Labor History Today

Jan 05 2025 100 ep. 33 mins 90
Labor History Today Podcast artwork

Gripping stories of the historic battles for worker rights and how they fuel today’s struggles. Part of the Labor Radio/Podcast Network: #LaborRadioPod

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At Sword’s Point

Jan 05 2025 58 mins  
American labor unions have seen an incredible resurgence in recent years, which, suggests public historian Tom Goldscheider, “begs the question: why were they in decline in the first place?” In "At Sword’s Point", Tom revisits a pivotal moment in American history, when the furious power of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare found its first true target, and when the dismantling of

Christmas in Mansfield

Dec 29 2024 30 mins  
Joe Jencks is a 25-year veteran of the international folk circuit, an award-winning songwriter, and a celebrated vocalist based in Chicago. Merging conservatory training with his Irish roots and working-class upbringing, Joe delivers engaged musical narratives filled with heart, soul, groove and grit. Pete Seeger said “The spirit of Folk music is people working together. Joe is a

The 1997 UPS Strike

Dec 22 2024 37 mins  
“This fight isn't just for the teamsters. This is for all American workers.”This weekend, Teamsters struck Amazon in New York City, Atlanta, Skokie, Southern California, San Bernardino and San Francisco. The union represents 10,000 Amazon workers at 10 warehouses and delivery stations. But that quote at the top is not from the Amazon strike; it’s about the Teamsters’ strike

Touring the American Labor Museum

Dec 15 2024 35 mins  
On this week's Labor History Today: Touring the American Labor MuseumThe American Labor Museum in Haledon, New Jersey, is also known as The Botto House, and that’s because for generations that’s what it was: the home of the Botto family. This unassuming house, sitting on an ordinary-looking street in a quiet residential neighborhood, played a key role in American labor history

Ybor City, Crucible of the Latina South

Dec 08 2024 48 mins  
On this week's Labor History Today: Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood

A tale of two Detroit murals

Dec 01 2024 31 mins  
Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals (top), commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson�

The lost labor artist

Nov 24 2024 32 mins  
Five stunning paintings depicting labor organizing, pickets and the violence directed at workers in the turbulent 1930s were almost lost to history. The story of Philip Tipperman and how a small group of people saved those paintings. On this week’s Labor History in Two: Massacre At Bogalusa.Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of

The Bootleg Coal Rebellion

Nov 17 2024 27 mins  
Labor historian Mitch Troutman’s 2022 book, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942 is a detailed account of coal bootlegging in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the Prohibition/Depression decades when unemployed miners took over unused mines, asserting and defending a right to mine and market the coal to support their familie

Together We Can Move Mountains

Nov 10 2024 22 mins  
Bev Grant is a cultural worker from Brooklyn, NY; she’s a social justice feminist, a choral director, an occasional bandleader, a dance artist and a photographer. She’s also a much beloved singer/songwriter, and on today’s show, she tells us the story behind one of her best-known songs – and one that seems especially meaningful this post-election week, Together We Can Move

A Wild Woman Sings the Blues

Nov 03 2024 55 mins  
“The life and music of Barbara Dane,” from The Harry Bridges Project. The story of America told through its social upheaval, its achievements and, above all, its music. Originally broadcast on WPFW's Labor Heritage Power Hour (10/31/24). On this week’s Labor History in Two: The year was 1975; that was the day that the National Organization for Women, or NOW, called for a stri