Labor History Today

The Radicalism of Irish American Women

Women's History Month is celebrated in March in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, corresponding with International Women's Day on March 8.On this week’s show, the Ballot Blocked podcast focuses on the role of Irish American women in the suffrage movement. Many of these women were already veteran organizers. They had led strikes and fought for labor unions in cities across the country. They had also campaigned for land reform in Ireland and for Irish independence. Dr. Tara McCarthy, a professor of history at Central Michigan University and the author of Respectability and Reform: Irish American Women’s Activism, 1880-1920, reflects on the activist history of Irish American women, and how this set them apart from many other suffragists.Ballot Blocked is produced and hosted by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney. Dr. Sylvea Hollis conducted research and interviews and helped plan the podcast. Drew Himmelstein is the producer and editor. Music is by Podington Bear. The project was made possible through the National Park Service in part through a grant from the National Park Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Also on today’s show, the Heartland Labor Forum’s Judy Ancel tells us about Sarah Lloyd Green -- suffragette, feminist and fiery labor organizer, whose story, like so many women’s, has been all but forgotten.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Francis Perkins named Secretary of Labor (1933).
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. Hosted this week by Mel Smith, produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Additional music clips from: Sufferin' Till Suffrage, Etta James; Women's Suffrage movement, Schoolhouse Rock.

Tragedy and Resistance at Port Chicago Naval Magazine

On July 17, 1944, a group of sailors and civilians were loading ships with ammunition and bombs at Port Chicago, a naval magazine and barracks in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tragically, the ships blew up in a massive explosion that instantly killed 320 workers and injured hundreds more. Most of the dead were African Americans, since racial segregation consigned Black soldiers and sailors to manual labor and service, including the dangerous work of transporting munitions. When the surviving workers were ordered back on the job without any additional safety measures or training, 50 refused to return. The resisters, dubbed the “Port Chicago 50,” were found guilty of disobedience of a lawful order and mutiny and received lengthy sentences and dishonorable discharges.Today, the disaster and its aftermath are memorialized at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, one of a small number of National Park sites that commemorate death and dying on the job. Last October, as part of "Monumental Labor," a three-part online series that explored the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and National Historic Landmarks,  a distinguished panel discussed “Tragedy and Resistance at Port Chicago Naval Magazine.” Dr. Albert Broussard, Professor of History at Texas A&M University, Tom Leatherman, former Superintendent at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, and Dr. Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, discussed African American labor in the West, the memorial’s role in shaping the memory of the Port Chicago disaster, and how the event should inform commonly-told histories of “America’s Greatest War.”The "Monumental Labor" series was organized by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman. Dr. Mahoney has contributed to Labor History Today before, and we appreciate her help bringing this discussion to the podcast as Black History Month wraps up. Thanks also to the National Park Service, and to the National Park and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, which helped make the series possible. On this week’s Labor History in Two: The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down (1937), and Criminalization of the Sit-Down (1939).  
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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
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Black labor in Richmond

For 150 years, Richmond's place in history has been as "the capital of the Confederacy." But this label hides a much richer and more complex history. On today’s show, we hear from Peter Rachleff, Co-Executive Director of the East Side Freedom Library, a retired professor of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and author of "Black Labor in Richmond, 1865 -1890," as he reveals part of that hidden history, that of Black and White workers in the second half of the 19th century. Note: Excerpted from Rachleff’s Feb. 2, 2022 talk for The Virginia Worker; click here for the complete talk.  
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Yale Grad Students Strike (2/17/1992).
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. Editing this week by Patrick Dixon.
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The Irish Immigrant Miners’ Memorial

Irish immigrants, who toiled in the silver mines of Leadville, Colorado, in the late 1800s are largely forgotten. Many died penniless, buried in paupers’ graves.  But now a Colorado professor has dug up their stories and their struggles. The Heartland Labor Forum brings us a report on the Irish Immigrant Miners’ Memorial. Then, Remember Our Struggle with HLF's Ariana Blockmon, who covers the 1916 Springfield (MO) Streetcar Strike.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The sacrifice of Rufino Contreras (1979).
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.
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This week's music: Working Man by The Dubliners; Sprinkle Coal Dust On My Grave by Orville J. Jenks (UMWA); Working Man by The Men Of The Deeps.

City Workers Strike Song

LHT producers Patrick Dixon and Mel Smith head to the Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park to check out a special exhibit put together to amplify the momentum of the current wave of labor strikes. In the second half of the show, Dr. Eleanor Mahoney, host of the Ballot Blocked podcast, explores the strong historical connection between voting rights and labor rights; in this episode, we learn about the barriers to voting faced by Mexican American women and workers in the years after World War II. 
On this week’s Labor History in Two: Philly Garment Workers Win (1910); Seattle General Strike (1919).
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.
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This week's music: City Workers Strike Song, by Dave Rovics; a song he wrote for members of the District Council of Trade Unions in Portland, Oregon, who are set to go out on strike on February 10th if they don’t get a better offer from the city.

“America Works” launches new season

Mario Cervantes, a skilled factory worker -- and proud union member -- who makes the tools that make the planes for Boeing aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, kicks off the new season of America Works, the podcast series from the Library of Congress that features the voices of contemporary workers from throughout the United States talking about their lives, their workplaces, and their on-the-job experiences. Also this week, Saul Schniderman brings us the touching true story of Rex, the Mine Pony, saved by the coal miners who he helped save from a mine collapse (subscribe here to Friday’s Labor Folklore). Bonus track: commemorating the 25 years since the last pit pony left the final deep coal mine in Northumberland, England. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Saul Alinsky (1908); Chicago Gravediggers End 43-day Strike (1992); A Day for Remembering (2011).
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.
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This week's music: Pit Pony's Tale, by Gordon Carter from his album Diary of a Coaltown, available on Bandcamp.

The Bread Uprising

On the 18th of January, 1977, Egypt erupted into a huge popular uprising against the government's removal of food subsidies. For two days, hundreds of thousands of people across the country were variously involved in strikes, riots, occupations, looting, and sabotage. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat described it as “the uprising of thieves”; the Egyptian people called it by a different name: The Bread Intifada. Our report on the uprising, the decade of worker-student militancy leading up to it, and its relevance today comes to us from the Working Class History podcast.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: If Poison Doesn’t Work, Try Briggs! (1933) & More Labor Than They Planned (1936).
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.
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This week's music: Sheikh Imam’s Build Your Palaces; performed by Fadi Al Naji.

MLK at the AFL-CIO in 1961

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 this year’s AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference (Jan. 16-17 online) 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.
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SEE ALSO: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech to AFL-CIOExploring Dr. King’s Radical LegacyTrumka in Memphis: We’re Reaching for that MountaintopThis 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).