Red Jerseys in Detroit (Encore)

On this week’s Labor History Today: The FIFA World Cup is once again captivating fans around the globe as the 2026 tournament heads into the semifinal round, with France facing Spain on July 14 and England taking on Argentina on July 15. While soccer is often viewed as a relatively recent arrival in the United States, the game actually has deep roots here, thanks to immigrant workers from Britain and Europe who brought football to mining towns, factories, and mill communities in the late nineteenth century. This week's Labor History Today – originally released during the 2022 World Cup -- explores the long—and often overlooked—history of soccer as a workers' game.

From 1927 to 1935, the United States Communist Party (CPUSA) established the Labor Sport Union, a coalition of worker athletic clubs, primarily located in the urban Northeast and Midwest. The CPUSA’s 1925 sport manifesto emphasized that sports should be used as a medium for class struggle and even to create “proletarian fighting units against militarism and fascism.”

One of their successful sporting accomplishments was the Workers’ Soccer Association, or WSA, which organized leagues in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. This communist soccer league played two seasons per year and competed for city, regional, and national championships.

On today’s show, Gabe Logan recounts the history of the Workers’ Soccer Association and explains an overlooked aspect of U.S. soccer that intersected political ideology, labor, and athletics.

On this week’s Labor History in Two: No Justice, No Bagels!

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Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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