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 was destroyed by the Germans in 1915, but re-erected in 1926.
Today in Labor History November 5, 1916: The Everett Massacre occurred in Everett, Washington. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor activists were killed by the Everett police. On October 30, in the midst of a depression, forty IWW members arrived by boat in Everett to help support the shingle workers strike. As the boat pulled in, Snohomish County Sheriff McRae called out, “Who’s your leader?” The Wobblies laughed and jeered, “We’re all leaders!” The sheriff pulled his gun and said, “You can’t land.” A Wobbly yelled back, “Like hell we can’t.” Gunfire erupted, most of it from the vigilantes on the dock. When the smoke cleared, two of the sheriff’s deputies were dead, shot in the back by their own men, along with 5-12 Wobblies on the boat. Dozens more were wounded. The authorities arrested 74 Wobblies. After a trial, all charges were dropped against the IWW members. The event was mentioned in John Dos Passos’s “USA Trilogy.”
November 5, 1918: For the first time ever, the Farmer Labor Party appeared on the ballot in Minnesota. David Evans, a hardware merchant from Tracy, ran for governor and Tom Davis, a prominent Minneapolis labor attorney, campaigned for the office of attorney general.
Today in Labor History November 5, 1968: Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress.
November 5, 2001: At least four hunger strikers who were protesting Turkish prison conditions died in a police raid. Their deaths brought the total to 45 deaths in that year. Hundreds of jailed left-wing militants had joined the death fast to protest being kept in isolation cells in “F-type” high security prisons, subjected to torture, beatings and abuse.