Today In Labor History April 7, 1915: Jazz legend, Billie Holiday, was born. She was one of the first to sing Abel Meeropol’s, “Strange Fruit,” and performed the most well-known version of the anti-lynching song. Soon after her first public performance of the song, in 1939, the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics started gunning for her. Harry Anslinger, who was a racist, prohibition zealot, led the assault. He hired a black agent provocateur, Jimmy Fletcher, to befriend her and sell her drugs. And Fletcher conducted her first drug bust.

https://youtu.be/-DGY9HvChXk

#workingclass #LaborHistory #jazz #billieholiday #strangefruit #racism #addiction #drugs #lynching #prison

Today in Labor History March 25, 1931: The authorities arrested the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama and charged them with rape. The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American youths, ages 13 to 20, falsely accused of raping two white women. A lynch mob tried to murder them before they had even been indicted. All-white juries convicted each of them. Several judges gave death sentences, a common practice in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women. The Communist Party and the NAACP fought to get the cases appealed and retried. IWW cofounder Lucy Parsons and many other radicals also supported the cause. Finally, after numerous retrials and years in harsh prisons, four of the Scottsboro Boys were acquitted and released. The other five were got sentences ranging from 75 years to death. All were released or escaped by 1946. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes wrote it in his work Scottsboro Limited. And Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son was influenced by the case. It is believed that the case influenced Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” which has a scene with a lynch mob going after a jailed African American man that is reminiscent of the lynch mob that went after the jailed Scottsboro Boys. Lead Belly did a song called “The Scottsboro Boys,” in which he tells listeners to “stay woke” when travelling through the South. Rage Against the Machine provides images of the Scottsboro Boys, and Sacco and Vanzetti, in their music video “No Shelter.”

The image accompanying this article is of an International Red Aid propaganda poster in Russian and Uzbek language that reads: "Wrest eight innocent young negroes out of the hands of the American bourgeoisie!" A U.S. cop is depicted in front of the Nazi swastika with baton raised against food rioters.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #scottsboroboys #racism #lynching #rape #prison #langstonhughes #richardwright #novel #naacp #communism #books #author #writer #fiction #alabama #BlackMastodon @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 15, 1877: Ben Fletcher, African-American IWW organizer was born on this date in Philadelphia. Fletcher organized longshoremen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He joined the Wobblies (IWW) in 1912, became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913. At that time, roughly one-third of the dockers on the Philadelphia waterfront were black. Another 33% were Irish. And about 33% were Polish and Lithuanian. Prior to the IWW organizing drive, the employers routinely pitted black workers against white, and Polish against Irish. The IWW was one of the only unions of the era that organized workers into the same locals, regardless of race or ethnicity. The IWW Dockers struck in Philadelphia on May 13, 1913. 10,000 Wobblies participated. They were protesting poor wages and dangerous working conditions. By May 28, they had won a ten-hour workday and time-and-a-half pay for overtime. However, the strike also launched one of the most successful anti-racist, anti-capitalist unions in the country: IWW Local 8. By 1916, thanks in large part to Fletcher’s organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the union maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. After the 1913 strike, Fletcher traveled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color. In 1918, the state arrested him, sentencing him to ten years for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #BenFletcher #racism #AfricanAmerican #lynching #prison #union #strike #wobblies #longshore #philadelphia #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History March 14, 1891: Eleven Italian American immigrants were lynched in New Orleans by a mob for their alleged role in the murder of police chief David Hennessy. The mob was furious with the results of their trial, the day before, when six of them were acquitted, and a mistrial was declared for the others because the jury failed to agree on their verdicts. It was the largest mass lynching in American history. There were thousands in the lynch mob, including some of the city's most prominent citizens. In the weeks that followed, the Italian consul Pasquale Corte in New Orleans fled the city at his government's direction. The New York Times charged city politicians with responsibility for the lynchings. Italy cut off diplomatic relations with the United States, sparking rumors of war. This, in turn, exacerbated the existing anti-Italian sentiment in the U.S. and led to calls for restrictions on immigration. This was also when the word "Mafia" entered the American vernacular.

Italian immigrants were encouraged to come to New Orleans in the late 1800s to replace black workers on the sugar cane plantations. Racism was rampant. Throughout much of the 19th century and early the 20th, Italian immigrants to the United States were often referred to as "White niggers." Much like the MAGA racism one hears today, these immigrants were accused of being dirty, violent, criminals, and spreaders of disease. After the Police Chief Hennessy’s assassination, the mayor told police to scour the neighborhoods and “arrest every Italian you come across.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #racism #antiitalian #mafia #lynching #neworleans #immigration

Today in Labor History March 9, 1911: Frank Little and other free-speech fighters were released from jail in Fresno, California, where they had been fighting for the right to speak to and organize workers on public streets. Little was a Cherokee miner and IWW union organizer. He helped organize oil workers, timber workers and migrant farm workers in California. He participated in free speech fights in Missoula, Spokane and Fresno, and helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques later used by the Civil Rights movement. He was also an anti-war activist, calling U.S. soldiers “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniforms.” 1917, he helped organize the Speculator Mine strike in Butte, Montana. Vigilantes broke into his boarding house, dragged him through the streets while tied to the back of a car, and then lynched him from a railroad trestle. Prior to Little’s assassination, Author Dashiell Hammett had been asked by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to murder him. Hammett declined.

Read my full bio of Frank Little here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #freespeech #indigenous #nativeamerican #cherokee #franklittle #civilrights #nonviolence #racism #vigilantes #lynching #author #writer #fiction #books @bookstadon

Many alleged suicides of Black trans women are in fact modern-day lynchings, report finds

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/crime/black-trans-women-modern-lynching

A classed understanding of mob violence as witnessed in the current Indian scenario.

#mob #lynching #class #religion

https://www.groundxero.in/2026/02/15/the-mob-is-us/

Today in Labor History February 11, 1953: Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower denied all appeals for clemency for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The government executed them at Sing Sing in 1953. They had been convicted of espionage for the USSR. Their sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol (adopted by Abel Meerepol, composer of the anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit,”), maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had, in fact, collaborated with them. The sons continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #rosenbergs #espionage #deathpenalty #execution #ussr #soviet #communism #prison #coldwar #obama #eisenhower #StrangeFruit #racism #lynching