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Labor History Episodes

June 24, 2024

The Auburn Prison System & the Case of William Freeman

In 1817, the second state prison in New York opened in Auburn, situated on a fast-flowing river so waterpower could be used to run machinery in the factories that would be housed in the prison. In a new practice of incarcera…
June 17, 2024

Quilting & the New Deal

As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), so-called “unskilled” women were put to work in over 10,000 sewing rooms across the country, producing both garments and home goods for people in need. Those home goods inc…
Aug. 7, 2023

Anna Rosenberg

When Anna Rosenberg Hoffman died in 1983, the New York Times called her “one of the most influential women in the country's public affairs for a quarter of a century.” A skilled labor mediator and advisor to four U.S. presid…
July 31, 2023

Pullman Porters & the History of the Black Working Class

In the early 20th century, career options for Black workers were limited, and the jobs often came with low pay and poor conditions. Ironically, because they were concentrated in certain jobs, Black workers sometimes monopol…
Dec. 5, 2022

The Rise of the Labor Movement & Employer Resistance in the Late 19th Century

After the Civil War, the simultaneous shift in the labor economy of the Southern United States and the second industrial revolution led to a growing interest in labor organizing. Newly formed labor organizations led a combin…
Guest: Chad Pearson
Oct. 17, 2022

Bert Corona

Labor leader and immigrant rights activist Bert Corona viewed Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in the United States, both with and without documentation, as one people without borders, and he understood that their st…
Jan. 10, 2022

The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike

In February, 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, a small group of unionized workers at the Electric Auto-Lite company of Toledo, Ohio, went on strike. When management failed to sign a promised contract by the April 1…
Sept. 6, 2021

The Coors Boycott

In the mid-1960s, to protest discriminatory hiring practices, Chicano groups in Colorado called for a boycott of the Coors Brewing Company, launching what would become a decades-long boycott that brought together a coalition…