Labor Archives

Police use tear gas against participants in San Francisco’s 1934 general strike.

Who Made the New Deal? The Economic Recovery Conference Role Play

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
Through role play, students explore how different social groups influenced New Deal legislation.

Breadline at McAuley Water Street Mission under Brooklyn Bridge, New York, circa 1930.

What Caused the Great Depression? The Widget Boom Game

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools.
A simulation helps students understand the causes of economic crises.

The Green New Deal and Our Schools

Article. By the Rethinking Schools Editorial Board. Rethinking Schools, Summer 2019.
The Green New Deal will only be brought to life by people who grasp the enormity of the crisis that humanity faces and the radical changes necessary to address it. This requires that we teach a climate justice curriculum.

At the River I Stand

Film. Directed by David Appleby, Allison Graham, and Steven Ross. 1993. 58 minutes.
Documentary film on the African American sanitation workers' 1968 fight for human dignity and a living wage in Memphis.

Commemorate International Workers’ Day 2020

On this International Workers’ Day — May 1st — let’s remind ourselves of the importance of teaching our students about workers’ struggles for better lives. For dignity. For equality. For bread — and for roses.

Sept. 3, 1991: Fire at Food Processing Plant Kills 25 Workers

Chicken plant workers died when a preventable workplace “accident” trapped them in a burning building.

Dec. 26, 1907: New York City Rent Strike

Months of organizing work by 16-year-old Pauline Newman culminated in the start of the largest rent strike in New York City’s history.

9to5: The Story of a Movement

Film. Directed and produced by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar. Working Women Documentary Project LLC. 2021.
While Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" song is well known, this documentary captures the real-life 9-to-5 organizing to address issues of working women in the early 1970s that led to a union.

Kids on the March: 15 Stories of Speaking Out, Protesting, and Fighting for Justice

Book — Non-fiction. By Michael Long. 2021. 204 pages.
A history of children's activism in the United States, focusing on 20th and 21st-century marches, strikes, and social justice movements.

The First Rainbow Coalition

Film. Directed and produced by Ray Santisteban. Nantes Media LLC. 2019. 56 minutes.
In this documentary, Chicago's Black Panther Party forms alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city to collectively confront issues such as police brutality and substandard housing.

To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War

Book — Non-fiction. By Tera W. Hunter. 1998.
An examination of post-Civil War lives of African American women, focusing on their labor organizing, leisure, hope, and struggle.

Stripmining Black History Month

In “Stripmining Black History Month,” Jeff Biggers writes that “the neglect and degradation of a region and its history have always mirrored the neglect and abuse of the land.” And there is no more abused land in the United States than Appalachia, where coal companies continue to scrape away mountains to get at the thin coal seams buried within. The coal companies call everything that is not coal, “overburden” — streams, trees, animals, plants. Surely history itself is also a burden for the coal companies, because if we knew our history, we would know the rich legacy of activism that has characterized Appalachia — activism that does not conform to the whitewashed ignorant “hillbilly” stereotypes that the rich and powerful have found so convenient to promote.

Fasanella - The Great Strike | Zinn Education Project

One Hundred Years After the Singing Strike

By Norm Diamond

Today’s Occupy movement is a reminder that throughout U.S. history a major engine of change has been grassroots organizing and solidarity. As an old Industrial Workers of the World song goes:

An injury to one, we say’s an injury to all, United we’re unbeatable, divided we must fall. —“Dublin Dan” Liston, The Portland Revolution

Major history textbooks, however, downplay the role of ordinary people in shaping events, especially those who formed labor unions and used the strike to assert their rights. One of the most significant strikes in U.S. history occurred exactly 100 years ago, in the Lawrence, Mass. textile mills, and yet it merits barely a mention in the most widely used U.S. history textbooks.

July 12, 1917: The Bisbee Deportation

The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal deportation of more than 1,000 striking mine workers (IWW-led strike), their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 vigilantes.

Newsboys Strike | Zinn Education Project

July 18, 1899: Newsboys Strike in New York

The Newsboys Strike of 1899 began in New York City.

July 28, 1932: Bonus Army Attacked

The U.S. government attacked an encampment of Black and white WWI veterans with tanks, bayonets, and tear gas.

July 19, 1881: Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike

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.

A confrontation between a policeman wielding a nightstick and a striker during the San Francisco General Strike, 1934.

May 9, 1934: Longshore Strike

Starting in the spring of 1934, longshoremen across every port on the West Coast struck against the unfair hiring tactics that they experienced daily.

Salt of the Earth

Film. By Herbert Biberman. 1954. 94 minutes.
This classic, powerful film about a miners strike in New Mexico can be used to teach about the intersection of class, race, national origin, and gender.

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot

Film. Produced by Anne Lewis. 2012. 75 minutes.
Documentary about Southern activist Anne Braden.

Sugar

Book — Fiction. By Jewell Parker Rhodes. 2013. 288 pages.
Historical fiction about Reconstruction-era Louisiana through the eyes of a young girl who bridges the divide between the long-time plantation workers and the Chinese indentured servants.