#triangle shirtwaist fire

The disaster of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. 145 people dead due to lousy safety conditions within the workspace.

March 25, 1911.

Working Women in Union History | AFL-CIO

I’m a day late for International Women’s Day (originally named International Working Women’s Day) but you should still check out this fabulous collection of introductions to women’s labor movements from the AFL-CIO.

Since I’ve lived in Massachusetts all my life, I’d heard about the Lowell mill girls (the photo above is from the mill):

In the 1830s, half a century before the better-known mass movements for workers’ rights in the United States, the Lowell mill women organized, went on strike and mobilized in politics when women couldn’t even vote—and created the first union of working women in American history.

But had you heard about the Atlanta washerwomen’s strike? Thousands of black washerwomen (and a handful of white ones) joined together in 1881 to demand better wages, and they succeeded. By striking and canvassing, enduring arrests and threats from the city government, they brought about radical change less than 20 years after the end of slavery.

Even further, all the history books I’d read that included the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 mentioned that the victims were mostly young women, but neglected to mention that the vast majority were Jewish teenage girls, primarily recent immigrants. As 20,000 workers went on strike to demand improved working conditions, union meetings were held in Yiddish and English.

Nineteen-year-old Clara Lemlich was sitting in the crowd listening to the speakers—mostly men—caution against striking. Clara was one of the founders of Local 25, whose membership numbered only a few hundred, mostly female, shirtwaist and dressmakers. A few months earlier, hired thugs had beaten her savagely for her union involvement, breaking ribs.

When the meeting’s star attraction, the American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers, spoke, the crowd went wild. After he finished, Clara expected a strike vote. Instead, yet another speaker went to the podium. Tired of hearing speakers for more than two hours, Clara made her way to the stage, shouting, “I want to say a few words!” in Yiddish. Once she got to the podium, she continued, “I have no further patience for talk as I am one of those who feels and suffers from the things pictured. I move that we go on a general strike…now!” The audience rose to their feet and cheered, then voted for a strike.

After the strikes successfully raised wages and cut working hours for garment industry workers up and down the east coast of the U.S., Clara was blacklisted by the industry and became a full-time union organizer and founded a working-class suffrage group.

The history of activism iswomen’s history. It’s the histories of poor women, black women, Jewish women, immigrant women, and so many more disenfranchised groups. Keep listening, because they’re still talking.