The 'Strike for Better Schools'

Almost 70 years after a strike by St. Paul teachers, their battle holds lessons for today’s postal workers and other public employees: The educators didn’t strike only on their own behalf – they walked a picket line for better schools. In 1946, the...

The Real Norma Rae

Early On May 30, 1973, the J.P. Stevens textile mill in Roanoke Rapids, NC, fired 32-year-old Crystal Lee Sutton. Before Sutton left the plant, she climbed atop a table on the shop floor and raised above her head a piece of cardboard with the word “...

War on the Waterfront

Early in the morning on July 5, 1934, storefront owners in the Mission District of San Francisco were opening their doors. In the financial district, bankers and businessmen were trading stocks. Across the harbor, the Oakland Bay Bridge construction...

Ludlow Massacre Forges Mine Workers’ Struggle

Life was not easy a century ago for coal miners in Southern Colorado, where heavily industrialized mines produced high-grade coal needed by the steel and railway industries. The largest mining operation in the region, the Colorado Fuel and Iron...

Black Women Raise Their Voices in the Tobacco Industry

By 1938, Louise "Mamma" Harris had worked at the I.N. Vaughan Export stemmery in Richmond VA for nearly six years. The women who worked at Export were among the poorest in Richmond; they had to wrap themselves in tobacco burlap to stay warm in the...

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