May 1: International Workers Day

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 11 pages.
This role play activity on the famous 1892 Homestead Strike, explores the possibility of solidarity among workers of very different backgrounds and at different levels in the workplace hierarchy.

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 12 pages.
Role play on farm labor organizing in the 1930s shows how racism had to be challenged to create effective worker alliances.

Song. By Joe Hill. 1910.
A classic labor song, reaching out to workers to around the world.

This International Workers’ Day — May 1st — comes in the midst of union victories at Amazon and Starbucks — and ever increasing challenges for frontline workers and teachers in the face of the ongoing pandemic.

Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. 184 pages.
Role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.

Book — Fiction. By Harriette Gillem Robinet. 2003. 142 pages.
Historical fiction chapter book on the Haymarket labor struggles and massacre.

Black women in Atlanta who washed clothes for a living organized an effective Reconstruction era strike — with clear demands, strategic timing, and door-to-door canvassing.

An explosion at the Banner Mine in Alabama killed 128 men, almost all of them African American prisoners of the state who were forced to work in the mine under the convict leasing system.

The Bread and Roses Strike began in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

IWW labor organizer Frank Little was lynched from a railroad trestle.

The Bogalusa Labor Massacre was an attack on interracial labor solidarity in Louisiana.

The Battle of Blair Mountain was the climax of two mine wars fought in the West Virginia coalfields.

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was launched in New York.

More than 1,000 streetcar workers went on strike in New Orleans.

The Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 was settled with union recognition and reinstatement for all fired workers.

Over 1,100 sanitation workers strike and march for better wages, conditions, and safety with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.

Teachers and administrators from the Florida Education Association (FEA) walked out in what is reported to be the first statewide teachers’ strike.

The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Postal Service began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan who were demanding better wages.