This Day in History

May 11, 1894: Pullman Strike

Time Periods: 1877
Themes: Labor

The Pullman, both the man and the town, is an ulcer on the body politic. He owns the houses, the schoolhouses, and churches of God in the town he gave his once humble name. And thus the merry war—the dance of skeletons bathed in human tears — goes on, and it will go on, brothers, forever, unless you, the American Railway Union, stop it; end it; crush it out — railway strikers in their appeal to the American Railway Union. — from statement from a Pullman striker, June 1894 Chicago convention of the American Railway Union (ARU)

Pullman strikers outside Arcade Building in Pullman, Chicago with the Illinois National Guard guarding the building in 1894.

The major Pullman Strike began May 11, 1894.

Learn more from the Northern Illinois Digital Library.

Here are resources for teaching outside the textbook about labor history.