Today in Labor History November 9, 1851: Kentucky marshals abducted abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. They took him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape. Fairbank was an activist on the Underground Railroad. The authorities imprisoned him for over 17 years and lashed him 35,000 times. The governor pardoned […]
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Today in Labor History November 8, 1892: 20,000 black & white workers united for a General Strike in New Orleans. During a streetcar drivers labor victory earlier in the year, they won a closed shop and shorter workday. Then they launched a massive organizing campaign, creaing dozens of new unions and greater demands from the city’s
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Today in Labor History November 7, 1912: Ernest Riebe’s “Mr. Block,” IWW labor comic strip first appeared in print. Mr. Block was one of the best-loved features in the Wobbly press. Joe Hill wrote a song about “Mr. Block,” who was a boss-loving, American Dream-believing, self-sabotaging knucklehead. Some call Riebe the first “underground” comic book
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Today in Labor History November 6, 1872: Suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony received a $100 fine for attempting to vote in a U.S. presidential election. Women did not win the right to vote until 1920. Today in Labor History November 6, 1918: The Kiel mutiny spread to Hamburg and led to the creation of Workers’ Councils. Three
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Today in Labor History November 5, 1855: Labor leader and socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. Today in Labor History November 5, 1911: A Francisco Ferrer statue was erected at the Place de Sainte-Catherine, Brussels, in honor of the radical educator executed by the Spanish government in 1909. The statue
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