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The Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act was part of the group of laws referred to as the "Compromise of 1850." In this compromise, the antislavery advocates gained the admission of California as a free state, This law continued operation of the fabled Undergound Railroad, a network of over 3,000 homes and other "stations" that helped escaping slaves travel from the southern slave-holding states to the northern states and Canada. -
Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States fought from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America. -
The Great Southwest Railroad Strike
The Great Southwest railroad strike of 1886 was a labor union strike involving more than 200,000 workers. Beginning on March 1, 1886, railroad workers in five states struck against the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific railroads. The unravelling of the strike within two months led directly to the collapse of the Knights of Labor and the formation of the American Federation of Labor. -
ILGWU Strike
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) calls a strike in New York, demanding a 20-percent pay raise and a 52-hour workweek. Within two days, more than 20,000 workers from 500 factories walk off the job. This largely successful "Uprising of 20,000" is the largest labor action by women in the nation's history. -
Ludlow Massacre
The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Some two dozen people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. -
Post War Strike Wave
A wave of strikes breaks out after World War I. More than 40,000 coal workers and 120,000 textile workers walk off the job. In Boston, police strike, causing chaos in the city. The labor unrest is answered by a "Red scare," in which agitators are rounded up and the public turns suspicious of labor radicals -
World War ll
When Atlanta labor leader Albert W. Gossett died suddenly in 1951, newspapers hailed him as one of "Georgia's outstanding labor union figures." Gossett headed the Atlanta Federation of Trades from 1940 to 1945. He led the body during the difficult World War II years, and symbolized many of the divisions that swept the labor movement in the 1930s and 1940s. -
The Textile Workers Strike
The textile workers' strike of 1934 was the largest strike in the labor history of the United States at the time, involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the U.S. Southern states, lasting twenty-two days. -
Wagner Act
President Roosevelt signs into law the National Labor Relations Act, known as the Wagner Act. The law safeguards union organizing efforts and authorizes the National Labor Relations Board to assure fairness in union elections and during collective bargaining with employers. The new law tilts the playing field significantly in labor's favor, prompting a huge unionization drive throughout the late 1930s. -
Taft-Hartley Act
The Taft-Hartley Act became law despite President Harry Truman's (1945–1953) veto. Also known as the Labor-Management Relations Act, it passed Congress in 1947 and established guidelines to correct union's' unfair labor practices. -
Pullman Strike
Union workers walk out of the factory of the Pullman Company in Pullman, Illinois, in spite of the paternalistic treatment the company had afforded to workers. The strike, organized by Eugene V. Debs and the American Railway Union, will end in total defeat.
