June is Indigenous History Month in Canada, and this year, the country has been rocked by the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children who attended residential school over the decades.
Today we bring you a report from the always excellent podcast On the Line: Stories of BC Workers, which takes note of Indigenous History month with a different aspect of British Columbia's Indigenous history: one that is not tragic, and not very well known. They examine the contribution of Indigenous workers to the port of Vancouver, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, largely through the voices of those who worked the waterfront - and it's a union story, too. In 1906, the independent Lumber Handlers Union was established as local 526 of the Industrial Workers of the World – or I.W.W. -- with most of the 50 or 60 members being Indigenous. This is their story.
This week we’ve also got an interesting story that reminds us that labor history is all around us and can pop up in some pretty unusual places. This one started with an odd photograph that sent me down some interesting – and unexpected – paths, from a long-forgotten strike to a racist TV show.
And on this week’s Labor History in 2:00…
The year was 1944. That was the day Local 212 UAW workers at Briggs returned to work.
Produced by Chris Garlock. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @iww @BC_LHC
MORE LINKS
Milwaukee Public Library Remember When…
NAACP Bulletin
“It Didn’t Start with Amazon: A Conversation About the History of Organized Labor in the South”
The Battle of Virden
Sharecroppers’ struggles for rights and power
Feathers and Pennies - the 1888 Matchgirls and us
Trumka: “Art is why they remember our struggles”
Live from The Battle of Blair Mountain!
The Battle of Blair Mountain; Remembering Ed Asner
Marching on Washington: civil rights to voting rights
Sacco and Vanzetti; Midnight in Vehicle City
Trumka on the future of American labor (archive show)
Remembering Rich Trumka (1949-2021)
Keokuk before the strike
Houston, We Have a Labor Dispute
Dramatizing The Murals
2020/2021 Joe Hill award-winners
The Memphis Fire Fighter Strike of 1978
Marvel Cooke, a Journalist for Working People
LHT Archives: Why America’s most radical union shut down ports on Juneteenth
LHT Archives: Debs on capitalism; Dudzic on the Labor Party
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
American Scandal