1910s-1920s
Today in Labor History September 22, 1919: 400,000 steelworkers in 50 cities struck to protest intolerable working conditions. Union leaders believed that if they could organizer the steel workers, it would cause a national wave of unionization. Thus began the Great Steel Strike of 1919. The bosses called upon the federal troops and crushed the strike after 3½ months, killing twenty-two people in the process.
Today in Labor History September 22, 1922: Martial law ended in Mingo County, West Virginia, after overwhelming force by mine owners’ goons, police and U.S. troops suppressed the mining strike there.
1930s
Today in Labor History September 22, 1934: The United Textile Workers (UTW) strike committee ordered strikers back to work, ending “the greatest single industrial conflict in the history of American organized labor.” However, the Southern employers continued to try to bust the textile unions and their ongoing agitation occurring along the Eastern seaboard. The authorities mobilized 10,000 National Guardsmen in Georgia and the Carolinas, Alabama, & Mississippi, with an additional army of 15,000 armed deputies. Despite the overwhelming show of force, over 421,000 textile workers joined the strike. This was an increase of 20,000 new strikers in just one week. In response, the authorities declared martial law in Georgia. National Guardsmen started arresting and jailing large numbers of strikers without charge, holding them in World War I concentration camps. Cops and soldiers killed 13 strikers were killed and held 34 strike leaders incommunicado.
Today in Labor History September 22, 1935 – 400,000 coal workers went on strike.
1940s
September 22, 1941: : On the Jewish New Year, the German SS murdered 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, during the Ukrainian Holocaust. A few days earlier, they killed 24,000 Jews.
Today in Labor History September 22, 1946: 4,000 workers marched in Valleyfield, Quebec to protest the arrest of Medeliene Parent, a leader of the dominion textile strike.
September 22, 1947: Norma McCorvey, American activist was born. She was the plaintiff in Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling which legalized abortions in the U.S. She later became an anti-abortion activist. However, before she died, she admitted that she had been paid to speak out against abortion. She had also accepted money to renounce her lesbian identity. The video clip, above, is from the film, Citizen Ruth, with Laura Dern portraying a McCorvey-like character.