Labor History Links

An activist, coal miner, and educator, Kipp Dawson organized on the frontlines of nearly every major freedom struggle in the second half of the 20th century through the early 21st century. She participated in and helped to lead some of the largest and most well-known sit-ins, rallies, marches, and campaigns that led to crucial victories. Yet the movements sustained constant defeats and setbacks, and Dawson’s own social identities – as a lesbian, Jewish, working-class woman, from a multi-racial family – frequently meant she faced government surveillance, harassment, and intra-movement bigotry. Using peer-reviewed scholarship as well as interactive tools from the digital humanities, Kipp Dawson: The Struggle is the Victory documents her lifetime of work.

This public history site offers a multimedia, open educational resource authored by students, staff, and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham University, Emory University, and West Virginia University. The collaboration brings together a group of researchers, independent scholars, and technologists across generations, institutions, and disciplinary backgrounds. Our goal is to provide access to Dawson’s story through her own words, writing, photographs, documents, and movement ephemera as well as historical context and analysis. Using an intersectional, feminist lens to view the remarkable breadth and depth of Dawson’s coalitional activism, we suggest a re-thinking of leadership within social movements.

This pathbreaking study examines the radical Left in Puerto Rico from the final years of Spanish colonial rule into the 1920s. Positioning Puerto Rico within the context of a regional anarchist network that stretched from Puerto Rico and Cuba to Tampa, Florida, and New York City,

Kirwin R. Shaffer illustrates how anarchists linked their struggle to the broader international anarchist struggles against religion, governments, and industrial capitalism. Their groups, plays, fiction, speeches, and press accounts--as well as the newspapers that they published--were central in helping to develop an anarchist vision for Puerto Ricans at a time when the island was a political no-man's-land, neither an official U.S. colony or state nor an independent country. Exploring the rise of artisan and worker-based centers to develop class consciousness,

Shaffer follows the island's anarchists as they cautiously joined the AFL-linked Federación Libre de Trabajadores, the largest labor organization in Puerto Rico. Critiquing the union from within, anarchists worked with reformers while continuing to pursue a more radical agenda achieved by direct action rather than parliamentary politics. Shaffer also traces anarchists' alliances with freethinkers seeking to reform education, progressive factions engaged in attacking the Church and organized religion, and the emerging Socialist movement on the island in the 1910s.

The most successful anarchist organization to emerge in Puerto Rico--he Bayamón Bloc--ounded El Comunista, the longest-running, most financially successful anarchist newspaper in the island's history. Stridently attacking U.S. militarism and interventionism in the Caribbean Basin, the newspaper found growing distribution throughout and financial backing from Spanish-speaking anarchist groups in the United States.

Shaffer demonstrates how the U.S. government targeted the Bayamón anarchists during the Red Scare and forced the closure of their newspaper in 1921, effectively unraveling the anarchist movement on the island."--Publisher's website

Historians of immigration and ethnicity in the United States have typically devoted little attention to Greek Americans compared to the extensive historical literature produced about their Irish, Italian, and German counterparts. From acclaimed historian Kostis Karpozilos, Red America provides a deeply researched correction to Western perspectives on Greek American interaction with social, political, and economic change. Focusing on the history of the Greek American Left from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Cold War, this volume uncovers the threads that bound notions of radical social change to the everyday experiences of immigrants, tracing ethnic radicalism from the boundaries of a specific community to the epicenter of American social and political history"-- Provided by publisherContents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1
Radicals of Two Worlds
Chapter 2
Americanizing Communism
Chapter 3
Crisis and Revolution
Chapter 4
Turmoil and Compromise
Chapter 5
Planning the Future
Chapter 6
Cold War Nation
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

This lesson is intended to help students examine the history of labor unions and their efforts to support andprotect workers. The lesson begins with an introductionof the labor movement in the early twentieth century.
Using primary and secondary sources from the Seattle General Strike of 1919, students will learn about the causes of the strike and how people joined together to fight for their convictions. Students will also investigate why the strike eventually collapsed and how much change actuallyvoccurred. They will then compare and contrast this strike toanother labor conflict.
To access all documents and materials in one package go to https://nhd.org/en/by-topic/building-a-more-perfect-union/
OBJECTIVES
At the conclusion of this activity, students will be able to
› Understand a brief history of the labor movement and
the historical situation of 1919;
› Explain the causes of the Seattle General Strike and its
outcomes;
› Determine the long-term impacts of the strike; and
› Compare this event with another labor conflict to explore
patterns of continuity and change over time.

Union organizer and balladeer Ella May became a martyr for workers nationwide when she was murdered on her way to a union meeting in Gastonia, North Carolina, at age 28. A mother of nine and bookkeeper for the communist-led National Textile Workers Union, May worked to organize fellow mill workers in Gaston County. Her efforts to organize black workers—along with her brash, outspoken manner—incensed the local community and she was shot by an anti-union vigilante group on September 14, 1929. Written by her great-granddaughter, this book tells Ella May’s story, including her involvement in the Loray Mill Strike, the largest communist-led strike on American soil. Her most famous ballad, “Mill Mother’s Lament,” reveals her motivation: “It is for our little children.”
Introduction 1
Prologue: The Legend 21
1. The Beginning 27
2. The Mills 37
3. A Primed Situation 56
4. The 1929 Strike 69
5. The Music 130
6. The Shooting 147
7. Aftermath 156
Appendix: The Ballads 189
Chapter Notes 207

Kristy Nabhan-Warren spent more than seven years interviewing Iowans-native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia alike. In Meatpacking America, she portrays the gritty realities of a Midwest that is a global hub for migration and food production-and also for religion. Here, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. Speaking from the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, bustling places of worship, and modest homes across vast flatlands dotted with confined animal feeding operations and processing plants, both native born and newly arrived Iowans explain their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. At the same time, their stories reveal how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation of migrants and common racial biases

We are historians, labor educators, and working-class activists who seek to promote public and scholarly awareness of labor and working-class history through research, writing, and organizing.
We are open to the widest possible variety of approaches to the subject of labor and working-class history.
We have a demographically, regionally, and internationally diverse membership and leadership. Our Members
We have developed mutually supportive relationships with existing regional, state, and local labor studies and labor history societies in the United States and other countries. We have developed equally important relationships with unions and community organizations.
We promote labor and working-class history within the history and social studies curricula in public schools as well as at community colleges, colleges, universities, and unions.

Conversation (2023) with Ahmed White about Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers

In 2023, Margot Canaday and her new book Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2023) were featured for LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History's Big Book Forum. Queer Career is a groundbreaking study of how sexual minorities experienced and navigated the US workforce in the second half of the twentieth century. By combining LGBTQ history and labor history, Canaday rewrites our understanding of both and helps us better understand the recent history of capitalism and the queer past.

The 2023 Book Forum was be moderated by Shennette Garrett-Scott and commentaries provided by Julio Capó Jr., Christopher Phelps, Joshua Hollands, Christina Hanhardt, and Lisa Levenstein.

The poultry processing industry in El Dorado, Arkansas, was an economic powerhouse in the latter half of the twentieth century. It was the largest employer in the interconnected region of South Arkansas and North Louisiana surrounding El Dorado, and the fates of many related companies and farms depended on its continued financial success. We Just Keep Running the Line is the story of the rise of the poultry processing industry in El Dorado and the labor force -- composed primarily of black women -- upon which it came to rely.

At a time when agricultural jobs were in decline and Louisiana stood at the forefront of rising anti-welfare sentiment, much of the work available in the area went to men, driving women into less attractive, labor-intensive jobs. LaGuana Gray argues that the justification for placing African American women in the lowest-paying and most dangerous of these jobs, like poultry processing, derives from longstanding mischaracterizations of black women by those in power. In evaluating the perception of black women as "less" than white women -- less feminine, less moral, less deserving of social assistance, and less invested in their families' and communities' well-being -- Gray illuminates the often-exploitative nature of southern labor, the growth of the agribusiness model of food production, and the role of women of color in such food industries.

Using collected oral histories to allow marginalized women of color to tell their own stories and to contest and reshape narratives commonly used against them, We Just Keep Running the Line explores the physical and psychological toll this work took on black women, analyzing their survival strategies and their fight to retain their humanity in an exploitative industry.

During the early twentieth century, a diverse group of African American women carved out unique niches for themselves within New York City's expansive informal economy. LaShawn Harris illuminates the labor patterns and economic activity of three perennials within this kaleidoscope of underground industry: sex work, numbers running for gambling enterprises, and the supernatural consulting business. Mining police and prison records, newspaper accounts, and period literature, Harris teases out answers to essential questions about these women and their working lives. She also offers a surprising revelation, arguing that the burgeoning underground economy served as a catalyst in working-class black women (tm)s creation of the employment opportunities, occupational identities, and survival strategies that provided them with financial stability and a sense of labor autonomy and mobility. At the same time, urban black women, all striving for economic and social prospects and pleasures, experienced the conspicuous and hidden dangers associated with newfound labor opportunities."--Publisher description

canal workers, Ohio, music

The Labadie Collection is named for Detroit labor organizer and anarchist Jo Labadie, who donated his personal library of books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and memorabilia to the university in 1911.There are over 1700 photos in this collection, searchable and organized alphabetically.

The Joseph A. Labadie Collection contains posters which have been acquired over the past 100 years. These 200 + linked as labor oriented are selected here. This larger database consists of images of those posters covering social protest movements such as Anarchism, Civil Liberties, Colonialism, Communism, Ecology, Labor, Pacifism, Sexual Freedom, Socialism, Women, and Youth/Student Protest. Some are from the first half of the 20th century, but the majority are from the 1960s and later. Many are undated. All originals are held in the Joseph A. Labadie Collection.

We are pleased to provide high resolution files for a selection of these posters in the public domain, that is posters for which there is no copyright. These files may be used for any purpose without permission of any sort though attribution is welcome and consistent with academic norms.

Labor Age was a left-labor monthly magazine published by the Labor Publication Society from 1921-1933. It succeeded the Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

Labor Age aligned with the League for Industrial Democracy, and during 1929-33 the magazine was affiliated with the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) with A. J. Muste playing a prominent role.

Other important figures associated with Labor Age were James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, and Louis Budenz. The magazine advocated industrial unionism, economic planning and the nationalization of industries. It was also a major promoter of the workers education movement. As the CPLA radicalized with the deepening Depression, Labor Age radicalized to the left with it.

This directory updates work done in the early 1990s by the Wagner Labor Archives in New York City. A survey then conducted identified "archivists, librarians, and labor union staff who are collecting manuscripts, audio-visual materials, and artifacts that document the history of the trade union movement in the United States." Similarly, this directory includes repositories with partial holdings relating to labor and workers, as well as repositories whose entire holdings pertain to labor. Known updates were made in 2002, 2010 (James Quigel, editor), 2011 (Traci Drummond, editor), 2014, 2016, 2019 (Conor Casey, editor).

The directory is organized by state, then by repository, with Canadian repositories listed last. Please contact the Labor Archives Section Directory Working Group of the Society of American Archivists, if you have additions, comments, corrections, or questions at lasdirectory@gmail.com. You can also complete the directory entry request form, and the working group will draft a new entry for you based on the information you provide.

143 items from obscure to well-known, posters, leaflets, art, photos and other ephemera

LaborArts presents powerful images to further understanding of the past and present lives of working people. Our events and contests expand on this effort. The site includes curated Exhibits on particular subjects; the Collection, where one can search images from exhibits and other sources; and Events, a place for updates on talks in the “Art and Activism” series, the “Making Work Visible” writing contest for CUNY students, and the Clara Lemlich Awards (held every spring).

The range of images included in Labor Arts is broad:
photographs, posters, buttons, banners and flyers – images of artifacts that may not have been created as art but have artistic value
paintings, sculpture and other fine art that is about work and workers
art and artifacts that have been generated by working people
We gather, identify and display images of these cultural artifacts in order to encourage more people in this country and around the world to appreciate the history of work and working people. The labor movement is a critical part of the story – although not the whole story.

The exhibits each focus on a specific subject or theme; a full list can be found here. An alternative way to find images on this site browse or search the collection – which contains most of the images from the exhibits as well as a wealth of additional items. A small sample:

When W.E.B. Du Bois founded The Crisis magazine in 1910 there was little discussion of visuals – but the monthly publication from the fledgling National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was rich with drawings, political cartoons, photographs and prints. These extraordinary images illustrate the central role art played in Du Bois’ and the NAACP’s struggle to change minds.

Unlike images of African Americans in other magazines, the visuals he published were generated from a black perspective. The artwork is almost always directly tied to important political and social issues of the day, yet it also reflects Du Bois’ attempt to help build a collective memory for black people beyond that shaped by the white-dominated culture they lived within.

Art in Crisis: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and Memory, by Amy Kirschke (Indiana University Press, 2007) provides an in depth discussion of the issues touched on here. We are grateful for the author’s work on this exhibit and her generous provision of the images to make this presentation possible. The exhibit selections include images from her book and beyond, some of them reproduced in color here for the first time. See Resources for more information.

Our exhibit depicts the relationship between photography and America's working population during the 1930s, 40s and early 50s -- a period of labor organization, strikes and turmoil in this country. The brief biographies of the photographers have clues about the political convictions many of them shared, at times revealed in the way they present the workers and their occupations

this is a digital exhibit with a series of vignettes about the response of the ILGWU to five key issues that have engaged the efforts of America's working people and their representative organizations during the century just completed. While the ILGWU has not been in the forefront in responding to each of these issues, it has played a leading role in all of them, and in some instances it has distinguished itself as labor's chief organizational representative. The exhibit is divided into themes of organizing, immigration, civil rights, health care and culture.

We offer here a small sampling of critical moments from the well known New York City campaigns, together with two lesser-known examples of successful organizing drives in widely separated areas of the country. One is a campaign in 1966-67 that successfully crossed racial barriers in Little Rock, Arkansas. The other is from Los Angeles during the 1970s, when a remarkable group of women organizers, themselves immigrants, devised multi-lingual organizing materials that enabled them to organize the Spanish-speaking immigrants that the local county union leaders had considered unorganizable.

Drama, classical music and art are among the areas the ILGWU pioneered programs for its members. For example, beginning in the the 1930’s Labor Stage, a company of union workers, created the musical revue Pins and Needles, which ran for several years. The Union purchased large blocks of tickets which enabled members to hear outstanding artists including Leopold Stokowski of the American Symphony Orchestra. It also provided continuing opportunities for members to see great art such as the Raphael Soyer paintings of life around Union Square

Banners have been the communications method of choice for labor unions since their inception. So, too, for churches, fraternal organizations and political parties, among others. Sewn from cloth—cotton, silk, rayon—banners use words and symbols to tell stories of organizations and highlight key elements of their identities. Hung on a meeting room wall a banner helped to answer the question ”Who are we?“ Carried in a parade or at a protest rally it could answer passers by who wondered ”Who are they?“ and (at times) ”What do they want?“

We present in this initial exhibit four extraordinary banners from the nineteenth century and twenty seven garment industry banners from New York City in the twentieth century.

These American labor banners—neither as omnipresent nor as lavishly illustrated as those found in Great Britain—can be revealing if we read the clues sewn into the

17 minute video on the successful 1982 garment workers strike, when an estimated 20,000 members of Local 23-25 of the ILGWU—most of them Chinese immigrant women—walked off the job in protest.

As the official organ of the Florida Federation of Labor, the Citizen also worked to unite local branches and strengthen labor at the state and national levels. It covered major news from labor organizations throughout Florida, especially in Tampa, and statewide legislation and elections with an emphasis on voter registration and voting initiatives. From late 1940 until early 1942, the Citizen also included a four-page once-monthly “Florida Industrial Forum” section edited by Walter Hoyt which offered deeper coverage of industry, labor, and legislation in Florida, as well as the effects of national trends and federal policies on labor and industry in Florida.

In 1898 the United States acquired Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, after victory in the Spanish-Cuban-American War. After an initial military occupation, the United States granted Puerto Rico limited local autonomy. In 1917, the U.S. responded to local pressure for independence by declaring Puerto Ricans citizens of the United States—a “gift” that many Puerto Ricans resented. Large, corporate-financed sugar plantations transformed Puerto Rico’s agricultural economy and displaced thousands of subsistence farmers from their own land, forcing them into the rural wage labor force. These dramatic changes in the rural economy in the years before World War I pushed unemployment levels in Puerto Rico to crisis proportions. At the same time, American entry into the war created labor shortages in many industries on the mainland. This Labor Department bulletin from May 1918 set out plans for bringing more than 10,000 Puerto Rican laborers to the U.S. to work on war-related projects.