Today in Labor History June 24

1500s

Today in Labor History June 24, 1525: The Church reconquered the Anabaptist free state of Munster. The Anabaptists had created a sectarian, communal government in Munster, Germany, during the Reformation. They controlled the city from February until June 24, 1525. Both the Catholic and Lutheran authorities heavily persecuted them as heretics. They opposed participation in the military and civil government and saw themselves as citizens of the Kingdom of God, not of any political state. Their beliefs helped radicalize people during Germany’s Peasant War. As a result, it grew into a revolt against feudalism and for material equality among all people. Some of the early Anabaptists practiced polygamy and polyamory, as well as the collective ownership of property. The more conservative decedents of the Anabaptists include the Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites.

Many authors have portrayed the Munster rebellion in fiction. My all-time favorite is “Q,” (1999) by the Italian writing collective known as Luther Blissett. They currently write under the pen name Wu Ming. Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote an opera about it 1849, “Le prophète.”

1800s

Today in Writing History June 24, 1842: Ambrose Bierce, American short story writer, essayist, and journalist was born. The American Revolution Bicentennial Administration named “The Devil’s Dictionary,” one of the top 100 masterpieces of American literature. Many consider his horror writing on par with Poe and Lovecraft. As a satirist, he has been compared with Voltaire and Swift. His war stories influenced Hemingway. In 1913, at age 71, he traveled to Mexico to cover the revolution. He joined Pancho Villa’s army and witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca. However, he never returned from Mexico. No one knows what happened to him and his body was never found. But a priest named James Lienert claimed that he was executed by firing squad in his town’s cemetery.

Colorado Labor Wars

Today in Labor History June 24, 1904: Troops arrested 22 workers in Telluride, Colorado. They accused them of being strike leaders and deported them out of the district. This was a repeat of events in March, in which they deported 60 union miners. And all of it was part of the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903-1904. The Western Federation of Labor (WFM) led the strikes. However, they were violently suppressed by Pinkerton and Baldwin-Felts detectives, local cops and militias. Scholars have said “There is no episode in American labor history in which violence was as systematically used by employers as in the Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904.”

James McParland ran the Pinkerton agency in Denver. He had served as an agent provocateur in the Pennsylvania miners’ union in the 1870s. The state convicted and executed 20 innocent Irish coal miners because of his testimony. (I have depicted that story in my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill.”) McParlan also tried to sabotage the WFM, in Colorado, by placing spies and agents provocateur within the union.

1910s

June 24, 1917: The IWW Domestic Workers Union supplied sandwiches to dozens of draft resistors in the Duluth, Minnesota jail.

June 24, 1917: The Russian Black Sea fleet mutinied at Sevastopol.

Today in Labor History June 24, 1919: U.S. authorities deported Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani and his colleagues on the newspaper “Cronaca Sovversiva.” They did this in response to the bombing of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house on June 2, 1919. That bombing was a response to Palmer’s mass arrests and deportations of dozens of labor leaders, anarchists and communists.

1930s

June 24, 1932: The Siamese People’s Party launched a nearly bloodless revolution. This ended the absolute power of King Prajadhipok. The rebels were influenced by the Russian and French Revolutions.

1940s

Today in Labor History June 24, 1943: Otto Rühle (1874-1943) died in Mexico. He was a German left communist member of the Spartacist League. Early in his life, Rühle trained and worked a school teacher. He created a socialist Sunday school and criticized traditional school in “Work and Education” (1904), “The Enlightenment of Children About Sexual Matters”, (1907), and, “The Proletarian Child” (1911). In 1912, the people elected him to the Reichstag as a Social Democrat.

However, he is much more well known for his role as a leader of the Council Communist movement, along with Anton Pannekoek. They opposed the state communism of the Soviet Union. They advocated for Workers Councils and Council Democracy. Lenin attacked them in his pamphlet, “Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.” Rühle was also a comrade of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring and very active in the German Revolution. He opposed both World Wars and fascism.

Today in Labor History June 24, 1943: US military police attempted to arrest a black soldier in Bamber Bridge, England. This led to the Battle of Bamber Bridge mutiny. As a result, they killed one soldier and wounded seven others.

1960s-1970s

Today in Labor History June 24, 1969: African Americans rioted in Omaha, Nebraska, after police killed African American teenager Vivian Strong. Rioting lasted for four days.

Today in Labor History, June 24, 1971: Seventeen workers died in a water tunnel in Sylmar, California. It was the second explosion in two days at the worksite. The June 24 disaster was the worst tunnel disaster in California history. A 54-week criminal investigation followed. As a result, the courts gave Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company one of the highest fines of that era.