On this day in Labor History the year was 1934.
That as the day that the bank robber known as Pretty Boy Floyd was gunned down by federal agents in Ohio.
He was born Charles Arthur Floyd in 1904 in Georgia.
His family moved to Oklahoma when he was a boy.
Like many Oklahomans during this era, he fell on hard economic times.
Floyd turned to crime.
He did a four year stretch in a Missouri prison for a payroll robbery.
When he got out, he tried to get a job in the Oklahoma oil fields.
Unable to find work, Floyd took up bank robbing.
He robbed banks in Kentucky, Ohio and Missouri.
He got caught and convicted in Ohio, but escaped on his train trip to prison.
He made his way back to Oklahoma.
There he became a folk hero.
Locals called him the “Robin Hood of The Cookson Hills.”
Legend had it that Floyd destroyed mortgage papers when he robbed banks, winning him friends among farmers reeling from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Floyd became a national fugitive when he was accused of killing federal agents in Kansas City.
He denied he was involved in the killings.
Finally, the law caught up with Floyd in an Ohio cornfield.
His body was returned to Oklahoma, where as many as 40 thousands came to his funeral.
Woody Guthrie remembered Floyd in song.
November 10 - Suicide or Murder?
November 9 - Remembering Philip Murray
November 8 - Dorothy Day is Born
November 7 - Eisenhower Wields Taft-Hartley
November 6 - The Fight for Equality
November 5 - The Everett Massacre
November 4 - Will Rogers is Born
November 3 - The Greensboro Massacre
November 2 - Sixteen Tons
November 1 - The Deadly Consequences of Scabbing
October 31 - Happy Union Made Halloween
October 30 - Wall St. Lays an Egg
October 29 - Alice Doesn’t Day
October 28 - The Pony Express
October 27 - The 1948 Donora Smog
October 26 - America’s Florence Nightingale
October 25 - NY Daily News On Strike!
October 24 - Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!
October 23 - John Sweeney is Elected
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