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A songwriter, itinerant laborer, and union organizer, Joe Hill became famous around the world after a Utah court convicted him of murder. Even before the international campaign to have his conviction reversed, however, Joe Hill was well known in hobo jungles, on picket lines and at workers' rallies as the author of popular labor songs and as an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) agitator. Thanks in large part to his songs and to his stirring, well—publicized call to his fellow workers on the eve of his execution—"Don't waste time mourning, organize!"—Hill became, and he has remained, the best—known IWW martyr and labor folk hero. more

In the largest uprising in the United States outside of the Civil War, thousands of miners waged armed warfare in Logan County, West Virginia against mine owners, the sheriff and federal troops in an effort to unionize the mines in 1921. The battle marked the first time U.S. troops were ordered to bomb civilians. The United Mine Workers (UMW) enjoyed widespread support among the general population and were the first industrial union to admit African Americans on an equal basis. The union leader Bill Blizzard eventually surrendered his army in order to avoid further civilian casualties. Blizzard was acquitted in court of insurrection. Future UMW & Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) leader John L. Lewis fought alongside Blizzard at the Battle of Blair Mountain and succeeded in getting recognition for the union 14 years later in southern West Virginia.

"Which Side Are You On?" is a song written by Florence Reece in 1931. She was the wife of a union organizer for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky. In 1931 the miners of that region were locked in a bitter and violent struggle with the mine owners. In an attempt to intimidate the Reece family, deputies hired by the mining company illegally entered and searched the Reece family home. Sam Reece had been warned in advance and escaped, but Florence and their children were terrorized in his place. That night, after the men had gone, Florence wrote the lyrics to "Which Side Are You On?" on a calendar that hung in the kitchen of her home.

One of the bloodiest labor conflicts that shook the early twentieth-century American West, the Ludlow Massacre marked the end of Colorado's "thirty years' war." While relations between coal miners and mining corporations in Colorado had been poor for more than a decade, the direct origins of this event were in the United Mine Workers' organizing efforts, begun in the fall of 1913. The refusal of John D. Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and several smaller mine operators to recognize the budding union sparked a strike by more than eight thousand miners in September 1913. Evicted from company-owned housing, the striking miners, comprised mostly of Slavic, Greek, and Italian immigrants, formed their own tent colony. Workers demanded union recognition, a 10 percent wage increase, and rigorous enforcement of existing state laws, especially the eight-hour day. Over the next several months sporadic violence between miners and the state militia marred the coalfields.

Mountaintop Removal Mayhem: Blair Mtn Scandal (Feds See Dead People), Coal Profits Soar, EPA Disses Scientists
Who needs to go to the movie theatre to watch Avatar and the horrors of ruthless extraction companies when we have our own bizarre mountaintop removal policies at play. Check out the trailers for this week's episodes: more

This clip documents a dark part of the history of the United States as mostly seen through the lens of photographer Lewis W. Hine. American child labor was prolific in southern cotton mills and all kinds of other industries in other parts of the country. This video documents the period of approximately 1900-1920. Dorsey Dixon was a great songwriter who also happened to have been forced to work in a cotton mill as a young teen. He knew all of the 'ins and outs' of that time in history. Dixon wrote Babies In The Mill as a 'memory song' remembering his time as a child working in a cotton mill.