Big Top Labor: Life and labor in the circus world

There was always something about the circus that bothered me, maybe because by the time I saw it in the 1970s, “The Greatest Show on Earth” was reduced to playing in sports stadiums and arenas, a shadow of the glory days when towns and even cities declared “Circus Day” and closed down so everyone could go gawk at the spectacle of acrobatic performers wild animals and creepy sideshows.
But now, thanks to Andrea Ringer, I know that it was the class struggle lurking right there in plain sight, just beneath the Big Top, the spangles and sequins. As Ringer explains in today’s show, the circus was a highly transient workplace, with a long history of exploiting its workers, and in a Zoom talk last month, she examined the life and work of the people who labored in tented shows during the circus Golden Age, from the 1880s until the late 1950s. Andrea Ringer is assistant professor of history at Tennessee State University. Her talk, “'Save the Circus’: Worker Strikes, Circusgoers, and the Mid-Twentieth Century Decline of the Big Top” was part of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" Brown Bag series sponsored by the Michigan Traditional Arts Program and the Labor Education Program at MSU’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations. 
On today’s Labor History in 2:00: Minneapolis Teachers Brave the Cold for a Better Tomorrow.

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Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Hosted and produced by Chris Garlock. 

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