On January 22, 1599, Spanish troops began their attack on Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. This incredibly violent incident and aftermath created a regime of labor under Spanish rule that would have devast
On January 17, 1915, the radical Lucy Parsons led an unemployed march of 10,000 workers in Chicago. Suppressed by the police, the size of the march impressed the city’s more establishment reform
On January 1, 1867, a landowner named Isham Bailey signed a one-year sharecropping deal with freedmen Cooper Hughs and Charles Roberts. While there is no obvious date to discuss sharecropping, an abso
On December 30, 1828, 400 of Dover, New Hampshire’s approximately 800 “mill girls,” women working in the new textile plants, walked off the job in one of the nation’s first str
On December 14, 1945, the House passed what would become the Employment Act of 1946 once Harry Truman signed it. This was an important piece of legislation in moving the nation forward out of a renewe
On November 26, 1931, cigar factory owners in Ybor City, Florida, initially a company town but by this time a neighborhood in Tampa, banned cigar makers from having people read to workers on the job.
On November 12, 1892, the New Orleans General Strike ended with a major victory for workers. One of the few true general strikes in American history, it demonstrated the potential power of workers, ev
On November 10, 1933, workers at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota sat down on the job. Possibly the first sit-down strike in American history, the win these workers achieved helped set up the lab