Today in Labor History March 22, 1972: U.S. Congress sent the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. It failed. And to this day, women still earn 84% of what men do. One of the exceptions is public education, where teachers’ unions have fought and won the right to collectively bargain salaries based on years of experience, not gender. The first ERA was introduced to Congress in 1923. The 1972 had wide bipartisan support, including by presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, and seemed destined to pass. However, Phyllis Schlafly mobilized conservative women against the amendment, arguing that it would disadvantage housewives, make them eligible for the draft and cause divorcees to lose custody of their children. This killed the ERA in the 1970s. From 2017-2020, several states have ratified the ERA. However, it is uncertain whether these ratifications are legal, since they occurred after the deadlines. Schlafly went on to become a major player in the anti-abortion and anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ rights movements.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #feminism #sexism #EqualRightsAmendment #teachers #unions #collectivebargaining #ERA #phyllisschlafly #homophobia #lgbtq #abortion #choice #equalpay

Today in Labor History March 22, 1943: The Nazi-affiliated Schutzmannschaft Battalion burnt alive everyone from the village of Khatyn, Belarus, near Minsk. They did it in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans. Himmler created Schutzmannschaft police units in 1941. By 1942, they had over 300,000 members. They slaughtered Jews throughout the Baltics, Ukraine and Belarus. They also served as guards at forced labor camps. In total, Nazis and Nazi collaborators slaughtered over 2 million people just in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation. This was nearly 25% of the entire population. Of these, 800,000 were Jews, or about 90% of the Jewish population.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nazis #fascism #genocide #holocaust #antisemitism #jewish #khatyn #belarus #himmler #police #soviet #minsk #belarus #racism

Today in Labor History March 22, 1920: Azeri army soldiers, in collaboration with Azeri civilians, attacked Armenian civilians in Shusha (Nagorno Karabakh) and destroyed the Armenian half of the city. The pogrom continued through March 26. The true death toll may have been well over 20,000. Between 1905 and 1920, there were at least 9 pogroms in the region, against both Armenians and Azeris, with a death toll of at least 57,000, and possibly well over 100,000. At least another 10 pogroms resumed after the fall of the Soviet Union, with hundreds more people slaughtered.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #azeri #armenian #armenia #genocide #azerbaijan #soviet #russia

Today in Labor History March 22, 1886: Mark Twain, who was a lifelong member of the International Typographical Union, gave a speech entitled, “Knights of Labor: The New Dynasty.” In the speech, he commended the Knights’ commitment to fair treatment of all workers, regardless of race or gender. “When all the bricklayers, and all the machinists, and all the miners, and blacksmiths, and printers, and stevedores, and housepainters, and brakemen, and engineers . . . and factory hands, and all the shop girls, and all the sewing machine women, and all the telegraph operators, in a word, all the myriads of toilers in whom is slumbering the reality of that thing which you call Power, ...when these rise, call the vast spectacle by any deluding name that will please your ear, but the fact remains that a Nation has risen.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #KnightsOfLabor #solidarity #union #MarkTwain #writer #author #books #fiction #race #gender @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 22, 1794: President Washington signed the Slave Trade Act, which banned U.S. ships and citizens from engaging in the international slave trade. However, Americans continued to import and export slaves illegally, and other countries could still legally import slaves into the U.S. until 1807. A slave trader named John Brown, founder of Brown University, was the first person tried and acquitted under the Slave Trade Act. But the government still confiscated his ship. He was later elected to Congress.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #slavery #brownuniversity #racism #abolition #washington #congress #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History March 22, 1910: Nestor Makhno was illegally sentenced to death, along with his comrades, for a series of bank robberies and other expropriations to raise money for their anarchist propaganda. The death sentence was illegal because they had not killed anyone. Due to the fact that he was only 17 at the time, his sentence was commuted to a life in prison. However, they released him during the 1917 Revolution. While in prison, he contracted typhoid fever and, later, tuberculosis.

Makhno was born in Huliaipole, southern Ukraine. His parents were peasants and extremely poor, and he was forced to start working at the age of ten. When the 1905 revolution occurred, at the age of 16, he joined a local anarchist group, the Union of Poor Peasants, which initiated a campaign of “Black Terror” against the wealthy landlords and local Tsarist police, ultimately leading to his arrest in 1910. After his release from prison, he returned to Huliaipole to continue his anarchist organizing, leading ultimately to anarchist and peasant control of Huliaipole's Public Committee, the local organ of the Provisional Government. As a union leader, he led a series of worker strikes against the employers resulting, ultimately, in total workers' control over all industry in the Huliaipole region.

The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU), an anarchist peasant army led by Nestor Makhno, created a stateless libertarian communist society known as the Free Territory, or Makhnovshchina, in south-eastern Ukraine. The autonomous region, which lasted from 1917-1921, had an influence that extended over nearly one-third of Ukraine. The 7 million people 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 and share them among the various villages and communes of the Free State. They implemented a system of common land ownership among the peasantry and established hospitals, schools and children’s communes. In 1920, the Bolsheviks began attacking Makhnovshchina, after the Maknovists had defeated White Army, their common enemy. But many soldiers in the Red Army defected and joined the RIAU in their fight against the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks ultimately crushed Makhnovshchina in 1921. Nester Makhno barely escaped. He died in exile in Paris, July 25, 1934.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #ukraine #NestorMakhno #revolution #soviet #russia #prison #makhnovshchina #bolshevik

#FranceInsourmise and the #workingclass

#Jacobin

https://jacobin.com/2025/03/france-insoumise-roubaix-working-class

#Roubaix

Today in Labor History March 21, 1965: 3,200 people began the third march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racial violence. Earlier efforts to hold the march had failed when police attacked demonstrators and a minister was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites. The five-day walk ended March 26, when 20,000 people joined the marchers in front of the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery. This time they were defended by national guards and FBI agents. Soon after, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

#workingClass #LaborHistory #civilrights #MartinLutherKing #racism #JimCrow #fbi #votingrights #selma #montgomery #alabama #policebrutality #police #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History March 21, 1960: South African police opened fire on peaceful black protesters, killing 69 and wounding 180 in the Sharpeville massacre. Many were shot in the back as they fled. Thousands had been out protesting the hated pass laws, when they decided to march on the police station. The town of Sharpeville had high unemployment and poverty. Its residents had been forcibly moved there from the neighboring town of Topville in 1958. Passbooks were used by the Apartheid regime to control the movement of black residents and to enforce segregation.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #apartheid #racism #SouthAfrica #Sharpeville #massacre #unemployment #poverty #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History March 21, 1946: The Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington, the first professional African American football player in the U.S. since 1933. His father played baseball in the negro leagues. His uncle was the first black lieutenant in the LAPD. In college, he played both baseball and football. He was a teammate of Jackie Robinson’s at UCLA. Many people thought he was a better baseball player than Robinson. Leo Durocher supposedly offered him a contract to play major league baseball, but only if he played in Puerto Rico first, which Washington refused to do.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nfl #racism #LARams #KennyWashington #JackieRobinson #lapd #mlb #ucla #BlackMastodon #football #baseball