Labor History Links

This monument, created by artist Elliot Offner, was dedicated to mailworkers on the hundreth anniversary of the NALC

tells the story of the 1970 general strike of postal workers, told mostly from the perspective of the letter carriers involved. The wildcat Postal strike that began on March 18, 1970 signaled the end of collective begging and the beginning of collective bargaining that raised hundreds of thousands of postal workers, craft and management, from poverty level wages to middle class wage earners.The members of each NALC Branch that made the decision to engage in the illegal strike against the United States Government, since the USPS was a government agency at that lime, reached a final decision with great trepidation following a serious and difficult debate between senior and junior union members.

On that faithful day in March NALC Branch 36 NY, Branch 41 Brooklyn, Long Island Branch 6000 as well as branches In New Jersey, supported by APWU postal clerks, staged an illegal work stoppage. At its peak over 200,000 letter carriers went on strike that included letter carriers from throughout the country --from Paul Daniels, Union Courier, March 2014

Digitial labor journal of this major AFL union from 1890-1891

Located on the Ohio River near West Virginia. East Liverpool was a small trade post that soon gained a reputation for its many potteries. The deposits of yellow clay nearby attracted James Bennett, the first of East Liverpool’s potters, and many others in the trade, primarily English immigrants. Rather than compete with the other major group of unionized potters in Trenton, New Jersey, the potters of East Liverpool withdrew from the Knights of Labor in 1890 to begin a new organization, the National Brotherhood of Operative Potters. By 1938, the National Brotherhood of Operative Potters had seen a steady increase in membership in East Liverpool and its surrounding locale, and would eventually become the center of unionized potters in the United States and Canada. Even as tastes in pottery shifted away from the nearby yellow clay to white clay that had to be shipped in from out of state, East Liverpool’s numerous historically important potteries and convenient waterway access enabled it to retain enough notoriety to be known as the “Pottery Capital of the World,” or simply “Crockery City.”

The Potters Herald probably began publishing on April 19, 1899 under A. S. Hughes and T. J. Duffy, president and secretary of the National Brotherhood of Operative Potters to cover the interests of professional potters. Soon after, it was adopted as the official organ of the Brotherhood. Eventually the East Liverpool Trades and Labor Council joined as a sponsor, of which potters were likely already a large component. The Potters Herald appears to have maintained its name throughout the years and had no known competitors. A Thursday weekly comprised of a regular six pages, the Potters Herald published news related to union and labor. Many of its articles were based in Chicago or Washington D.C., although it regularly announced local events too. The Potters Herald also reported on War Labor Board policies and unionists’ reactions to those policies during World War II. The War Labor Board imposed restrictions on unions’ abilities to strike during a time when boosted production was necessary to supply war materials. After these restrictions were lifted and many workers were laid off, strikes resumed. Due to membership declines following these struggles, the Potters Herald downsized to a monthly in the 1970s, and finally closed in 1982.

13 minute film dramatizing child labor, Children Who Labor was directed by the openly radical Ashley Miller and written by his wife, the actress Ethel Browning. Its political argument is hung on a credibility-straining family melodrama featuring an industrialist who shuns photographic evidence put before him by an NCLC investigator (who is unobtrusively gathering information at the far left in the opening shot). The industrialist’s wife, by contrast, is shocked and sympathetic.

When their young daughter gets lost during a train trip through a factory town (the location was Paterson, New Jersey), she’s taken in by an immigrant family—probably meant to be Italian—that has found mill work only for their elder daughter. The lost child too joins the workforce, and “fate” leads the industrialist, after he buys the mill, to unknowingly become his daughter’s employer.

This gallery expands the story of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike. New videos feature Rev. James Lawson and T.O. Jones, who courageously waged the battle on behalf of striking sanitation workers. The iconic strikers with the "I Am a Man" signs and the garbage truck from the original exhibition are here. Film documenting the sanitation strike is projected upon the garbage truck. New to the exhibit is the Mountaintop Theatre, showing the powerful "Mountaintop" speech, the last one Dr. King gave the evening before he died.

Noted as one of the nation's premier heritage and cultural museums, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, is steadfast in its mission to share the culture and lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement and explore how this significant era continues to shape equality and freedom globally.

This timeline is the central tool for the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) “We Make History” political education curriculum. History helps us to understand current conditions, learn from the courage and resilience of our movement ancestors, and continue to build a powerful, multiracial alliance grounded in a shared commitment to combating all forms of oppression.

This is the official bibliography for LAWCHA’s Teaching and Public Sector Unionism initiative. A full listing of our resources can be found on the Teaching Resources page. For an overview of teachers’ unions, see our featured

4 NEA Oral histories conducted by Vakil Smallen, archivist for the NEA, between January 19th and May 5th, 2017. Interviewees include: John Dunlop was elected president of the Birmingham Education Association (BEA) in 1967 and hired by the National Education Association (NEA) in 1970. He began his career at NEA by doing field work before he joined the Office of Negotiation. He worked directly with local NEA affiliates who were involved in negotiations, bargaining, and strikes. Dale Lestina worked for the National Education Association (NEA) from 1968 through 1999, mostly with the Legislative Department. For most of his career, he was the NEA's Chief Lobbyist. Richard Nuanes worked at the National Education Association from 1976 through 2010, splitting his time between Legal Services and Conference and Facilities Management. Ken Melley worked at the National Education Association (NEA) from 1968 through 1997. His career began as an organizer of teachers to support collective bargaining initiatives. In 1979, he became the Political Director of NEA. He was also the founder of the Uniserv program and oversaw the NEA's Political Action Committee (NEAPAC). See https://searcharchives.library.gwu.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/430211 for citation information.

National Labor Tribune was published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, beginning in 1874.
It is available here on google newspapers, but the interface takes some effort. 1876-1883, 1887-1889, 1899-1906 are available at this site.

Founded by Thomas A. Armstrong of Pittsburg in 1874, Greenback candidate for governor of Pennyslvania. Credited with 10,000 subscribers in the 1870s, there is much coverage of miners and steel workers in this newspaper.

National Park Foundation and National Park Service are working together to expand storytelling at parks to share a more comprehensive history of the U.S., including the contributions and stories of forced laborers, enslaved people, and advocates of the labor movement. The histories of work and working people help us explore the lives of a broader range of individuals – each with their own labor history to share – and invite us to imagine a better future.

National Park Service highlights only

The history of the labor movement and the fight for better working conditions is preserved in the stories of our national parks.

Terms like “slave stampede” or “stampede of slaves” began appearing in American newspapers in the late 1840s, as a way to describe larger groups of Black freedom seekers moving together toward liberation, sometimes armed and ready to defend themselves.

Both Northern and Southern newspapers tended to portray these group escapes as powerful forms of mobile insurrections. The term spread quickly during the fugitive crisis of the 1850s, and eventually became a staple of the sectional debate.

This website contains over 1,000 newspaper articles and hundreds of other primary sources detailing nearly 200 attempted stampedes mainly from across the Upper South between 1847 and 1865.

Our initial focus (2018-23) has been on eastern Missouri and the numerous group escapes that occurred across the Missouri borderlands. In our second phase (2022-25), we will be focusing on similar antebellum era and wartime stampedes from across Kentucky and its borderlands. Slave stampedes are not well known today and clearly have been underestimated as a concept for classroom study and historic preservation. Yet the recurring specter of large group escapes should be regarded as one of the more potent Black-led contributions to the destruction of American slavery.. Contains a useful timeline, and other materials

200 events on the Timeline with brief notes about each event, compiled by labor historian Jeffrey Johnson

Link to NPS site that depicts their efforts toward telling the labor history story in National Parks. THe sites profiled are Cesar Chavez Monument, Pullman, West Virginia Mine Wars,

The NPBM preserves and interprets the history of pearl button manufacturing in the United States, focusing on the contribution of the workers, entrepreneurs, and mussels of Muscatine, Iowa.

In 1892, owner Andrew Carnegie and his plant manager Henry Clay Frick decided to break the steelworkers union at the Carnegie Steel Company plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Frick locked out the steelworkers and hired 300 armed guards from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to protect non-union strikebreakers. When the Pinkertons arrived on barges, armed steelworkers defeated them in a bloody pitched battle. Later, however, the state militia supported Carnegie, and the strike—along with the union—was broken. The National Police Gazette portrayed the July 6, 1892, fight between striking workers and Pinkerton strike-breakers on the Monongahela River. A national weekly directed to male readers, many of whom were workers, the Police Gazette occasionally covered labor conflict, expressing sympathy toward strikers while also exploiting the more sensational aspects of the events.

Museum also features virtual tours. Since Pullman was declared a National Park Service site, this museum is being enhanced. see multiple links, online through menu. Located at 10406 S. Maryland Ave. Chicago, IL 60628 <strong>MUSEUM ENTRANCE: 817 E. 104th Street </strong>104th Street (Between Corliss and Maryland)The museum exists for the purpose of providing educational and cultural enrichment for all of mankind. All activities, past, present and future are for the purposes and objectives of facilitating study, through the preservation,multimedia programming interpretation,the enjoyment of African-American history and culture.

National Women's Trade Union League journal, full run.
The National Women’s Trade Union League of America (NWTUL) was established in Boston, MA in 1903, at the convention of the American Federation of Labor.
It was organized as a coalition of working-class women, professional reformers, and women from wealthy and prominent families. Its purpose was to “assist in the organization of women wage workers into trade unions and thereby to help them secure conditions necessary for healthful and efficient work and to obtain a just reward for such work.”
The League grew from 1907 and 1922. Let by Margaret Dreier Robins it organized secured protective legislation, and educated the public on labor rights.

A wide-ranging, powerful, alternative vision of the history of the United States and how the slave-breeding industry shaped it. The American Slave Coast tells the horrific story of how the slavery business in the United States made the reproductive labor of "breeding women" essential to the expansion of the nation. The book shows how slaves' children, and their children's children, were human savings accounts that were the basis of money and credit. This was so deeply embedded in the economy of the slave states that it could only be decommissioned by Emancipation, achieved through the bloodiest war in the history of the United States. The American Slave Coast is an alternative history of the United States that presents the slavery business, as well as familiar historical figures and events, in a revealing new light"

"This is a history of struggle, revolution and social change: of hominins, hunters and herders; of emperors and slaves; of patriarchs and women; of rich and poor; of dictators and revolutionaries. From the ancient empires of Persia and Rome to the Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, and the 2008 crash, this is a history of greed and violence, but also of solidarity and resistance.
Hunters and farmers, c. 7 million-3000 BP
The first class societies, c. 3000-1000 BC
Ancient empires, c. 1000-30 BC
The end of antiquity, c 30 BC-AD 650
The medieval world, c. AD 650-1500
European feudalism, c. AD 650-1500
The first wave of bourgeois revolutions 1517-1660
Absolutist Europe and capitalist globalisation 1660-1775
The second wave of bourgeois revolutions, 1775-1815
The rise of industrial capitalism, c. 1750-1850
The age of blood and iron 1848-1873
Imperialism and war, 1873-1918
The revolutionary wave, 1917-1928
The Great Depression and the rise of fascism, 1929-1939
World War and Cold War, 1939-1967
The world on fire 1968-1975
The new world disorder, 1975-2008
Capitalism's greatest crisis? The early twenty-first century
Conclusion: Making the future

This collection explores how migrations across South Asia have shaped key aspects of globalization since the 1830s. With original research from colonial India, Fiji, Mexico, South Africa, North America and the Middle East, the essays explore indentured labour and its legacies, law as a site of regulation and historical biography. Showcasing a world history outside empire and nation, this book presents histories from below with global implications"-- Provided by publisher

The period of American history between 1877 and 1919 is often misunderstood as a boring time when nothing really happened. This is not indirectly brought about through excessively complex and abstract economic theory about money supply, sometimes bland political theater, and the gravity of the Civil War/Reconstruction and World War One have upon our national consciousness. Plus, how much of this period weighs upon the lives of us today? This last point is often brought up by students, and my answer to that is both: "a helluva lot!" and "does that really matter?" A diverse nation of people struggling with massive political, technological, and economic changes is not unworthy of study, and the various purposes of history to both instruct us about what it means to be a human being and guide us in times when our innate thoughts do little in that regard hold true here. I would highly recommend this work to anyone interested in this period of history and to anyone who is interested in history in general. A fascinating look at how politics, economic theory, racial theory, technological change, diversity, political and economic self-determination, empowerment, cultural definitions, definition of citizenship, and the effects and causes of major military conflicts affect people in their own time and place is hardly simple to compress into a readable book, but it reads fluidly and has a argumentative force to dispel any confusion that this this period could ever be "boring". For my students in high school, it may not be effective as a textbook, but could easily be more compelling than any simplification provided by their standard text.