Today in Labor History November 29, 1864: Colonel John Chivington led a 675-man force in the Sand Creek Massacre of at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants. They attacked and destroyed a village in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating up to 600 Native Americans, two-thirds of whom were women and children. The massacre has been depicted in numerous books, including “Centennial” (1974) by James Michener; “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” (1971) by Dee Brown; “Flight” (2007) by Sherman Alexie; and “Choke Creek” (2009) by Lauren Small.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #indigenous #nativeamerican #genocide #massacre #racism #cheyenne #arapaho #colorado #women #children #literature #fiction #novel #books #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History November 29, 1832: Louisa May Alcott, author, nurse, feminist and abolitionist, was born. Her writing was influenced by the transcendentalists, like Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Longfellow, whom she knew personally. While she was most famous for her book, “Little Women,” she also wrote “Work,” an autobiographical novel that exposed the exploitation of women workers. Poverty forced her to work at a young age as a teacher, seamstress, governess and domestic. During the Civil War, she worked as a nurse and developed typhoid fever. The medicine she took contained mercury, which may have contributed to the autoimmune disorders that plagued her for the rest of her life and that ultimately killed her. She is buried on Author’s Ridge, at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, in Concord, near Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #louisamayalcott #feminism #slavery #Abolition #nurse #teacher #poverty #exploitation #thoreau #hawthorne #longfellow #emerson #civilwar #books #literature #fiction #writer #author @bookstadon

Today in Labor History November 29, 1781: The crew of the British slave ship Zong slaughtered over 130 enslaved Africans. According to the crew, the ship ran low on drinking water after several navigational blunders. Consequently, they threw the insured slaves overboard. However, when the insurers refused to pay, the slavers sued. On appeal, the judges, ruled against the slave trading syndicate, due to evidence that the captain and crew were at fault. Following the first trial, a freed man, Olaudah Equiano, brought news of the massacre to the attention of the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp, who fought unsuccessfully to have the ship's crew prosecuted for murder. This did increase publicity, stimulating the abolitionist movement. The event led to the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1788, Britain’s first law regulating the slave trade. And in 1791, Parliament prohibited insurance companies from reimbursing ship owners when enslaved Africans were murdered by being thrown overboard.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #slavery #abolition #massacre #racism #BlackMastadon

Today in Labor History November 29, 1969: The cover of the Black Panther Party paper portrayed an image of pigs being killed. The ubiquitous pig artworks in the BPP paper, created by Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, helped to popularize the use of the term “pig” as a pejorative for police in the late 1960s. Headlines in this issue of their paper included “S.F. Pigs Beat-Choke Chairman Bobby Seale,” and “Shackled Like a Slave,” the latter referring to how Seale was shackled and gagged in the courtroom of Julius Hoffman, just one month prior, during the 1969 trial of the Chicago Eight, in the aftermath of the Days of Rage protests and police riot during the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

At the age of 13, Emory Douglas served time at a youth prison in Ontario, California, where he worked in the facility's printing shop and learned the basics of commercial printing. In 1960, he attended City College of San Francisco where he studied graphic design. There he joined the Black Students’ Association and worked with poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, designing theater sets. He joined the BPP in 1967, drawn to its dedication to self-defense. As one of the main artists for the Panther’s newspaper, he developed iconic images depicting policemen as bloodied or hanged pigs. His artwork also portrayed the Panther’s free breakfast program, free health clinics, and free legal aid. In 1970, he cofounded the revolutionary funk band, The Lumpen, which collaborated with Muhammad Ali and Curtis Mayfield on a prison concert at San Quentin. At that concert, they performed "Free Bobby Now" and "Ol' Pig Nixon," before the prison guards shut them down during a rendition of "Revolution is the Only Solution." The Lumpen influenced bands like Public Enemy, Dead Prez, and The Coup. Check out the excellent book about the band, “Party Music,” by music historian @RickyVincent, or see Vincent in person, next week, at the Howard Zinn Book Fair, where he’ll be discussing his book and sharing music clips.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #blackpanthers #cartoons #emorydouglas #thelumpen #funk #racism #blackpower #revolution #BlackMastodon #books #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History November 28, 1990: Margaret Thatcher resigned in tears after a mass non-payment of her hated poll tax forced her out of office. The tax was a flat tax, hugely unfair, charging all adults, regardless of their wealth or income, the same amount. At the height of the campaign, nearly half of all British adults, 17 million people, had refused to pay the tax. The Labour Party refused to back any protest of the tax. But Anti-Poll Tax Unions formed across the country, and there were thousands of demonstrations, many of which became riots after mounted police charged the protesters. Over 100 were injured and more than 330 were arrested in the protests.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #polltax #margaretthatcher #protests #demonstrations #directaction #anarchism #socialism #tax

Today in Labor History November 28, 1994: In the wake of years of outsourcing and downsizing, Bell-Atlantic announced another 5,600 lay-offs. In response, 1,200 employees in Pennsylvania came to work in T-shirts that portrayed themselves as road kill on the information superhighway. Management suspended them all without pay when they refused to remove the shirts.

#laborhistory #WorkingClass #union #strike #sabotage #freespeech #protest #pennsylvania

Today in Labor History November 28, 1944: 400 people in Rotterdam attacked a coal warehouse during the Nazi occupation. The Nazis executed 40 Dutch men in retaliation. By 1944, over 300,000 Dutch resisters were living underground, combined with tens of thousands more who were actively resisting the occupation.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nazis #worldwartwo #resistance #occupation #solidarity #dutch #netherlands #fascism #nazis #antifa #antifascism

Today in Labor History November 28, 1908: A mine explosion in Marianna, Pennsylvania, killed 154 men, leaving only one survivor.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #coal #mining #disaster

Today in Labor History November 28, 1843: The Kingdom of Hawaii was officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation. Consequently, the date is now known as Ka Lā Hui (Hawaiian Independence Day). The nation was formed in 1795, when the warrior chief Kamehameha the Great, of the independent island of Hawaiʻi, conquered and unified the independent islands of Oʻahu, Maui, Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi. The U.S. became its chief trading partner and “protector” to prevent other foreign powers from seizing control. In 1891, the Committee of Safety, led primarily by foreign nationals from the U.S., U.K. and Germany, and some dissident locals, overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani. And in 1898, the U.S. annexed Hawaiʻi, making it a territory of the U.S. In 1993 Congress passed the Apology Resolution, acknowledging that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii was by agents and citizens of the U.S. and that the Native Hawaiian people never relinquished their claims to sovereignty.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #colonialism #hawaii #NativeHawaiian #indigenous

Today in Labor History November 27, 1898: Maria Vetulani was born. She was a soldier in Poland’s war for independence, the Polish-Ukrainian war, and in World War II, as well as a fierce opponent of fascism. In 1918, she fought in the defense of Lvov against the Ukrainian occupation. She had to disguise herself as a man, because women weren’t allowed in combat then. In the 1920s, she became a socialist and married the communist Bohdan de Nisau, who was later imprisoned, tortured and murdered under Stalin. She fled the USSR and moved to Warsaw, where she helped hide Jews from the Nazis. In 1944 she participated in the Warsaw Uprising, where she was wounded. The Nazis killed her in her hospital bed. Her son also participated in the uprising and survived.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #fascism #nazis #antifascism #worldwartwo #sexism #feminism #poland #ukraine #independence #soviet #communism #socialism #ussr #uprising #antisemitism #holocaust #stalin