Images of Labor Educational Posters
for the social studies and literature classrooms, homeschoolers, & office decor.

Educational posters from the “IMAGES OF LABOR” series featuring quotes about the struggles of working people from an eclectic group of historic figures: Roberto Acuna, George Baer, Eugene V. Debs, Lucy Parsons, A. Philip Randolph, Nicola Sacco, Carl Sandburg, Sojourner Truth, Mark Twain and a Sit Down Striker.

Labor Day is a legal holiday observed in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Canal Zone, and the Virgin Islands. The holiday in honor of the working class was initiated in the U.S. in 1882 by the Knights of Labor, and the first Labor Day holiday was celebrated in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The second Labor Day holiday just a year later in 1883 and in 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the date. The Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow their example of a “workingmen’s holiday”. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
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Images of Labor -
Roberto Acuna Wall Poster

“If I had enough money, I would take busloads of people out to the fields and into the labor camps. Then they'd know how that fine salad got on their table.”
-Roberto Acuna, farm worker (quote from "Working")

• Teachers Guide to Working by Studs Turkel
• more Hispanic/Latino posters

Images of Labor -
Eugene V. Debs Wall Poster
b. 11-5-1855; Terre Haute, IN
d. 10-20-1926; PA

“Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.” - Eugene V. Debs

Debs was one of the founders of the International Labor Union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and a five-time Socialist Party of America candidate for U. S. President. He was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917 for protesting World War I and was sentenced to prison. President Warren B. Harding commuted his sentence to time served in 1921. • Walls and Bars by Eugene V. Debs

Lucy Parsons
Images of Labor Wall Poster
b. c. 1853; Texas
d. 3-7-1942

“We are the slaves of slaves.
We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.”
- Lucy Parsons

Lucy Parsons, radical American labor organizer and anarchist, is remembered as a powerful orator and author. In 1871 she married former Confederate soldier Albert Parsons; they were forced from Texas to Chicago by intolerant reactions to their interracial marriage. Albert was hanged for his supposed envolvement in the Haymarket Riot.

• Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity - Writings & Speeches, 1878-1937

• Black History posters
• Native American posters
• Hispanic Latino History posters

Images of Labor -
A. Philip Randolph Wall Poster
b. 4-15-1899; Florida
d. 5-16-1979

“The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement traditionally has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.”
-A. Philip Randolph

• more A. Philip Randolph posters
• Black History posters

Images of Labor -
Nicola Sacco Wall Poster
b. 4-22-1891; Italy
d. 8-23-1927; MA

“It is true, indeed, that they can execute the body, but they cannot execute the idea which is bound to live.”
- Nicola Sacco

Italian born laborers and anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed after being convicted of a robbery and murder they likely had no part in. The court allowed the anti-immigrant prejudice to override the rules of the justice system- "This man, (Vanzetti) although he may not have actually committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless culpable, because he is the enemy of our existing institutions." - jury statement of Webster Thayer, judge.

• Sacco and Vanzetti: Rebel Lives
• Sacco and Vanzetti: DVD 2007
• Immigrants posters

Images of Labor -
Carl Sandburg Wall Poster
b. 1-6-1878; Galesburg, IL
d. 7-22-1967; Flat Rock, NC

You never come back.
I say goodbye when I see you going in the doors,
The hopeless open doors that call and wait
And take you then for - how many cents a day?
How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers?
- Carl Sandburg “Mill Doors”

Carl Sandburg was an American poet, historian, novelist, journalist, balladeer, biographer, and folklorist interest in the socialist community. Sandburg wrote Rootabaga Stories for his daughters because he felt children needed American fairytales.

• Carl Sandburg TIME Magazine cover

Images of Labor -
Sojourner Truth Wall Poster
b. c. 1797; NY
d. 11-26-1883; Battle Creek, MI

“Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted. And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well - And ain’t I a woman?” -Sojourner Truth

• more Sojourner Truth posters
• Black History posters

Images of Labor -
Mark Twain Wall Poster
b. 11-30-1835; Florida, MO
d. 4-23-1910, Redding, CT

“Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth, the valuable personages, the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.” - Mark Twain

• more Mark Twain posters

Images of Labor -
A Sit-Down Striker

“Those machines had kept going as long as we could remember. When we finally pulled the switch and there was some quiet, I finally remembered something... that I was a human being, that I could stop those machines, that I was better than those machines anytime.”
- Sit-down Striker, Akron Rubberworkers 1936

• Careers and Jobs posters