Labor History Today

Original airdate January 16, 2022 On December 11, 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. The speech is not long, just 30 minutes, but it’s tremendously historic, both in its content and its timing. In this speech, King connected the civil rights movement and labor movement, calling them “the two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country.” King encouraged the AFL-CIO to "help erase all vestiges of racial discrimination in American life, including labor unions," as well as to provide financial support to the civil rights movement. Until recently this speech only existed on a reel of tape in the Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park, but for the 2022 AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference the AFL-CIO and the Archives digitized the speech and gave us permission to bring it to you here on Labor History Today. Labor historian Joe McCartin tells us how had King come to be there, the context for his quiet but powerful challenge to the American labor movement, and what that speech says to us now, 61 years later. Our other story today is the perfect follow-up to Dr. King’s speech; it’s about the fight by DC trash collector Marvin Fleming and his union, AFSCME, against job discrimination in the 1960’s. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Give Us Our Daily Bread (1898) and Standing Against Wage Theft (1915). Questions, comments or suggestions 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 Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @AFSCME @AFSCMEArchivist @JosephMcCartin SEE ALSO: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech to AFL-CIO Exploring Dr. King’s Radical Legacy Trumka in Memphis: We’re Reaching for that Mountaintop This week's music: Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round (The Roots); Everybody's Got A Right To Live: Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick & Jimmy Collier and The Soul Chance; Woke up this morning (The Freedom Singers).

Labor historian Julie Greene on why Woody Guthrie’s 1943 New Year’s resolutions still resonate today. On this week’s Labor History in Two: the year was 1968; that was the day Johnny Cash played Folsom Prison.   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. @WoodyGuthrieCtr #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

Back in the day of publishers William Randolph Hearst  and Joseph Pulitzer, newsboys were essential players in the circulation pipeline, cheap labor that made the highly competitive industry profitable. The newsboy became an America cultural trope or archetype, a focus of rags-to-riches fiction, the target of pity and social welfare activism, a smiling stereotype, an exemplar of hard work, and an incarnation of urban poverty. "Please Buy My Last Paper, I Want to Go Home”: Portrayal of Newsboys and Newsgirls in 19th and 20th Century Music" is a talk given last Fall by Joshua Duchan from Wayne State University’s Music Department and Eric Freedman from the Michigan State University School of Journalism. The talk was part of MSU’s Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives brown bag series, organized by John Beck. Today’s show features highlights from that talk, and adds in a number of the songs they reference. On this week’s Labor History in Two: renowned Illinois poet Carl Sandburg wrote about workers in Gary, Indiana and farmers around Omaha, Nebraska; he wrote about railroad workers and steel workers. 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. @michiganstateu #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

Labor Heritage Power Hour co-host Elise Bryant talks with two young activists --Pride@Work’s Jarel Sanders and the A. Philip Randolph Institute’s Denicia Montford Williams -- about the new film “Rustin”, which tells the story of charismatic gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Musicians fight back. 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. @jarelyboy @prideatwork #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

From the Gilded Age to the 1920s, employers and allies used terrorism to control workplaces and communities. Our colleagues at the Heartland Labor Forum radio show talk to Chad Pearson, author of Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen & Employers to find out how terrorism disempowered the working class and its unions. On this week’s Labor History in Two: AFL leaders jailed for boycotting; Wal-Mart pays up for wage theft.   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. @UNC_Press @Heartland_Labor #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

In our first segment, Woody Guthrie Center Director Cady Shaw on the story behind Woody Guthrie’s song "1913 Massacre". Check out the video here. Then, Central Oregonizing, Radical Songbook podcast host Michael Funke’s brief history of unions at sawmills in Bend, Oregon from 1916 to 2000. Check out the video here. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1951; that was the day New York City was struck by the Great Bagel Famine. 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  

Melbourne’s Solidarity Breakfast podcast talks to Alex Ettling, co-editor ofKnocking The Top Off: A People's History of Alcohol in Australia. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. 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. @3CRsolidarity #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

All Who Labor podcast host Anna Nowalk speaks with Georgetown University’s Brother Ken Homan about the distance between what we say we believe and how those values are lived out, particularly as it relates to the Jesuits. The conversation stretches from topics further in the past, such as slavery, to more current labor activism at universities. On this week’s Labor History in Two:  The year was 1833. That was the day that the Oberlin Collegiate Institute was founded in north central Ohio. Today, it's known as Oberlin College. The college was the project of two Presbyterian ministers, John J. Seifert and Philo Stewart. 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. @AllWhoLabor #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

"In Ludlow, the workers were killed by bullets and kerosene; here they died from poverty.  The names are illuminated at night. People are claiming the memorial. They're leaving items, artifacts, relics, coins, stones, gifts for the dead, telling them that we see them." The average age of the people in the pine boxes was 23 years old; half of them were children under 12. 70 percent were from Ireland. On today’s show we travel to the Evergreen Cemetery in Leadville, Colorado; where on September 16th a new memorial was unveiled commemorating the 1,100 unmarked graves of Irish workers and their families who fled the famine in their homeland to toil deep in the Colorado copper mines and who died penniless in the Promised Land. Today's show comes to us from the Labor Exchange radio show, Colorado's only labor focused radio show on KGNU Community Radio (88.5 FM / 1390 AM)  On this week’s Labor History in Two: Newspaper Printers Quit! 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 @aflbobby @IrishCentral

Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art walks us through the BMA’s brand-new exhibit, Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA, which explores the importance of women artists many of whom are unknown today, yet who captured the human faces of industrial and domestic labor and its inherent racial, gendered, and class inequities while they used their art to support important reforms led by the era’s growing communist and socialist movements. From the Labor Heritage Power Hour radio show, which airs Thursdays at 1p ET on WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC. Singer-songwriter Si Kahn finds poetry in the many names for the third shift, that overnight work period that is the bane of existence for so many. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1936; that was the day that workers at the General Motors plant in Atlanta, Georgia participated in a sit down strike. 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 @artbma Artwork: Harlem Dancers, by Elizabeth Olds