Today in Labor History July 7, 1882: Striking longshoremen in New York City held a meeting to plan how to keep new immigrants from scabbing on them. They were successful, at least temporarily, as 500 newly arrived Jews marched straight from the ship to the union hall on July 14. The following day, 250 Italian […]
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Denmark Vesey Today in Labor History July 2, 1822: The authorities hanged Denmark Vesey and 34 others for plotting a slave uprising. An estimated 9,000 were involved in the plot, but only 67 were convicted of any offense. Vesey was a free man living in Charleston, South Carolina, who still had enslaved family members. He
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Today in Labor History July 1, 1766: French authorities tortured, beheaded and burnt François-Jean de la Barre on a pyre for reading Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique and, more importantly, for not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, France. The articles in Voltaire’s work included critiques of the Catholic Church, as well as Judaism and Islam. The general public loved the book, which sold
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