Labor History Today

IWW’s Little Red Songbook (Encore)

Today's episode originally ran on August 12, 2018.This week's labor history: Yale Strom remembers WEVD, the Chicago radio station named for labor leader Eugene Victor Debs;Dan Duncan celebrates the founding of the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department;Saul Schniderman marks the anniversary of the publication of the IWW’s "Little Red Song Book," which is where all our music this week comes from;and Ben Blake’s labor history Object of the Week is a collection of posters, including one from the height of the Cold War showing an AFL-CIO map of forced labor gulags in the Soviet Union.
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. Engineered by Chris Garlock.
Labor history sources include Today in Labor History, from Union Communication Services.
This week's music: Hold The Fort-Pete Seeger; Dump The Bosses Off Your Back-Anne Feeney; We Will Sing One Song - John Paul Wright; One Big Industrial Union-May Day Chorus of Asheville, performing at Firestorm Cafe on April 30th, 2011; The Preacher And The Slave-Mischief Brew. 

The St. Vincent Hospital Strike

An oral history of a ferocious labor battle that became the longest nurses' strike in Massachusetts state history. It happened in 2021. Today’s show comes to us from The Real News Network; if you enjoy this report, please help TRNN continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following them and making a small donation.Got a 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 and produced by Chris Garlock. 
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @TheRealNews

The Washington Navy Shipyard Strike

The Washington Navy ship yard strike of 1835 begins, the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike ends, and in 1970, the United Farm Workers signed their first union contract in California. Thanks to The Heartland Labor Forum and Labor History in 2:00.
Got a 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 and produced by Chris Garlock. 
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory

A cold wind and a hot summer sit-down

Hundreds of Senate cafeteria workers and their supporters rallied – and 17 were arrested – this week in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, demanding justice and a contract. We remember the 78-day strike by government cafeteria workers in the frigid winter of 1948 that included battles on the picket line between the AFL and the CIO and between President Harry Truman and Congress. On Labor History in 2:00: The Great Railroad Strike reaches Louisville.
Got a 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 and produced by Chris Garlock. 
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Tragedy and Resistance at Port Chicago Naval Magazine (Encore)

Originally released February 27, 2022On 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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“The Port of Missing Men”

This week, labor history takes a deep dive into "True Crime" territory. Billy Gohl was called "The Ghoul of Grays Harbor" in the early 20th Century when he was accused of being the murderer who dumped several bodies into the canals around Aberdeen in Washington State. Was he one of America's first serial killers? Or was he just another in a long line of labor activists framed by the bosses? Find out when Working to Live in Southwest Washington podcast hosts Shannon and Harold talk with Aaron Goings, author of “The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor & Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest”. Music for today's show: Hellbound Glory Streets of Aberdeen the ballad of Billy Gohl, by Leon Virgil Bowers. On Labor History in 2:00: the year was 1918. That was the day machinist John Connolly was fired from General Electric’s sprawling River Works in West Lynn, Massachusetts.
Got a 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 and produced by Chris Garlock. 
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @SWWACLC @Red_Harbor

A Supreme disaster for workers

On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in the United States nearly 50 years ago. The decision sent shock waves across the country and through the American labor movement, which recognizes that reproductive rights are a worker issue, affecting millions of working women and their families. Labor historian Joe McCartin argues that “for most of its history, the court's just been a disaster for workers” and on today’s show, McCartin explores that history, warning that “We're not going to see a better Supreme Court…without a movement, without something happening in the streets, without a struggle.”On Labor History in 2:00: the day that American folklorist Archie Green was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and the day known as the East St. Louis Race Riot.Got a 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 and produced by Chris Garlock. 
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @WomenLeadLabor @CLUWNational

Working People’s Hidden Histories

Dr. Lane Windham moderates a discussion with Dr. Rosemary Feurer and Josephine Ong, M.A. examining the ongoing struggle to create new memorials to labor organizer Mother Jones and the history of worker organizing that led to the construction of memorials to Filipino Revolutionary leader Apolinario Mabini within War in the Pacific National Historical Park. They also explore connections between marking labor's past and contemporary organizing campaigns. Co-sponsored with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University and Women Innovating Labor Leadership (WILL) Empower. Excerpted from a longer program presented in December 2021 as part of the Monumental Labor series exploring the memory of work and working peoples in National Parks and affiliated sites through their representation in monuments and memorials. The series was organized by NPS Mellon Humanities Fellows Dr. Eleanor Mahoney and Dr. Emma Silverman, and was made possible by the National Park Foundation with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.On Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1894; that was the day the American railway union led by Eugene V Debs voted to support the boycott of Chicago's Pullman palace cars...the year was 1934; that was the day 1400 workers at the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company launched a four day strike.Got a 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 and produced by Chris Garlock. 
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @WomenLeadLabor