Labor History Links

This project reclaims the hidden stories of the Arab American working class. It sheds light on their rich history and their struggles to become part of the United States, securing their families’ livelihoods amidst difficult (and sometimes deadly) working conditions, labor activism, racial animosity, economic turmoil, and the fast changing landscape of America’s industrial cities and agricultural farmland. In so doing, this project invites us to rethink the prevalent narrative of Arab immigration, and to move beyond its one-dimensionality to include the richer—and more complicated—diversity of immigrant experiences.

“Syrian” immigrants found steady work as coal mine laborers in Pennsylvania starting in 1880, and by the 1910s Arab immigrant communities had been established in coal and metal mining towns as far west as Utah and Montana. Arab immigrants and their children born in America sought multiple wage sources in these regions including mine labor, peddling, storekeeping, business ownership, and ranching. Contrary to long-held perception that they would not work underground, Syrian-Lebanese men did find employment within mines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They navigated the unregulated industry alongside immigrants of other ethnic and national origins. Coal mine accident registries regularly listed the names of Arab immigrant men who were injured and killed by roof and wall collapses, haulage accidents, explosions, and falls. In addition to inherent danger, mine laborers contended with low wages and uncertain employment schedules.

An excellent set of sources on Arab American labor history

In 1912 the Bread and Roses Strike—one of the most significant struggles in US labor history—rocked the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts. By the conclusion of the nine-week strike, which involved tens of thousands of mill workers, the country had learned of the terrible working conditions (life expectancies around forty years), long hours (sixty hours per week) and low pay ($8 per week). Negotiations provided some gains, namely a 15 percent raise in pay and guarantees for better health conditions, and established unions as central to protecting both workers' rights and the American economy.

This map-story presents the Syrian immigrants who were part of this movement.

But a crucial component remains missing from most narratives about the Bread and Roses Strike: the central role that "Syrians" played in the movement. Aside from comprising part of the strike's rank and file, early Arab immigrants were fundamental in the organizing and sustaining of the strike. Faris Marad, James Brox, and Dr. Iskandar Hajjar were on the strike committee, and the majority of Arab workers became members of the IWW (International Workers of the World). Finally, and tragically, one of three strikers killed during the strike was a young Syrian man by the name of Hanna Ramey.

The Khayrallah Center’s latest project highlights the stories of Lebanese factory workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Lawrence held one of the largest Lebanese immigrant populations in the United States in the early 1900s. Over one-third of early Lebanese immigrants worked as laborers in America’s industrial mills and factories, yet their experiences are often overshadowed by the more familiar stories of merchant-peddlers. This project sheds light on thousands of Lebanese who lived and labored in Lawrence and played a unique role in twentieth-century American history.

The Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is proud to share a suite of lesson plans based on the Arab American Labor project. Developed by Lindsey Payne, a PhD student in the NCSU College of Education, these lessons utilize the C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards. Each unit is designed for use by secondary social studies teachers and can be adapted to fit the needs of each individual classroom.
Lesson Plans list:
Overview
Miners Lesson Plan: How do you find stability in precarious situations?
Seamstresses Lesson Plan: Key Question: How did gender impact the ways in which Arab American women navigated labor?
Autoworkers Lesson Plan: Key Question: Can resistance lead to reform?
Performers What happens to art when it is commodified?
Yemeni Farmworkers Lesson Plan: Do the experiences and contributions of Yemeni farmworkers in the United States reflect broader patterns in society?

This site includes original sources on the fire held at the ILR School's Kheel Center, an archive of historical material on labor and industrial relations.
LEARN ABOUT THE FIRE
Read the story of the fire
Review original text documents
Listen to and read interviews of survivors and witnesses
View photographs and illustrations

GAIN PERSPECTIVE
View a timeline of events
Explore a model of the 9th floor
RESEARCH FURTHER
Find bibliographic resources
High school students: Get tips on using primary sources

COMMEMORATION
Remember the victims
Final six victims identified
Learn about reforms and outcomes of the fire's legacy
Triangle fire commemoration events

organized by album, hundreds of photos digitized from 1910 to 1980s

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - This exhibit site includes original sources and information pertaining to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, an industrial fire that occurred in New York City in 1911 that took the lives of 146 people in 18 minutes. This pivotal moment in history led to the transformation of the labor code of New York State and to the adoption of fire safety measures that served as a model for the whole country. This site includes:
Survivor Interviews and Audio Recording featuring oral history interview recordings with Max Hochfield, Dora Maisler, and Pauline Pepe; transcripts derived from the survivor interviews; Frances Perkins’ lectures; and the Triangle Fire 50th Anniversary Commemoration.
Photos & Illustrations including topics including workers and working conditions, shirtwaist strikes, Triangle fire mourning and protest, victims and survivors, commemoration, and reporting and trial of Triangle factory owners. These images were digitized from photographic prints, negatives, newspaper accounts, lantern slides, and editorial cartoons. High resolution images can be found on the Kheel Center Flickr website.
Testimonials including selections from Leon Stein’s publications featuring Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and other witnesses to the fire.
Newspaper & Magazine Articles including excerpts about the fire from The New York Times, Chicago Sunday Tribune, Outlook, The Ladies Garment Worker, Literary Digest, and American Federationist.
Reports including excerpts from the New York (State) Factory Investigating Commission, highlighting its creation, organization, scope, importance, and findings.
Letters including correspondence from sweatshop reform activist Pauline Newman and journalist Charles Willis Thompson.
Songs & Plays including "The Uprising of the Twenty Thousand"; the Ballad of the Triangle Fire; My Little Shirtwaist Fire; Episode V, The Triangle Fire from The Story of the ILGWU: A Radio Play in Six Episodes; and the Mournful Song of the Great Fire.
Transcripts of Criminal Trial Against Triangle Owners consisting of full-text transcripts of the 1911 criminal trial against the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.
--site lists all the dead, has timeline, resources for research papers, teaching materials

These films and videos were produced by or for the ILGWU between 1935 and 1985. In addition to the ILGWU's well-known Union Label television commercials, included here are films made during two strikes, the union's Golden Jubilee Convention, and other notable events in the union's history. Incluees Look for the Union Label commercial and other gems like "Mother is On Strike" from Texas strike in 1958

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was formed in 1900 by merging smaller related craft unions which were later organized on local, regional, department, and international levels. This selection of images from a photo collection of approximately 20 cubic feet of material reflects the public face of this influential, women’s-clothing industry union as it was documented in photographs over a period of 100 years.

Photographs document everyday life and work at home, in garment shops, at the Union’s offices, in the streets and the courts, and abroad. While many individuals who shared the union’s struggle are pictured in these photos, relatively few have been identified.

Stunning scenes from early strikes and working conditions, suffrage parades, New York, labor leaders, Rose Schneiderman, garment workers

This is an exhibit that highlights items from Kheel Center's archives. An introdcution to the union, biographies of every president, a timeline, bibliography of resources, Early history using visual culture and the famous "Look for the Union Label" commercials of the mid 20th century as well as the earlier ‘Pins and Needles’ highlights of issues like piece work, women of the union and the cooperative housing movement. The site also contains primary sources such as banners, broadsides, videos, television commercials, correspondence, minutes, oral histories, pamphlets, photos, and speeches.

Bernard Kassoy (1914-2008) graduated from the City College of New York and Cooper Union Art School and worked in a wide range of media as a painter, printmaker, photographer, sculptor and cinematographer. As a young artist, Kassoy began his career in the WPA New York City Federal Art Project in 1936 and was arrested under the name “Michelangelo Buonarotti” at the first sit-down strike against the WPA by the Artists Union. He was also a US delegate to the 1983 International Association of Artists conference in Finland.

In 1939 Kassoy was hired as a New York City high school fine arts teacher where he taught until he retired in 1972. He also taught adult education classes on cinematography at the High School of Music and Art. As a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 5, he created cartoons for their publication “The New York Teacher News,” directed the Teachers Union art gallery, and made stage sets for theatrical productions.

Bernard Kassoy’s 136 editorial cartoons preserved by the Kheel Center were largely created in the 1950s at a time when many US policy makers were enthralled by the search for Communist Party members and sympathizers. In pithy cartoons he portrayed the struggles of New York City students and teachers, as well as the Teachers Union's response to these hardships. He accused school, city, and state officials of turning their attention away from funding shortfalls, classroom overcrowding, outdated texts, dilapidated buildings, teacher turnover, increasing teacher workloads, and stagnant wages, to focus on the question of whether any teachers appeared to be advocating Communism. Though Kassoy repeatedly criticized these manifestations of McCarthyism, he was never blacklisted. His work can also be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, and Fennimore House Museum.

The images here document the research techniques for time and motion studies, which were mean to speed-up work, and create advantage through "scientific management." The science was supposed to be timing every motion so that the management could tell the worker how to produce at higher rates. There are many books in our collection that will help contextualize this and the reaction to it by workers across the globe. Best recommendation is David Montgomery's The Fall of the House of Labor

Photographer Louise Boyle figures prominently among those of her time whose penetrating images documented the devastating effects of the Great Depression on American workers. Struggling landless farmers organized the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (SFTU) in 1934 in response to displacement caused by long-term drought, agricultural mechanization, and pressures on landowners to reduce production. The union was notable for encouraging blacks and women to join and lead integrated union locals, for promoting non-violent tactics, and for using songs, prayers, and rituals at meetings, drawing on the inspirational power of the Christian faith to which the majority of its members adhered.

In 1937, at the height of a wave of labor militancy, Ms. Boyle was invited to photograph the living and working conditions of the SFTU members from several Arkansas communities. Her provocative recording courageous people linking their futures together despite devastating poverty, physical hardship, and brutal police-endorsed reprisals. Most portray African American farmers in their homes, at union meetings and rallies, or at work with their families picking cotton. Boyle returned in 1982 to rephotograph some of the people and places she had documented earlier.

Approximately 200 of images are available in Flickr.com, and twice that number are made available at the Kheel Center, Cornell University.

From the publisher: Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America's civil rights movement. These are only some of the working-class heroes who propelled American labor's relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law.

The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories get cut from the final copy: those of women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, sex workers, prisoners, and the poor. In this volume, Kelly excavates that untold history and shows how the rights the American worker has today--the forty-hour workweek, workplace-safety standards, restrictions on child labor, protection from harassment and discrimination on the job--were earned with literal blood, sweat, and tears."-- Publisher's description

In this expansive collection, labor writer Kim Moody explores the present state and the future possibilities of the US labor movement, as well as evaluating the forces working against it. These wide-ranging, accessible essays ask the key questions: What has happened to union organizing in the United States? Is there an alternative to the strike? How does the increased presence of immigrant and women workers change the balance of forces? What strategies can workers use to counteract company 'union avoidance' campaigns and bureaucratic 'business unionism'? What is the role of socialists in the labor movement? Drawing on his own background as a working-class radical, the works of Karl Marx, and the everyday experiences of nurses, miners, autoworkers, and more, Moody sketches a comprehensive picture of the state of US labor--and points the way forward for a rank-and-file union movement that can win real change"--Back cover

Analyzes how recent changes in capitalism have altered both the composition of the working class and the economic and political ground on which it struggles. He challenges conventional wisdom about a disappearing working class and the inevitability of a two-party political structure as the only framework for struggle. Through in-depth study of the economic and political shifts at the top of society, Moody shows how recent developments in capitalist production impact the working class and its power to resist the status quo. He argues that this transformed industrial terrain offers new possibilities for organization in the workplace and opens doors for grassroots, independent political action strengthened by reemerging labor and social movements. --From publisher description

Offering an analysis of how internal migration in Gilded Age America undermined collective organizing and workers' political power, Moody presents a detailed case for why there has been no viable, independent labor party in the United States. While the racial, ethnic, and gender divisions within the American working class have created organizational challenges for the working class, the author argues that despite their divisions, workers of all ethnic and racial groups in the Gilded Age often displayed high levels of class consciousness and political radicalism.

In place of "American exceptionalism," Moody contends that high levels of internal migration during the late 1800's created instability in the union and political organizations of workers, which undermined efforts by American workers to build independent labor-based parties in the 1880s and 1890s. Using detailed research and primary sources; Moody traces how it was that 'pure-and-simple' unionism would triumph by the end of the century despite the existence of a significant socialist minority in organized labor at that time. --Adapted from publisher description

An epic and riveting history of New York City on the edge of disaster--and an anatomy of the politics of austerity that continues to shape the world today. When the news broke in 1975 that New York City was on the brink of fiscal collapse, few believed it was possible: how could the capital of the financial world go bankrupt? And yet the city was billions of dollars--maybe twelve, maybe fourteen, no one even really knew how much--in the red. Bankers and politicians alike seized upon the situation as evidence that social liberalism, which New York famously exemplified, was doomed to failure--and promised apocalyptic scenarios if the city didn't fire thousands of workers, freeze wages, and slash social services.

In this vivid, gripping account, historian Kim Phillips-Fein tells the remarkable story of the crisis that engulfed the city, forever transforming the largest metropolis in the United States and reshaping ideas about government throughout the country. In doing so, she brings to life a radically different New York, the legendarily decrepit city of the 1970s. Drawing on never-before-used archival sources as well as interviews with key players in the crisis, Phillips-Fein guides us through the hairpin turns and sudden reversals that brought New York City to the edge of bankruptcy--and kept it from going over. At once a sweeping history of some of the most tumultuous times in the city's past, a colorful portrait of the unwieldy mechanics of municipal government, and an origin story of the politics of austerity, Fear City is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the resurgent fiscal conservatism of today."-- Provided by publisher

In the waning years of the nineteenth century, women journalists across the United States risked reputation and their own safety to expose the hazardous conditions under which many Americans lived and worked. In various disguises, they stole into sewing factories to report on child labor, fainted in the streets to test public hospital treatment, posed as lobbyists to reveal corrupt politicians. Inventive writers whose in-depth narratives made headlines for weeks at a stretch, these “girl stunt reporters” changed laws, helped launch a labor movement, championed women’s rights, and redefined journalism for the modern age.

The 1880s and 1890s witnessed a revolution in journalism as publisher titans like Hearst and Pulitzer used weapons of innovation and scandal to battle it out for market share. As they sought new ways to draw readers in, they found their answer in young women flooding into cities to seek their fortunes. When Nellie Bly went undercover into Blackwell’s Insane Asylum for Women and emerged with a scathing indictment of what she found there, the resulting sensation created opportunity for a whole new wave of writers. In a time of few jobs and few rights for women, here was a path to lives of excitement and meaning.

After only a decade of headlines and fame, though, these trailblazers faced a vicious public backlash. Accused of practicing “yellow journalism,” their popularity waned until “stunt reporter” became a badge of shame. But their influence on the field of journalism would arc across a century, from the Progressive Era “muckraking” of the 1900s to the personal “New Journalism” of the 1960s and ’70s, to the “immersion journalism” and “creative nonfiction” of today. Bold and unconventional, these writers changed how people would tell stories forever.

"Why has the labor movement in the United States been so weak and politically conservative in comparison to movements in Western Europe? Kim Voss rejects traditional interpretations--theories of ?American exceptionalism?--which attribute this distinctiveness to inherent characteristics of American society. On the contrary, she demonstrates, the American labor movement had much in common with its English and French counterparts for most of the nineteenth century. Only with the collapse of the Knights of Labor, the largest American labor organization of the century, did the U.S. movement take a different path." -- Provided by publisher

African Americans' long campaign for “the right to fight” forced Harry Truman to issue his 1948 executive order calling for equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces. In War! What Is It Good For?, Kimberley Phillips examines how blacks' participation in the nation’s wars after Truman’s order and their protracted struggles for equal citizenship galvanized a vibrant antiwar activism that reshaped their struggles for freedom. Using an array of sources ― from newspapers and government documents to literature, music, and film ― and tracing the period from World War II to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Phillips considers how federal policies that desegregated the military also maintained racial, gender, and economic inequalities. Since 1945, the nation’s need for military labor, blacks' unequal access to employment, and discriminatory draft policies have forced black men into the military at disproportionate rates. While mainstream civil rights leaders considered the integration of the military to be a civil rights success, many black soldiers, veterans, and antiwar activists perceived war as inimical to their struggles for economic and racial justice and sought to reshape the civil rights movement into an antiwar black freedom movement. Since the Vietnam War, Phillips argues, many African Americans have questioned linking militarism and war to their concepts of citizenship, equality, and freedom.

primary source items from the King Institute. There is a search tab for more options.