Today in Labor History May 22, 2002: Nearly 41 years later, a jury in Birmingham, Alabama, finally convicted former KKK member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 16th Street Baptist church bombing that killed four girls.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #kkk #racism #alabama #bombing #murder #terrorism #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History May 22, 1968: New York police broke through the barricades at Columbia University, busting the student occupations there. As a result, 998 were arrested and over 200 injured. Students were demanding a black studies program and an end to military recruitment and ROTC on campus. Sound familiar? However, today’s student protests are bringing back the worst of 1960s-‘70s police brutality and university intolerance for Free Speech along with McCarthy era firing, blacklisting and doxing of academics for the crime of criticizing the Israeli government, under bogus claims of antisemitism.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #columbia #policebrutality #antiwar #police #policebrutality #racism #antiracism #student #protest #antisemitism #mccarthyism #freespeech #academicfreedom #studentprotest #freepalestine #EndTheOccupation

Today in Writing History May 22, 1967: Writer and activist Langston Hughes died. Hughes was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the early pioneers of Jazz Poetry. During the Civil Rights Movement, from 1942-1962, he wrote a weekly column for the black-owned Chicago Defender. His poetry and fiction depicted the lives and struggles of working-class African Americans. Much of his writing dealt with racism and black pride. Like many black artists and intellectuals of his era, he was attracted to communism as an alternative to the racism and segregation of America. He travelled to the Soviet Union and many of his poems were published in the CPUSA newspaper. He also participated in the movement to free the Scottsboro Boys and supported the Republican cause in Spain. He opposed the U.S. entering World War II and he signed a statement in support of Stalin’s purges.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #blackhistory #racism #lgbtq #CivilRights #Harlem #renaissance #communism #soviet #poetry #writer #BlackMastodon @bookstadon

Today in Labor History May 22, 1960: An earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, hit southern Chile. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. The massive quake lasted for 10 minutes. It caused tsunamis in Chile, Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia and Alaska. In Chile, there were waves measuring over 80 feet high. 35-foot waves hit Hilo, Hawaii, devastating that state’s second largest city and killing 61 people. Between 1,000 and 6,000 people died. Over the course of two weeks, Chile experienced three earthquakes registering in the world’s ten most powerful that year.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #earthquake #tsunami #chile #hawaii #japan #philippines #alaska

Today in LGBTQ History May 22, 1930: Harvey Milk, gay rights activist and San Francisco’s first openly gay city Supervisor, was born. Former supervisor Dan White assassinated him and Mayor George Moscone. White only got a couple years in jail using the infamous Twinkie defense leading to the White Night Riots in San Francisco.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #lgbtq #HarveyMilk #assassination #homophobia #riots

Today in Writing History May 22, 1927: Author Peter Matthiessen was born. Matthiessen was an environmental activist and a CIA officer who wrote short stories, novels and nonfiction. He’s the only writer to have won the National Book award in both nonfiction, for The Snow Leopard (1979), and in fiction, for Shadow Country (2008). His story Travelin’ Man was made into the film The Young One (1960) by Luis Bunuel. Perhaps his most famous book was, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983), which tells the story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s war on the American Indian Movement. The former governor of South Dakota, Bill Janklow, and David Price, an FBI agent who was at the Wounded Knee assault, both sued Viking Press for libel because of statements in the book. Both lawsuits threatened to undermine free speech and further stifle indigenous rights activism. Fortunately, both lawsuits were dismissed. Peltier spent over 43 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. On January 19, 2025, the last full day of his presidency, Joe Biden commuted Peltier's life sentence to home confinement

#workingclass #LaborHistory #petermatthiessen #indigenous #LeonardPeltier #nativeamerican #aim #fbi #fiction #nonfiction #writer #author #cia #FreeSpeech #censorship @bookstadon

Today in Writing History May 22, 1880: Victor Hugo died. Hugo wrote poetry, novels and drama over the course of sixty years. His most famous works include Les Miserables (1862) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831). Though he was a conservative early in his life, he broke with the conservatives in 1848, calling for the end of misery and poverty. He also supported universal suffrage and free education for all children. Additionally, he was known worldwide for his advocacy to abolish the death penalty and slavery. In 1859, he asked the U.S. to spare John Brown’s life. He also begged Benito Juarez to spare the life of Maximilian I.

When Napoleon III seized power, Hugo publicly called him a traitor. After that, he lived in exile from 1855 to 1870. While in exile, he published his most famous political pamphlets, Napoleon le Petit and Histoire d’un Crime. Both were banned in France. However, in spite of these progressive views, he supported colonialism because of its “civilizing” effects on the colonized peoples. And he wrote that the Paris Commune was as “idiotic as the National Assembly is ferocious. From both sides, folly.” But he did offer his support to Commune participants when they were being brutalized.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #johnbrown #victorhugo #pariscommune #poverty #racism #exile #censorship #freespeech #slavery #abolition #poetry #novels #fiction #writer #author @bookstadon

Today in Labor History May 22, 1846: Rita Cetina Gutierrez was born in the Yucatan, Mexico. She was a poet and educator, and one of Mexico’s first feminists. She opened Mexico’s first secular school for poor girls. At the same time, she created a scientific and literary society and newspaper written by and for women. She rejected the idea that girls should only be taught domestic skills. Her school taught them astronomy, constitutional law, math, history and geography. It also included curriculum on female sexuality, love and marriage. Many of her students went on to become some of the Yucatan’s first female elected officials in the early 1920s.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mexico #feminism #ritacetinagutierrez #yucatan #education #school #children #poetry

Today in Labor History May 21, 1979: The White Night Riot occurred in San Francisco, California, the day before Harvey Milk’s birthday. On November 10, 1978, ex-cop and former city supervisor, Dan White, murdered Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, and the popular progressive mayor, George Moscone. His murder trial concluded on May 21. The jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter. However, the prosecutor had asked for a finding of first-degree murder. It was, after all, premeditated. This verdict was likely influenced by the absurd Twinkie Defense, in which his lawyer argued that it could not have been premeditated due to his diminished capacity and depression, a symptom of which was his recent shift from a healthy diet to a junk food diet. A similar defense had failed repeatedly to get students excused from exams and school detentions.

Needless to say, the public was outraged. However, there had been decades of police harassment and physical abuse of San Francisco’s LGBTQ community lead up to this miscarriage of justice. Tensions were already high. And this ruling, which virtually absolved White of his homophobic crime, was the torch to the powder keg. Things began with a peaceful march through the Castro district. But when the crowd arrived at City Hall, violence began. People attacked the windows of City Hall. When the cops tried to protect the building, people hurled rocks and bottles at them, forcing them to run inside. Where ever the cops showed up, people threw rocks at them. At least a dozen cop cars were torched. They busted windows in the financial district and in government buildings.

Many people were injured. The riot caused hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of property damage to City Hall. And when the riot was finally subdued, the cops made a retaliatory raid on the Elephant Bar, in the Castro District. Cops in riot gear beat patrons. They arrested 24 people.

Furthermore, the double assassination of Moscone and Milk dramatically altered the political landscape of San Francisco. Under Moscone and Milk, the city was moving in a progressive, pro-neighborhood direction. With the new mayor, Diane Feinstein, city politics returned to the traditional, conservative, pro-Chamber of Commerce, law and order framework that had preceded Moscone and Milk, and the followed after them to this day.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #harveymilk #homophobia #lgbtq #policebrutality #police #acab #homophobia #danwhite #sanfrancisco #castro #assassination #georgemoscone #dianefeinstein #twinkie

Today in Labor History May 20, 1946: The U.S. government took over control of the coal mines (again). On April 1, 400,000 UMWA coal miners from 26 states went on strike for safer conditions, health benefits and increased wages. WWII had recently ended and President Truman saw the strike as counterproductive to economic recovery. In response, he seized the mines, making the miners temporarily federal employees. He ended the strike by offering them a deal that included healthcare and retirement security.

The coal strike was part of the strike wave of 1945-1946, the biggest strike wave in U.S. history. During WWII, most of the major unions collaborated with the U.S. war effort by enforcing labor “discipline” and preventing strikes. In exchange, the U.S. government supported closed shop policies under which employers at unionized companies agreed to hire only union members. While the closed shop gave unions more power within a particular company, the no-strike policy made that power virtually meaningless.

When the war ended, inflation soared and veterans flooded the labor market. As a result, frustrated workers began a series of wildcat strikes. Many grew into national, union-supported strikes. In November 1945, 225,000 UAW members went on strike. In January 1946, 174,000 electric workers struck. That same month, 750,000 steel workers joined them. Then, in April, the coal strike began. 250,000 railroad workers struck in May. In total, 4.3 million workers went on strike. It was the closest the U.S. came to a national General Strike in the 20th century. And in December 1946, Oakland, California did have a General Strike, the last in U.S. history.

Then, in 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which severely restricted the powers and activities of unions. It also banned General Strikes, stripping away the most powerful tool workers had. And there hasn’t been a General Strike in the U.S. since.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #coal #mining #strike #GeneralStrike #wildcat #ww2 #union #WorldWarTwo #tafthartley #uaw #oakland