Today in Labor History April 17, 1617: Armed women attacked 53 Scottish monks and burned them alive in their refectory. They sought revenge for being cheated out of their pasture rights on the Isle of Eigg.
1800s
April 17, 1824: Slavery was abolished in Central America.
Today in Labor History April 17, 1854: American individualist anarchist and publisher of Liberty, Benjamin Tucker, was born on this date. Tucker
April 17, 1864: Bread riots occurred in Savannah, Georgia. The Civil War had been going on for several years. Soldiers were deserting, particularly working class conscripts. Those that remained were hungry and stealing whatever food could be found. Consequently, there were severe food shortages. As a result, this led to food riots throughout the south, particularly by poor women.
1900s-1910s
Today in Labor History April 17, 1905: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a New York hours of labor law for bakery workers. They argued that the law was unconstitutional under the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. Congress did not limit hours of employment until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
April 17, 1912: Miners struck at the Lena gold fields in eastern Siberia. Over 6,000 gold miners struck over long hours, appalling working conditions, and starvation wages. In order to quell the protests, the government sent in troops. They arrested strike leaders. And when 2,500 workers marched to demand their release, the soldiers fired on the peaceful strikers. As a result, they killed over 200 people and wounded more than 500. Anger over the mass murder fueled a subsequent wave of strikes across the country.
1960s
Today in Labor History April 17, 1968: One-third of the Duke University student body struck against racial discrimination in hiring.
1990s
April 17, 1990: Ralph Abernathy died on this day. Abernathy was a Civil Rights leader and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and served on its board. After the assassination of King, in 1968, he led the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. In 1973, he helped broker a deal between the FBI and Native American activists during the Wounded Knee incident.
Today in Labor History April 17, 1996: Brazilian police attacked 2,000 landless peasants. As a result, they killed 19 people and wounded 69. They killed over 1,000 people in similar protests throughout the 1990s. The peasants were part of the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra), or Landless Workers Movement.
2000s
April 17, 2013: An explosion at a west Texas fertilizer plant killed 15 people and injured nearly 300. It occurred when 30 tons of ammonium nitrate caught fire. Of those killed, ten were emergency responders. As a result of the explosion, there was a crater of 93 feet wide where the plant had been.
Today in Labor History April 17, 2014: Journalist and author Gabriel Garcia Marquez died on this day. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Two of his most famous books were, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Garcia Marquez was a socialist and an anti-imperialist, often critical of U.S. policy in Latin America.