Labor History Educational Posters, pg 3/4
for the social studies and literature classrooms, homeschoolers, & office decor.

Cesar Chavez &
Dolores Huerta
A. J. Cronin
Samuel Gompers

James Hoffa
Florence Kelly
John L. Lewis

Rosie the Riveter

• WWII posters
• Library of Congress Webcast

Woolworth Strike

Woolworth's was the first successful ‘five and dime’ store, selling inexpensive necessities and novelties by employing women as ‘unskilled’ clerks. In 1937, 110 women employees of a Woolworth's five and dime store in Detroit called a sit-down strike demanding an increase in the 25¢ an hour wage, an eight-hour workday, overtime pay after forty-eight hours a week, 50¢ lunches for the soda fountain workers; free uniforms along with free laundering (company required uniforms), seniority rights, new employees hired only through the union offices, and no discrimination against the strikers once the strike ended.

The media reported the struggles of the women, the extravagnt life style of the Woolworth heiress “Poor Little Rich Girl” Barbara Hutton, the strike spread, and within a week the strikers won.

• Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. The NFWA lead a five year strike and boycott of table grapes that lead to the improvement of working conditions of union farm workers.

• labor history posters

A. J. Cronin
b. 7-19-1896; Cardross, Scotland
d. 1-6-1981; Switzerland

Physician and author A. J. Cronin is noted for his deep social conscience. His novel “The Citadel” questioned occupational hazards of mining and resulted in a free public health service in Britain.

FYI - the film Billy Elliot is inspired in part by Cronin's 1935 novel The Stars Look Down.

Emma Goldman
b. 6-27-1869; Lithuania
d. 5-19-1940; Canada

Emma Goldman, an immigrant from Lithuania, found work in a sweatshop as a seamtress like so many others from eastern Europe. The conditions she worked under were harsh and demeaning. The 1886 Chicago Haymarket Rally and its consequences lead Goldman to commit herself to achieving individual liberty and social equality for the working class through anarchy, the abolition of authority.

• Emma Goldman posters

Samuel Gompers
b. 1-26-1850; England
d. 12-13-1924; Texas

American labor and political leader, Gompers was founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

James Hoffa
b. 2-14-1913; Brazil, IN
d. 7-30-1975; Michigan

President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters trade union from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Hoffa is also infamous for his illegal activies and mysterious disappearance.

Florence Kelley
b. 9-12-1859; Philadelphia, PA
d. 2-17-1932; Germantown

Florence Kelley, a social and political reformer associated with Hull House, worked against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights.

• Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900

John L. Lewis
b. 2-12-1880; Lucas, IA
d. 6-11-1969; Virginia

An important figure in the history of coal mining, Lewis served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1920 to 1960. He was also the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Frances Perkins
b. 4-10-1882; Boston, MA
d. 5-14-1965; New York

Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor from 1933-1945, was the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet, the most senior appointed advisors in the executive branch of the federal government. As chairwoman on the President's Committee on Economic Security Perkins was involved in all aspects of the reports and hearings that ultimately resulted in the Social Security Act of 1935. Frances Perkins also was a teacher, a volunteer at Hull House in Chicago, and a lecturer at Cornell.

• The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience

Walter Reuther
b. 9-1-1907; Wheeling, WV
d. 5-10-1970; plane crash, MI

American labor union leader who made the United Automobile Workers (UAW) a major force in the auto industry and the Democratic party in the mid 20th century. He was a supporter of the New Deal coalition.

Modern Times (1936)

Charlie Chaplin has his famous ‘Little Tramp’ character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world with the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression. “Modern Times” is one of the movies featuring a dog as Chaplin's faithful companion.

Upton Sinclair
b. 9-20-1878; Maryland
d. 11-25-1968

American author Upton Sinclair achieved much popularity in the first half of the 20th century for his investigations of social conditions, and notariety for his advocacy of socialist views and anarchist causes, such as his arrest for reading the First Amendment (free speech) at a labor rally in 1923. He gained particular fame for his novel, The Jungle, which dealt with conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry and caused a public uproar that contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906.

• Writers Who Changed the World posters

Crystal Lee Sutton
b. 12-31-1940; North Carolina
d. 9-11-2009; Burlington, NC

Cryatal Lee Sutton was a union organizer and advocate who was fired from her job at the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina for trying to unionize its employees was inspiration for the 1970s movie Norma Rae.

A Nation of Immigrants:
Eastern Europe-

. . . But most immigrants did not find an easy life in the New World. Some worked in the “sweatshops” and factories of New York and other large cities. Others went to the coal mines of Pennsylvania. . . .
and worked in factories. Many found work in the clothing industry. When unions began to organize in the early 1900s, Jewish immigrants were often at the forefront of the labor movement.

• America: A Land of Immigrants Educational History posters