A gallery of photos to explore.
John L. Lewis was born February 12th 1880, to Welsh immigrant parents in the coal mining camp of Cleveland, Iowa- one mile East of Lucas, Iowa. He began working in the Big Hill Coal Mine in Lucas, IA as a teenager, joining the UMWA Local #799 in 1900. He began his rise to power in the United Mine Workers of America and served as President of the UMWA for forty years and was founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The Wisconsin Labor History Society is a volunteer-based organization working to record and catalogue the historical labor events of Wisconsin.
Created in partnership with Education Development Center, Zoom In features 18 skill-focused, document-rich lessons on social history topics that address every era of U.S. history. These interactive inquiries engage students in reading documents closely, gathering evidence, and writing an argumentative or explanatory essay. Each lesson…
The Battle of Homestead Foundation (BHF) is a diverse organization of citizens, workers, educators and historians. Our purpose is to memorialize the dramatic labor conflict of the 1892 Battle of Homestead and clarify the consequences that remain with us today. Inspired by that event, we promote a people’s history, empower today’s workforce and build strategies for the future of work. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization.
One of the most significant struggles for workers’ rights began on January 12, 1912, in Lawrence, Mass., when thousands of textile workers began a walkout that would come to be known as the Bread and Roses Strike, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and the Singing Strike. Read an overview and find teaching resources below.
The Takeaway traces it all back to August 1981, when nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike creating a standoff with Ronald Reagan that ended when he fired the majority of them and de-certified their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization.
Women Have Always Worked: Fighting for Equality: 1950–2018.
An exploration from an online edX course.
Designed for both high school and college classrooms, History Matters helps students actively interpret evidence about the lives of ordinary Americans. It contains descriptions of and links to more than 1000 websites and first-person primary source documents, guides for analyzing historical evidence, classroom activities, and…
Once called “the strike heard round the world,” the first major labor dispute in the U.S. auto industry ended after General Motors signed a contract with the United Auto Workers Union on February 11, 1937.
