Today in Labor History September 6, 1869: The Avondale fire killed 110 miners, including several juveniles under the age of 10. It led to the first mine safety law in Pennsylvania. Avondale is near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna River flows nearby. The mine had only one entrance, in violation of safety recommendations at the time. In the wake of the fire, thousands of miners joined the new Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, one of the nation’s first large industrial unions (and precursor to the United Mineworkers). My book, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” opens with this fire. My main character, Mike Doyle, joins the bucket brigade trying to put out the flames shooting out of the mineshaft.
Today in Labor History September 5, 1964: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn died in Moscow. Flynn was an anarchist, labor militant and highly successful organizer with the IWW. before joining the American Communist Party. She was also a founding member of the ACLU. She is portrayed in Jess Walter’s historical novel, “The Cold Millions,” about the Spokane Free Speech Fight.
When you find the right book, it can be a revelatory experience for the reader. This is why it was so difficult for me when I went through a long period of being unable to focus on reading.
Today in Labor History September 3, 1838: Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland to freedom in the north, where he became a leader of the abolitionist movement. During his lifetime, he wrote 3 autobiographies and became a best-selling author. He also fought for women’s suffrage and was the first black man nominated to run for vice president. Douglass opposed colonialism and segregated schools. He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, never smiling once for the camera so as to not play into the racist myth of the happy slave.
"Anywhere but Schuylkill" by Michael Dunn - coming soon from Historium Press! Check it out!! http://wix.to/M9gMx11
“The Banshees of Inisherin and 1917 are two of the best historical films I’ve seen in recent years, particularly the cinematography. Yet the visuals Michael Dunn creates in Anywhere But Schuylkill, are richer, more vivid, more imaginative, and more haunting and indelible than what I recall in those brilliant films. It’s like the author transports himself to each scene and brings to life each physical detail, each expression, each emotion, and each word of dialogue with the care of a Renaissance painter.”
—David Aretha, award-winning author of Malala Yousafzai and the Girls of Pakistan and Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1963 March on Washington.
Today in Labor History September 1, 1880: The utopian communistic Oneida Community ended after 32 years. The Community was founded by John Humphrey Noyes and his followers in 1848 near Oneida, New York. They believed that Jesus had already returned in AD 70, allowing them to bring about Jesus's millennial kingdom themselves. The Community practiced communalism (holding all property and possessions in common). They also practiced complex marriage, where 3 or more people could enter into the same marriage, and male sexual continence, where the male’s goal was to not ejaculate during sex. They were also one of the first groups in the U.S. to practice mutual criticism, to root out bad characteristics in people, something adopted by many later cults, and even by Cesar Chavez and the UFW under his leadership.
The Oneida Community has been portrayed in numerous works of fiction such as “Silken Strands,” by Rebecca May Hope (2019). “Assassination Vacation,” by Sarah Vowell (2005) and “Pagan House,” by David Flusfeder (2007).
Today in Labor History August 31, 1919: John Reed and others formed the Communist Labor Party of America in Chicago. The party evolved into the American Communist Party. Reed was a journalist and communist activist who extensively covered World War I. He was most famous for his coverage of the Russian Revolution and his book, “Ten Days That Shook the World.” He died in Moscow in 1920 from typhus. They gave him a hero’s welcome and buried him in Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Only two other American were given this honor: Big Bill Haywood, a founding member of the IWW, and C.E. Ruthenberg, founder of the Communist Party USA.
John Dos Passos included a short biography of him in his “U.S.A.” trilogy. Uptain Sinclair called him the Revolution’s Playboy, elements of which can be seen in Warren Beaty’s portrayal of Reed in the film, “Reds.” Sergei Eisenstein made a film version of “Ten Days That Shook the World” in 1927.
Today in Writing History August 31, 1908: Armenian-American writer William Saroyan was born. He won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1940 and the Academy Award for best screenplay for his story, “The Human Comedy.” Saroyan was born in Fresno, California, but spent several of his early years in an orphanage in Oakland. He was later reunited with family in Fresno. Many of his early stories were about Armenian farm workers, during the Depression, in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Today in Labor History August 30, 1948: Fred Hampton revolutionary activist and chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party was born. He founded the antiracist, anti-class Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that included Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. In December 1969, the Chicago police & FBI drugged Hampton, shot him and killed him in his bed during a predawn raid. They sprayed more than 90 gunshots throughout his apartment. They also killed Black Panther Mark Clark and wounded several others. In January 1970, a jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides.
Stephen King refers to Hampton in his novel “11/22/63” (2012). In that book, a character suggests that if you could travel back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination, it could have a ripple effect that also prevented Hampton's assassination.
Today in History August 30, 1797: Mary Shelley, English novelist and playwright was born. She is most famous for her novel, “Frankenstein.” However, she wrote several other novels, including the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826). She married the romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelly. Her father was the early anarchist philosopher, William Godwin. And her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a writer and a feminist activist. Mary Shelley was a political radical throughout her life, influenced by the anarchism of her father.
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 30, 1813: The Fort Mims massacre took place during the Creek War. The Red Sticks faction of the Creek Nation, under the command of head warriors Peter McQueen and William Weatherford, stormed Fort Mims and defeated the militia garrison. Afterward, they massacred nearly all the remaining Creek métis, white settlers, and militia at the fort. Their victory spread panic throughout the Southeast. Settlers fled. Thousands of whites fled their settlements for Mobile, which struggled to accommodate them. The Red Stick victory was one of the greatest Native American victories. They were facilitated by the fact that Federal troops were bogged down at the northern front of the War of 1812. However, local state militias, commanded by Major General Andrew Jackson and allied with Cherokees, ultimately defeated the Red Sticks Creek faction at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, ending the Creek War.
The Fort Mims massacre is cited in Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Grandma Fontaine shares her memories of seeing her entire family murdered in the Creek uprising following the massacre as a lesson to Scarlett.
Today in Labor History August 29, 1970: LAPD brutally attacked 10,000 Chicano antiwar demonstrators, killing three, including journalist Ruben Salazar. The attack led to a week of rioting. Salazar was portrayed under the name "Roland Zanzibar" in Oscar Zeta Acosta's 1973 novel “The Revolt of the Cockroach People.” Oscar Zeta Acosta, himself, was portrayed in Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” as his “Samoan attorney.” Salazar wrote for the L.A. Times and was the first mainstream journalist to cover the Chicano community. He covered the 1965 U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republican, as well as the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City. He often wrote critically about how the local L.A. government treated Chicano people, particularly during and after the school walkouts.
While attending her college roommate's UFO-themed wedding in Roswell NM, non-believer, firmly grounded Francie gets abducted by a sentient tumbleweed with whip snapping tentacles. But hey! She keeps her cool.
Well defined and quirky characters will take you on a road trip out of this world. Connie Willis is a masterful, economical and very, very clever writer. Feel great, must read!
Today in Labor History August 28, 1921: The Soviet Red Army dissolved the stateless Anarchist Free Territory, after driving the Black Army out of Ukraine. The anarchist rebel leader, Nester Makhno, barely escaped, and with serious injuries.
The Free Territory within Ukraine, also known as Makhnovia (after Nestor Makhno), lasted from 1918 to 1921. It was a stateless, anarchist society that was defended by Makhno’s Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army (AKA the Black Army). Roughly 7 million people lived in the area. The peasants who lived there refused to pay rent to the landowners and seized the estates and livestock of the church, state and private landowners, setting up local committees to manage them and share them among the various villages and communes of the Free State.
Michael Moorcock’s “A Nomad of the Time Streams” is a steampunk/alternative history novel where Makhno survives into the 1940s.
Today in Labor History August 27, 1934: 7,000 Filipino lettuce cutters and mainly white packing shed workers went on strike against the powerful Salinas Valley growers and shippers, demanding union recognition & improved wages and working conditions. Many of the white workers were Dust Bowl refugees. Most of the Filipino workers had immigrated as U.S. nationals, after the U.S. took over the Philippines, in the wake of the Spanish-American War. There was rampant persecution of Filipino workers in California. Laws prohibited Filipino women from immigrating to the U.S. and prevented Filipino men from consorting with Anglo women. The American Federation of Labor initially refused to recognize or support the Filipino Labor Union (FLU). Scabs and vigilantes viciously beat Filipino strikers and chased 800 out of the Salinas Valley at gunpoint. They also burned down a labor camp. Police arrested picketers and union leaders for violation of the Criminal Syndicalism laws (laws that prohibited advocating any change to the economic and political status quo). The FLU ultimately won a raise and union recognition. However, discrimination and racist violence against Filipinos continued.
Steinbeck wrote about the plight of Filipino migrant farmworkers in the Salinas Valley in a 1936 series of articles for the San Francisco News called “The Harvest of Gypsies,” which formed part of the basis for his novel, Grapes of Wrath. He said they were among the most discriminated, and best organized, ethnic group in the U.S. Their organizing, he went on to say, brought on terrorism against them by vigilantes and the government.
Today in Labor History August 25, 1819: Allan Pinkerton was born. He founded the Pinkerton private police force, whose strike breaking detectives (Pinkertons, or 'Pinks') gave us the word 'fink' as they slaughtered dozens of workers in various labor struggles. Ironically, Pinkerton was a violent, radical leftist as a youth. He fought cops in the streets as a member of the Chartist Movement. He had to flee the UK in order to not be imprisoned and executed. Yet in America, he became the nation’s first super cop. He created the secret service. He foiled an assassination attempt against Lincoln. He fine-tuned the art of spying on activists and planting agents provocateur in their ranks. His agents played a major role in destroying the miners’ union in the 1870s, as portrayed in my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill.” Later, they assassinated numerous organizers with the IWW and came within inches of successfully getting Big Bill Hayward convicted on trumped up murder charges.
I went to the International Corrections Education Association conference on Monday and - for the first time - encountered my work in the wild! It was quite a feeling ♥
Today in Labor History August 23, 1909: IWW strikers boarded a streetcar in McKees Rock, Pennsylvania looking for scabs, during the Pressed Streetcar Strike, in the Mckees Rock borough of Pittsburgh. A deputy sheriff shot at them and was killed in the return fire. A gun battle ensued that killed 12-26 workers. IWW cofounder, William Trautman, led the Wobbly contingent during the strike. He later wrote a novel, “Riot,” based on the strike. After the authorities arrested Trautman during the strike, Big Bill Haywood and Joe Ettor came to organize the strikers.
Pressed Streetcar employed 6,000 people, mostly immigrant, from 16 different ethnic backgrounds. It was the second largest streetcar manufacturer in the country. Working conditions were horrendous, even by Pittsburgh standards. Locals referred to it as the slaughterhouse. The local coroner estimated that workers were dying at a rate of one per day, mostly by cranes. Slavic immigrants complained that company officials forced their wives and daughters to perform sexual favors in exchange for debts owed to the company for food and rent.