Art Shields covered it all, as a reporter for the Daily Worker on the front lines in Spain, as a labor journalist, and organizer himself.
He covered many key events for the left including the defense of Sacco & Vanzetti, the Battle of Blair Mountain, the organizing drives in Harlan County, the sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, and many more.
Art believed that strong unions were one of the best defenses against fascism, and covered the defense of those trade union leaders under attack during McCarthyism.
Today’s show is an excerpt from a talk last month presented by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives; you’ll find the whole talk here.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1926; on this day, labor leader Benjamin Gold began what became a general strike of all furriers in New York City.
photo: Art Shields, right, interviewing young people for an article in the Daily Worker in 1949. | Daily Worker / People’s World Archives | Tamiment Library
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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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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
Indigenous Longshoremen & the I.W.W.
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
LHT Archives: Painters join Black Lives Matter protests; the history of black police in America; Race and Rebellion
The 1913 Dublin Lock-out
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