Today in Labor History December 17, 1760: Deborah Sampson was born on this date in Massachusetts. Sampson disguised herself as a man in order to fight with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. She called herself Robert Shirtliff (as in don’t lift my shirt) and stood 5’9”, taller than the average man in those days. She fought in several skirmishes with British forces before being wounded and discovered and then honorably discharged from the army. She later petitioned the government to be repaid the wages that had been denied her because she was a woman. Her friend Paul Revere advocated for her full compensation. Finally, in 1816, Congress granted her request. There are several other women known to have secretly fought in this war. Sampson’s story has been portrayed in several plays and works of fiction, including “Portrait of Deborah: A Drama in Three Acts” (1959) by Charles Emery, “I'm Deborah Sampson: A Soldier of the Revolution” (1977) by Patricia Clapp and Revolutionary (2014), by Alex Myers, one of her descendants. Whoopi Goldberg played her in an episode of “Liberty Kids.”
Today in Labor History December 7, 1905: A General Strike of 150,000 workers began in Moscow, at the climax of the 1905 Russia Revolution. The strike escalated into a general uprising, with thousands of workers taking up arms against the imperial government. At least 400 workers died. The revolt was based in the apartment of writer, Maxim Gorky. Militants made bombs in his study and ate in his kitchen. On December 10, socialist revolutionaries bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Okhrana (secret police). By December 12, the rebels held six of the seven railway stations and many neighborhoods. On December 15, they assassinated the head of the Okhrana. However, the Imperial Guard brought in reinforcements on the 15th. They shelled the proletarian district of Presnia, home to 150,000 textile workers, and ultimately quashed the rebellion.
Today in Labor History November 26, 1911: Paul Lafargue, Cuban-French revolutionary and son-in-law of Karl Marx, died. Lafargue wrote “The Right to Be Lazy” in 1893 while in prison. Lafargue had Jewish, French, Indian, Creole and African ancestry. When IWW cofounder Daniel De Leon asked him about his origins, he replied that he was proudest of his “negro” ancestry. In his youth, Lefargue participated in the International Students Congress in 1865. Consequently, the government banned him from all French universities. So, he moved to London, where he became a frequent visitor to Marx’s house, ultimately marrying his daughter, Laura. Lafargue was a member of the General Council of the First International. He also participated in the Paris Commune.
Speaking of the #history of the #mexican#revolution , this page from "The Mexican Revolution: A Brief History with Documents" on how Pancho Villa tricked a city into capturing themselves reads like its from loony tunes #histodons would like
The sentence where they took the city without firing a single shot, if you ignore the massacre, is just surreal.
Can any #histodon or #histodons#help me with finding some sources on battles during the #mexican#revolution , hopefully with #maps of each battlefield and the description of how the battles happened with specific troops?
Its so easy to find #historical information on other #history in the #1910s but surprisingly hard here.
I have an idea for 3D modelling and wish to see if its feasible.
Today in Labor History November 7, 1918: Kurt Eisner led an uprising that overthrew the Wittelsbach dynasty in Bavaria, during the German Revolution. After the Kiel Mutiny a few days prior, uprising broke out throughout Germany. Within months, the Independent Social Democrats, who were heading the provisional government, were overthrown by the Bavarian Raterepublik, composed of Workers', Soldiers', and Farmers' Councils. Those fighting the socialists included anarchists and anti-authoritarian communists like Erich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, Ernst Toller and Ret Marut (who became known as the novelist B. Traven after fleeing the counterrevolution and living in exile in Mexico).
Today in Labor History November 3, 1793: French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges was guillotined during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794) for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her association with the Girondists. Her writings on women's rights and abolitionism reached a large audience in many different countries. She was also an outspoken advocate against the slave trade in the French colonies. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality.
Today in Labor History October 20, 1895: Anarcho-syndicalist writer Gaston Leval, active in the Spanish Civil War, was born in France. He was the son of a French Communard. He escaped to Spain in 1915 to avoid conscription during WWI. Then left for Argentina during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera where he lived from 1923 to 1936. He returned to Spain and became a militant fighter, and where he documented the revolution and the urban and rural anarchist collectives.
Today in Labor History August 30, 1800: Gabriel Prosser postponed his planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia. The authorities still arrested and executed him, along with 20 others. While the revolt never occurred, it was the one event that most directly confronted the founding fathers with the enormous gulf between their ideal of liberty and their sleazy accommodations to slavery. It led to a rash of new legislation curtailing the rights of free African Americans, as well as laws prohibiting the education and hiring out of enslaved black people. Richmond, at the time of the planned revolt, was a black-majority town, with 39% of its residents being enslaved. There was a community whipping post, where people were brutalized publicly. There was also a growing number of free black people in Richmond, due in part to the influence of abolitionist Quakers and Methodists, as well as numerous refugees from the Haitian Revolution, a few years prior. The goal of the uprising was to completely end slavery in Virginia by holding Virginia's Governor, James Monroe, hostage to negotiate for their freedom. In 2007, Governor Tim Kaine informally pardoned Gabriel.
Arna Bontemps, a member of the Harlem Rennaisance, wrote Black Thunder (1936), a historical novel based on Gabriel's Rebellion. Alex Haley mentions it in his book, Roots. Barbara Chase-Riboud writes about it in her 1979 novel, Sally Hemings. And "Gabriel, the Musical" was produced in Richmond Virginia in 2022, with libretto by Jerold Solomon, Foster Solomon and Ron Klipp, and Music & Lyrics by Ron Klipp.
Today in Labor History August 22, 1791: Encouraged by the French and American revolutions, Toussaint Louverture led over 100,000 Haitian slaves in a revolt against the French. They were ultimately successful, making Haiti the first black republic in the world. The US refused recognition of Haiti until 1865, as a result of pressure from Southern slaveholders. The French demanded $21 billion In today’s dollars) in reparations for the losses to the former slaveholders, in exchange for peace and recognition of Haiti as an independent nation. The debt was financed through French banks and the U.S. bank, Citibank. The Haitians finally paid it off in 1947. However, the huge interest payments for their independence debt, and the debt incurred through the corruption of the Duvalier dynasty, have made Haiti one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere. Prior to independence, Haiti was the richest and most productive of all of Europe’s colonies.
The best book I’ve read on the Haitian Revolution is “The Black Jacobins,” by Trinidadian socialist C.L.R. James. Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier explores the revolution in his novel, “The Kingdom of This World” (1949). You can read more about Toussaint Louverture and the slave uprising in Madison Smartt Bell’s trilogy called “All Souls' Rising” (1995) and Isabel Allende’s 2010 novel, “Island Beneath the Sea.”
Today in Labor History August 21, 1752: French radical priest Jacques Roux (1752-1794) was born in Charente, France. He participated in the French Revolution and fought for a classless society and the abolition of private property. He also helped radicalize the Parisian working class. Roux was a leader of the far-left faction, Enrages, and was elected to the Paris Commune in 1791. He demanded that food be available for everyone and argued that the wealthy should executed if they horded it.
Roux is featured in a mission in the French Revolution-set game Assassin's Creed Unity. He is also portrayed in Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade. Here, Roux is dressed in a straight jacket in an asylum and the asylum directors cut off his dialogue to symbolize the state’s desire to restrain political radicals.
Did you know that the first female supercentenarian (someone reaching the age of 110) was also the first person whose life spanned three centuries?
Margaret Ann Neve was born in Guernsey in 1792. Her father was a wealthy privateer who died aged 49.
She remembered the #French#Revolution & visited #Waterloo just after the battle. She was married but childless. She did not eat or drink between meals, climbed an apple tree aged 110 & got her first ever illness at age 105.
Today in Labor History August 14, 1791: Dutty Boukman led a Vodou ceremony with enslaved people from Saint Domingue plantations that led to the start of the Haitian Revolution, the largest slave uprising since the Spartacist revolt against the Romam empire. Boukman was born in Senegambia. His name, Boukman, came from the English “Book Man,” because he not only knew how to read, but taught other enslaved people how to read. He, and priestess Cécile Fatiman, had led a series of meetings with enslaved people prior to August 14 to organized and plan for the uprising. Boukman was killed by French troops a few months into the revolution. Trinidadian Marxist writer C. L. R. James wrote the best book on the Haitian Revolution: “The Black Jacobins,” (1938). Also, be sure to check out the wonderful music of the contemporary Haitian pop group, Boukman Eksperyans, named for the Haitian revolutionary, Dutty Boukman. A fictionalized version of Boukman plays the title character in Guy Endore's novel “Babouk,” an anti-capitalist parable about the Haitian Revolution.