Today in Labor History April 22, 2011: Songwriter, musician and activist Hazel Dickens died at age 75. Dickens was well known, not only for her protest songs, but for her activism, too. According to blogger John Pietaro, "Dickens didn’t just sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded her into the cause." She was born in West Virginia in 1925. After her family moved to Baltimore in the 1940s, she met Mike Seeger. Together, the two became active in the Baltimore folk music and protest scenes. She wrote “They’ll Never Keep Us Down,” and “Working Girl Blues.” She made appearances in the Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County, USA, about the struggle of coalminers and contributed four songs to the film's soundtrack. She was also in the films Matewan and Songcatcher. And she recorded an album called, Don’t Mourn, Organize! covering the songs of IWW singer and organizer, Joe Hill.

In the accompanying Youtube video, she performs Fire in the Hole, from Matewan. https://youtu.be/1pb2bDA7Kd0

Today in Labor History April 22, 1996: Peace activists Tom & Donna Howard-Hastings celebrated Earth Day 1996 by cutting down three power poles in Clam Lake, Wisconsin, preventing the launch of the U.S. Navy's first-strike nuclear submarine. They stapled an indictment against nuclear war to one of the poles and signed it "with disarming love, Tom & Donna." The district attorney charged them with criminal damage to property and sabotage. However, a jury found them not guilty of sabotage. This was just the fourth time in 16 years that members of the Plowshares antinuclear movement were acquitted of such charges. From 1980-1995, there had been 57 trials of antinuclear activists on sabotage charges. In northern Wisconsin, these direct actions focused on Extremely Low-Frequency transmitters, known as ELF, used to communicate with submerged nuclear submarines.

Today in Labor History April 22 April 22, 1946: Writer and director, John Waters, was born. Among his many classic films are his early low budget trash films, staring Divine, like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Polyester (filmed in “odoroma” with scratch and sniff cards). His later, higher budget films include Pecker, Dirty Shame, Cecil B. Demented, and Hairspray. In the Cockettes documentary, he said the famous drag performers were an early influence on his films.

https://youtu.be/AIPF8mk1a4Q

Today in Labor History April 22, 1922: Jazz legend Charles Mingus was born on this day. His career spanned three decades. He collaborated with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock. Mingus considered Parker one of the greatest innovators in jazz history, but he was also annoyed by all the pretenders who followed. Consequently, he titled a song "If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats." On his most famous album, Mingus Ah Um, he paid tribute to Lester Young on his song "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” He also recorded on that album the instrumental version of "Fables of Faubus," a protest against segregationist Arkansas governor Orval Faubus.

The “Original Fables of Faubus,” with vocals, is shown in this youtube video. https://youtu.be/QT2-iobVcdw

Today in Labor History April 22, 1897: The anarchist Pietro Acciarito attempted to stab the king of Italy in Rome. The authorities convicted Acciarito and sentenced him to life in prison.

Today in Labor History April 21, 1915: Anthony Quinn was born. Quinn was a Mexican-American actor, painter, writer, and film director. He played the titular role in Zorba the Greek and was nominated for the Academy Award for best actor. And he did win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice: for “Viva Zapata!” (1952) and “Lust for Life” (1956). As a child, Quinn experienced considerable racism growing up in Los Angeles. He later participated in several civil rights and social causes. He supported the Spanish-Speaking People's Congress. He also helped raise funds for the legal defense of Mexican American youth in the racially charged Sleepy Lagoon murder trial in 1942. He also supported the 1963 March on Washington and visited Native American activists occupying Alcatraz Island.

Today in Labor History April, 21, 1913: Andre Soudy and Raymond Callemin, members of the anarchist Bonnot Gang, were executed. Callemin had started the individualist paper "L'anarchie" with author and revolutionary Victor Serge. The Bonnot Gang was a band of French anarchists who tried to fund their movement through robberies in 1911-1912. The Bonnot Gang was unique, not only for their politics, but for their innovative use of technology, too. They were among the first to use cars and automatic rifles to help them steal, technology that even the French police were not using. While many of the gang members were sentenced to death, Serge got five years and eventually went on to participate in (and survive) the Barcelona and Soviet uprisings. Later, while living in exile, Serge wrote The Birth of Our Power, Men in Prison, Conquered City, and Memoirs of a Revolutionary.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #illegalism #BonnotGang #Revolutionary #VictorSerge #Revolution #uprising #barcelona #soviet #writer #author #books #fiction #novel @bookstadon

Today in Labor History April 21, 1910: Mark Twain died. “I have read carefully the treaty of Paris and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem… And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” During the Boxer Rebellion, he said that "the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success." From 1901, until his death in 1910, he was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the U.S. He was also critical of European imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold II of Belgium, who attempted to establish colonies in African. He also supported the Russian revolutionaries fighting against the Tsar.

Many people have criticized him for his racism. Indeed, schools have banned “Huckleberry Finn.” However, Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and said that the Emancipation Proclamation “not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also." He also fought for the rights of immigrants, particularly the Chinese. "I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible... but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him." And though his early writings were racist against indigenous peoples, he later wrote that “in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by "whites" in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey."

Twain was also an early feminist, who campaigned for women's suffrage. He also wrote in support of unions and the labor movement, especially the Knights of Labor, one of the most important unions of the era. “Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #marktwain #imperialism #racism #feminism #union #literature #fiction #satire #books #writer #author #novels @bookstadon

Today in Labor History April 21, 1834: 30,000 workers marched for the freedom of six trade unionists who were transported to Australia from Tolpuddle, Britain. The Tolpuddle struggle, which began in 1832, marked the beginning of British trade unionism. The workers were fighting for the repeal of the “Combination Laws,” which outlawed the formation of unions. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were pardoned in 1836, thanks to the popular protests.

Today in Labor History April 21, 1782: Friedrich Froebel was born. Froebel was a German pedagogue who coined the term “kindergarten.” He also produced the first educational toys, known as Froebel Gifts. Froebel was one of the first to recognize of the importance of activity and play in early childhood (Freiarbeit, or free work). Thus, to Froebel, kindergarten was not simply a poetic “garden” of children. It was literally a garden for them to observe and interact with the natural world. His kindergartens were suppressed by the Prussian government for their supposed denigration of religion and politics. He rejected the notion of original sin and promoted and practiced the coeducation of boys and girls. He also felt children should be able to grow and develop without the influence of arbitrary political and social priorities. These ideas endeared him to anarchist educators like Francisco Ferrer and others in the Modern School movement. You can my complete article on Ferrer and the Modern School movement here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/30/the-modern-school-movement/

Today in Labor History April 20, 2008: Danica Patrick won the Indy 300 Japan, becoming the first woman to win an Indy car race. She also was the first woman first to clinch a pole position in the NASCAR Cup Series and the woman with the most starts, laps led, and top-tens in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Today in Labor History April 20, 1948: United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins while he was eating dinner. It permanently impaired his right arm. He survived and ultimately died in a plane crash in 1970 under suspicious circumstances. Reuther also survived an attempted kidnapping in April, 1938, while his brother Victor was shot and nearly killed by police in 1949. The UAW headquarters was also bombed in 1949. Both Walter and Victor were again nearly killed in a small private plane near Dulles Airport. Despite this history of attempts on his life, virtually no media addressed the possibility that his actual death may have been an assassination.

Today in Labor History April 20, 1914: National Guards opened fire on a mining camp during a strike in Ludlow, Colorado, killing five miners, two women, and twelve children. By the end of the strike, they had killed more than 75 people. The strike involved 10,000 members of the united Mine Workers of America (UMW), 1,200 of whom had been living in the Ludlow tent colony. Many of the “Guards” were actually goons and vigilantes hired by the Ludlow Mine Field owner, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. During the assault, they opened fire on strikers and their families with machine guns and set fire to the camp.

Mining was (and still is) a dangerous job. At the time, Colorado miners were dying on the job at a rate of more than 7 deaths per 1,000 employees. The working conditions were not only unsafe, but terribly unfair, too. Workers were paid by the ton for coal that they extracted, but weren’t paid for so-called “dead work” like shoring up unstable roofs and tunnels. This system encouraged miners to risk their lives by ignoring safety precautions and preparations so that they would have more time to extract and deliver coal. Miners also lived in “company towns” where the boss not only owned their housing and the stores that supplied their food and clothing, but charged inflated prices for these services. Furthermore, the workers were paid in “scrip,” a currency that was valid only in the company towns. So even if workers had a way to get to another store, they had no money to purchase anything. Therefore, much of what the miners earned went back into the pockets of their bosses.

In the wake of the Ludlow Massacre, bands of armed miners attacked mine guards and anti-union establishments. In nearby Trinidad, they openly distributed arms from the UMWA headquarters. Over the next ten days, miners attacked mines, killing or driving off guards and scabs, and setting building on fire. They also fought sporadic skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard. In June of 1914, a number of anarchists decided to seek revenge on Rockefeller. Alexander Berkman (a former lover, and friend, of Emma Goldman) helped plan the assassination at the New York Ferrer Center. This was also the home to the anarchist Modern School, which Berkman helped create. However, the bomb exploded prematurely, killing three anarchists. These events led to infiltration of the school and center by undercover cops.

You can read my complete article on Ludlow and the Colorado Labor Wars here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/the-ludlow-massacre/

And my complete article on the Modern School Movement here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/30/the-modern-school-movement/

Today in Labor History April 19, 1911: More than 6,000 immigrant workers began the Great Furniture Strike in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By the late 1800s, Grand Rapids had become the furniture making capital of the U.S. In 1890, the city had about 90,000 residents, 33,000 of whom were recent immigrants. And 4,000 of them worked in the city’s 85 furniture factories. By 1910, the industry employed over 7,000 workers. Most worked six 10-hour shifts for less than $2 a day, or about $45 in today’s dollars. One of the owners, Harry Widdicomb, tried to drive scabs to his factory, right through the crowd of strikers. They pelted his car with rocks and bricks. Police beat people with clubs and firefighters fought them back with hoses. But by evening, they had busted every window in his factory.

Today in Labor History April 19, 1913: Modestino Valentino, a bystander, was shot and killed by company detectives during a conflict between IWW strikers and scabs in Patterson, N.J., during the infamous Silk Strike, which the workers ultimately lost on July 28, 1913. During the strike, 1,850 workers were arrested, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood.

Today in Labor History April 19, 1927: The authorities sentenced Hollywood star Mae West to 10 days in jail for obscenity, for her play, “Sex.”

Today in Labor History April 19, 1943: The 50,000 Jews remaining in Warsaw began a desperate and heroic attempt to resist Nazi deportation to extermination camps. Their armed insurgency became known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There had been over 3 million Jews living in Poland prior to the Nazi occupation. The Nazis rounded them up and forced them into crowded ghettos. The Warsaw ghetto had 250,000-300,000 Jews living in abominable conditions. Roughly this same number of Jews were slaughtered at the Treblinka concentration camp within the two months the Nazis started deporting them. The Jews managed to stockpile Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, military uniforms, and even a few pistols and some explosives. However, the resistance was crushed by the Nazis on May 16.

Today in Labor History Today in Labor History April 19, 1943: Albert Hoffman, inventor of LSD, tested his first dose and went for a bike ride. This day is now celebrated as Bicycle Day. “... Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux ...” And from that date forward, working class people could finally afford to go on a trip. Hoffman later went on to isolate psilicyben, the active hallucinogenic ingredient in mushrooms, which he also enjoyed experimenting with.

Sandoz originally marketed the drug as Delysid and sold it in 100 microgram doses. From the late 1940s, through the early 1960s, the drug was legal and numerous psychologists and researchers began experimenting with it as a form of therapy. Many were willing participants in the CIA’s UKUltra mind control experiments, in which LSD was given to people, most of whom without their consent or knowledge. Cary Grant was a frequent and enthusiastic user. As early as the late 1940s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson became enthusiastic about its potential to unleash a new era of peace and expanded consciousness. The founder of Alcoholic Anonymous was also an early user and said that it was far more effective at treating alcoholism than any other treatment he knew of. Researcher John Lily, along with Gregory Bateson, began dosing dolphins in the early 1960s, in experiments connected with the U.S. military, in an attempt to learn to communicate with the animals and deploy them as weapons in the cold war. You can read more about Mead and Bateson’s role in promoting hallucinogens and in collaborating with the military and intelligence communities in Benjamin Breen’s book, Tripping on Utopia.

Today in Labor History April 18, 1977: Native American activist Leonard Peltier was found guilty of murdering two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. However, he was actually framed by undercover FBI agents who were conducting counterintelligence on the reservation. During the trial, some of the government’s own witnesses testified that Peltier wasn’t even present at the scene of the killings. In 2017, President Obama denied Peltier's application for clemency. He was still in prison in 2025 and his health has deteriored. On June 7, 2022, The UN Human Rights Council's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Peltier’s imprisonment violates the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Biden, as one of his final acts as president, commuted his sentence to indefinite house arrest. In February 2025, he was released and transferred to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.

Today in Labor History April 18, 1914: IWW workers in Taft, California, continued their strike against Standard Oil. It was the first strike ever against the company. The workers demanded an eight-hour day and a 50-cents raise.