By Ricardo Levins Morales. Click image to order poster. Please do not reprint without permission of artist.
At a moment when politicians aligned with the MAGA movement are banning books, restricting curriculum, and attacking educators for teaching honest history, May Day offers a powerful example of the kind of story they don’t want told — and the kind of story we must fight to protect and keep telling if we are to build a more just world.
That effort to control history is not abstract. In Lowell, Massachusetts, a film about the city’s mill workers — women and girls who organized some of the earliest labor protests in U.S. history — was removed from a National Park site following a Trump administration directive. The film was censored because it tells the story of workers organizing and challenging exploitation — history that makes clear ordinary people can confront corporate power and win.
In much of the world, May 1 — International Workers’ Day — is recognized as a public holiday — won through generations of struggle and marked by marches, strikes, and mass demonstrations. The holiday traces back to 1886, when hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States launched a coordinated movement to reduce working hours from grueling 10–16 hour days to an eight-hour workday. On May 1, workers walked off the job in cities across the country, making one of the largest strikes in U.S. history.
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In Chicago, the movement reached a turning point during a rally in support of striking workers that led to the Haymarket Affair. After a bomb was thrown by an unknown person, police opened fire on the crowd, and in the days that followed, labor leaders were arrested, tried without evidence, and several were executed.
The Haymarket martyrs became international symbols of the struggle for workers’ rights, and in their honor, socialist and labor movements around the world declared May 1 a day of worker solidarity. In country after country, workers organized to win recognition of May Day as a public holiday — often through strikes, mass demonstrations, and sustained political struggle. But in the United States, where May Day was born, for far too long it has been absent from public life and classrooms. As historian Peter Linebaugh explains, there has been a “manufactured ignorance that prevents us from knowing about May Day.”
That erasure was not accidental. After the events of 1886, political leaders worked to distance the labor movement from its more radical roots. President Grover Cleveland helped establish Labor Day in September as a safer alternative, while decades later Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 “Law Day,” further obscuring a holiday born in worker resistance.
The result is a stark contradiction: While workers around the globe commemorate May Day, in the country of its origin, it has been pushed to the margins of public memory. But this year, the labor movement is challenging that organized forgetting.
Across the country, people are planning mass May Day actions to revive the holiday’s roots in collective struggle — and to confront the growing power of billionaires, authoritarian politics, and attacks on public education and democratic rights. This moment is part of a broader movement — building on the legacy of labor organizing, the immigrant rights movement, and the uprisings for Black lives, and echoing campaigns like No Kings — pushing back against fascism, corporate control, and the censorship of history itself. Educators have a crucial role to play: not only by teaching the truth about May Day, but by joining and supporting the organizing efforts unfolding in their communities.
Why May Day Matters Today
Teaching about May Day is not just about the past. It helps students make sense of the present. The massive immigrant rights demonstrations of 2006 — “A Day Without Immigrants” — helped revive May Day as a day of protest in the United States, linking labor rights with immigrant justice. That rebellious spirit continues to shape organizing today. From the UAW Stand Up Strike, where auto workers used targeted walkouts to win historic gains, to Amazon Labor Union organizers fighting for safer conditions and higher wages, to Starbucks Workers United leading strikes and union drives across the country, the spirit of May Day lives on. Educators, too, have been at the forefront of this resurgence — from historic strikes by teachers in Chicago and Los Angeles, to the wave of educator strikes in states dominated by Republican legislators known as the Red for Ed movement.
In Chicago this year, that connection between teaching and organizing is especially clear. The Chicago Teachers Union fought to make May Day a day of civic action in public schools — winning the right for students and educators to attend rallies, learn the history of labor struggles, and put that knowledge into practice. It’s a powerful reminder that education is not just about studying the past, but about preparing students to take part in shaping the future.
When students learn this history, they begin to see that rights are not simply granted — they are won through collective struggle. They come to understand the importance of labor rights: the right to a living wage, to safe working conditions, to rest, and to dignity on the job. They also come to understand that while workers can protest in many ways, there is a unique power in withholding labor. When workers strike, they reveal a fundamental truth: that their labor is the source of all wealth and they have the power to disrupt an entire economic system built on their exploitation.
Bringing May Day into the Classroom
The Zinn Education Project offers lessons and resources to help students explore the history and meaning of May Day. These lessons invite students not just to learn history, but to question it, debate it, and connect it to their own lives.
With honest education under attack, teaching the truth about May Day is an act of resistance. In a moment when those in power are working to erase or sanitize the history of labor struggles, teaching this history becomes even more urgent. When students learn about May Day, they learn that solidarity can cross lines of race, language, and nationality. They learn that injustice can be confronted. And they learn that ordinary people have always fought to transform their conditions — and that they can, too.
Take Action This May Day
On International Workers’ Day (May 1) there will be a national May Day Strong strike and protest. To prepare, we offer free resources on labor history, boycotts, and strikes, including selected “This Day in People’s History” stories, and our #TeachTruth campaign resources.
Here are five ways to participate.
Teach the history of May Day and hold teach-ins
Bring this history into your classroom or community. Use our lessons (see below) in the classroom, organize a lunchtime teach-in, or invite students to research and present on labor struggles past and present.
Bring the Teach Truth message to May Day events
We need to reach as many people as possible with information about the chilling effect of the anti-history education laws and encourage everyone to defend the freedom to learn.
Host a Play Date at the Protest (organized by Public School Strong)
Public School Strong offers a free toolkit to engage families on May Day and demand support for “Kids Over Corporations.”
Participate in job actions or other union activities
Stand with educators and workers organizing for dignity and justice through the National Education Association toolkit.
Start a study group on Teachers Unions and Social Justice
Get several educators together for a monthly reading circle on Teachers Unions and Social Justice — then put your ideas into practice with collective action to transform your union.
Lessons: Labor History
Reading the Sharecroppers’ Voice during an outdoor union meeting in 1937.
The Zinn Education Project offers a collection of free lessons on labor history from the teaching guide by Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond, The Power in Our Hands.
This curriculum offers lesson instructions and handouts to introduce students to the:
“scientific management,”
the impact of racism on labor organizing,
and more.
The lesson, Deportations on Trial: Mexican Americans During the Great Depression introduces students to the mass deportations during the Great Depression with parallels today. Also see the interactive website: Mapping Deportations: Unmasking the History of Racism in U.S. Immigration Enforcement.
Lessons: Boycotts and Repression
We offer a lesson on the Montgomery Bus Boycott and two lessons to help students prepare for the types of repression that might be used against May Day organizers, incuding Red Scare tactics.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Understanding the Organizing Tradition
This lesson expands students’ knowledge of how Black Montgomery secured a victory in the 1955–56 bus boycott by asking them to pay close attention to activists’ tactics — and what they did as white resistance mounted.
Legalize Black Education: The Long Fight for the Right to Learn
This lesson explores major examples of laws passed to suppress Black education in the wake of major victories for the Black Freedom Struggle, highlighting the historical context and motivations behind these legislative efforts. Also available: Gallery walk with quotes from the lesson so you can bring this activity to community events and protests.
Subversives: Stories from the Red Scare
In this mixer lesson, students meet targets of government Red Scare harassment and repression used against the labor movement and the Black Freedom Struggle.
Lesson: America 250
On this 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, we offer lessons to teach truthfully about the Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution.
“We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect?
A lesson to help students consider not just what the Constitution says, but what it leaves out, including with regard to labor rights.
This Day in People’s History
Below are a few labor history events from a collection of many more in our This Day in People’s History collection.
July 19, 1881: Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike
Black women in Atlanta who washed clothes for a living organized an effective Reconstruction-era strike — with demands, strategic timing, and door-to-door canvassing.
They sought higher pay, respect, and autonomy over their work and established a uniform rate at $1 per dozen pounds of wash. With the help of Black ministers throughout the city, they held a mass meeting and called a strike to achieve higher pay at the uniform rate.
May 4, 1886: Haymarket Tragedy
A peaceful demonstration in Chicago for the eight-hour day ended in tragedy when the police barged in, and a bomb exploded.
Although no one knew who threw the bomb, eight labor organizers, all known anarchists, were blamed and tried for conspiracy.
May 14, 1913: Longshore Strike in Philadelphia
More than four thousand Philadelphia longshoremen, who loaded and unloaded ships, went on strike and shut down one of the busiest ports in the United States. During their two-week strike, they joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a revolutionary union deeply committed to racial equality and socialism.
As members of Local 8 (of the IWW’s Marine Transport Workers industrial union), they were led by Ben Fletcher — a brilliant organizer, humorous speaker, and the most prominent African American in the IWW.
Jan. 31, 1938: Emma Tenayuca Leads Pecan Sheller Strike
12,000 pecan shellers, mostly Mexican American women, marched out of the factories in San Antonio to demand better working conditions and higher wages. They unanimously elected Emma Tenayuca as their strike leader.
Years later, as a result of anti-Mexican, anti-Communist, and anti-union propaganda, Tenayuca was forced to leave Texas to ensure her safety and well-being. Eventually, she returned to San Antonio and became a teacher.
Profiles: Women in Labor History
Textbooks and media often ignore women’s activism in labor history, despite the many roles women have played to organize, unionize, rally, document, and inspire workers.
From championing better workplace conditions to cutting back the 12-hour day to demanding equal pay across racial lines, these are just a few of the women who have contributed to the labor movement. Learn more.
Books: Labor and Organizing for K–12
Here is a list from Social Justice Books of recommended titles for pre-K–12 and background reading for educators on labor history and labor organizing.
Films
These “films with a conscience” list includes 11 films about labor history and organizing.
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Ah, May Day—a day steeped in the rich history of labor struggles and triumphs. This article from the Zinn Education Project offers invaluable resources to commemorate International Workers’ Day, highlighting the significance of the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. By providing free lessons on labor history, the project empowers educators to illuminate the enduring power of collective action. Such initiatives ensure that the sacrifices and victories of workers are neither forgotten nor marginalized.