Labor History Today

On this week's Labor History Today: Touring the American Labor Museum The American Labor Museum in Haledon, New Jersey, is also known as The Botto House, and that’s because for generations that’s what it was: the home of the Botto family. This unassuming house, sitting on an ordinary-looking street in a quiet residential neighborhood, played a key role in American labor history when it became the heart of the 1913 Patterson Silk Strike as tens of thousands of silk workers – most of them immigrants and many of them young children – demanded an eight-hour day and improved working conditions. They were supported by the IWW and the strike drew leaders like Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who spoke from that balcony at the Botto House, and recently LHT host Chris Garlock finally had a chance to make his own pilgrimage to this iconic labor landmark, for a personal tour with Education Director Evelyn Hershey. And, on Labor History in Two: The year was 2005; that was the day the labor movement lost a man who was willing to go to jail to fight for the rights of working people.    Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. @LaborMuseum #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

On this week's Labor History Today: Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil during the early half of the twentieth century. Producer Patrick Dixon talks with historian Sarah McNamara about her book Ybor City, Crucible of the Latina South, which tells the story of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas and Latinos who organized strikes, marched against fascism, and criticized U.S. foreign policy. While many members of the immigrant generation maintained their dedication to progressive ideals for years to come, those who came of age in the wake of World War II distanced themselves from leftist politics amidst the Red Scare and the wrecking ball of urban renewal. This portrait of the political shifts that defined Ybor City highlights the underexplored role of women’s leadership within movements for social and economic justice as it illustrates how people, places, and politics become who and what they are. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The American Federation of Labor is founded. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals (top), commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson’s 1937 untitled mural (bottom), which originally hung in the UAW Local 174 union hall and now hangs behind the reference desk at the Reuther Library, champions the progress those industrial workers made laboring for their own welfare via union action. Dr. Cephas is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. His essay “Detroit Industry and ‘The Mural’: Representing Labor and Reappropriating Care in the Museum and in the Union Hall,” was published in the 2023 volume, Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common. Originally aired on the Tales from the Reuther Library podcast. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The World Loses the Miners’ Angel. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. @ReutherLibrary #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  r4

Five stunning paintings depicting labor organizing, pickets and the violence directed at workers in the turbulent 1930s were almost lost to history. The story of Philip Tipperman and how a small group of people saved those paintings. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Massacre At Bogalusa. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. @labor_journal @BCLibrary #LaborRadioPod @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  #PhilipTipperman #LaborHistory #1939Strike #BrooklynCollegeLibrary #AmericanArt #ArtHistory Picketed, Beaten, by Philip Tipperman, 1939

Labor historian Mitch Troutman’s 2022 book, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942 is a detailed account of coal bootlegging in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the Prohibition/Depression decades when unemployed miners took over unused mines, asserting and defending a right to mine and market the coal to support their families. Excerpted from his June 23, 2022 talk for The Battle of Homestead Foundation.   On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1785. That was the day the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York was founded. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. @HomesteadFdn #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

Bev Grant is a cultural worker from Brooklyn, NY; she’s a social justice feminist, a choral director, an occasional bandleader, a dance artist and a photographer.   She’s also a much beloved singer/songwriter, and on today’s show, she tells us the story behind one of her best-known songs – and one that seems especially meaningful this post-election week, Together We Can Move Mountains. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Benevolent Dictator. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

“The life and music of Barbara Dane,” from The Harry Bridges Project. The story of America told through its social upheaval, its achievements and, above all, its music. Originally broadcast on WPFW's Labor Heritage Power Hour (10/31/24). On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1975; that was the day that the National Organization for Women, or NOW, called for a strike by women across the nation. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

LHT tours the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum with Executive Director Mackenzie New-Walker. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1948. That was the day that a thick yellow fog rolled over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania just south of Pittsburgh. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. @WarsWV #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory

The Pittsburgh Labor Choir’s Tom Hoffman and Kira Yeversky lead a master class in the history of labor songs in their inspirational session at this year’s Reuther-Pollack Labor History Symposium, recorded with a live – and enthusiastically singing – audience. On this week’s Labor History in Two:  The year was 1945; that was the day that Paul Robeson received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.  Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. @PghLaborChoir #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

I could not put this away. Once I saw what happened here: the orange Tug River from the strip mines…the strip mining, the desecration, the poverty. I owed it to the world to tell what happened. William Trent Pancoast has worked as a construction laborer, gas station attendant, railroad section hand and brakeman, factory laborer, commercial laundry foreman, and machinist. He’s been an English teacher and a journeyman die-maker. In 1986 The Wall Street Journal dubbed Pancoast a "Blue collar writer" and that’s just fine with him, as he told the Journal, "The reason I write about work is that that's just about damn near all I've ever done." His working-class-flavored short stories and essays have appeared in many Midwestern and international magazines and newspapers. Pancoast's novel Crashing was published in 1983. In 1986, his United Auto Worker's union history was published. Pancoast spent the next twenty years as the editor of a monthly union newspaper-the Union Forum-while continuing to publish his fiction, essays, and editorials not only in the Union Forum but also in the UAW's 1.2 million circulation Solidarity magazine. A revised version of his novel The Road to Matewan has just been published and yesterday Bill Pancoast drove down from his home in Ohio to give a reading and talk at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum so I figured the least I could do was make the 7-hour drive down – my own 300-mile Road to Matewan – to record it for you. By the way, as you’ll hear, the train still runs through town right across from the museum. On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1965; that was the day acclaimed photojournalist Dorothea Lange died. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. @WarsWV #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory