Aug. 1, 1917: Labor Organizer Frank Little Lynched

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 20 pages.
Students “become” several of the social groups who participated in the 1934 Longshore Workers Strike — some of whom had to answer the question, “Which side are you on?”

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond.
Role play on the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Mass.

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 8 pages.
Lesson engages students in a lively simulation that helps them experience some of the pressures that lead workers to organize.

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 11 pages.
This role play activity on the famous 1892 Homestead Strike, explores the possibility of solidarity among workers of very different backgrounds and at different levels in the workplace hierarchy.

Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. 184 pages.
Role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.

An explosion at the Banner Mine in Alabama killed 128 men, almost all of them African American prisoners of the state who were forced to work in the mine under the convict leasing system.

The Italian Hall disaster killed 73 people, 59 of them children, from families of striking copper miners.

The Battle of Blair Mountain was the climax of two mine wars fought in the West Virginia coalfields.

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was launched in New York.

Italian-born immigrants, workers, and anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Boston, Massachusetts.

Rubber workers began a sit-down strike at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio.

Over 1,100 sanitation workers strike and march for better wages, conditions, and safety with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.