars in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Another 30,000 marched in San Francisco. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 22, 1996 – Nonviolent activists Tom & Donna Howard-Hastings cut down three power poles in Clam Lake, Wisconsin, preventing the launch of the U.S. Navy's first-strike nuclear submarine. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History: April 11

Luddites Smashing Looms (from Cotton Times)

April 11, 1812 – 300 Luddites attacked Wroe & Duncliffs Mfg., in Rawfords Hill, England, to destroy the machinery that was replacing them and throwing them out of work. Wroe & Duncliffs Mfg. was set ablaze, while Wm Cartwright's mill in Liversedge was attacked by mobs. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 11, 1934 - Frank Norman, who had the gall to organize all citrus workers, regardless of their race, was kidnapped from his home in Florida and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?history_9_04_11_2011

April 11, 1938 – Richard Whitney, the five-term president of the New York Stock Exchange, was sentenced to 5-10 years for grand larceny. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 11, 1941 - The Ford Motor Company signed its first contract with the United Auto Workers. (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1947 - Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player to play in the major leagues. (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1968 – the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law barring racial discrimination in housing & other areas. The Act also made it a crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot, giving the government a new tool to prosecute labor and other protest organizers. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 11, 1974 - United Mine Workers President W. A. "Tony" Boyle was found guilty of first-degree murder for ordering the 1969 assassination of union reformer Joseph A. "Jock" Yablonski.  (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1980 – Eleven-day strike by 34,000 New York City Transit Authority workers for higher wages ended with management agreeing to a 9% raise in the 1st year and 8% in the 2^nd. During this same year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prohibited sexual harassment of workers by supervisors in the workplace. (From the Unionist)

April 11, 1986 – 17 were arrested on felony riot charges after police tear-gas striking Hormel meatpacking workers in Austin, Minn. The following day, 6,000 people demonstrated against Hormel and the police (nearly one-third of the city’s entire population). The strike was eventually suppressed by Hormel, with the collaboration of the state, and the workers’ own union. (From The Daily Bleed and the Unionist)

April 11, 1997 - 25,000 people marched in Watsonville, CA in support of the United Farm Workers organizing campaign for strawberry workers. (From the Unionist)

Today in Labor History—March 21

March 21, 1927 –Shanghai workers launched an uprising, leading to the Shanghai Commune. The Commune lasted until April 12, when it was crushed by Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist troops with the help of Soviet arms, advisers and money. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 21, 1965 – 3,200 people began the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racial violence. Earlier efforts to hold the march had failed when police attacked demonstrators and a while minister was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites. The five-day walk ended March 26, when 20,000 people joined the marchers in front of the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery. Soon after, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (From Workday Minnesota)

March 21, 1970 – Day 2 of the national wildcat postal strike. In New York, an effigy of Gus Johnson, president of the letter carriers' union local, was hung at a meeting and the national union leaders were called "rats" & "creeps." Despite the anti-strike clause in the postal workers contract and federal injunctions against striking, postal workers walked out in over 200 cities. (From the Daily Bleed)