Labor History Links

Sites of special interest :

History Matters - Many documents and website links relating to labor. Site is keyword-searchable.  Links to other labor history websites and on-line exhibitions. Links to syllabi, lesson plans and information on teaching. Links to discussion groups for subjects that include labor and social history

Women and Social Movements, 1820-1940 - A fabulous teaching resource, with some of it geared toward labor history--though most of it is now subscription-based only. Example: primary documents and lesson plans on women and labor, including the 1909-1910 New York shirtwaist strike,  Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strike of 1912, the 1938 Pecan Shellers strike in San Antonio, and much much more;

American Labor Studies Center " mission is to collect, analyze, evaluate, create and disseminate labor history and labor studies curriculum and related materials to kindergarten through 12th grade teachers nationwide."

Curriculum plans from the Wisconsin Labor History Society curriculum --most of these are usable beyond Wisconsin

Zinn Education Project is regularly updated with teaching plans and specific curricula ideas that emphasize the role of workers and class issues, including Civil War and Class Conflict I have organized those lesson plans chronologically, but search their site for themes and topics as well

The Power In Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States-originally published in 1988, this curriculum has been integrated into the Zinn education project. The book is well-worth the $18.00 price for the innovative teacher interested in integrating labor history into the curriculum

Curriculum guide for k-12 from the Illinois Labor History Society some of these are very well developed, with handouts, etc; some have rough ideas for approaching the topic

Labor in the Schools Committee of the California Teachers Federation --- multiple ideas and lesson plans, See also their resource list

Picturing U.S. History by Josh Freeman "digital project based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. This website provides online "Lessons in Looking," a guide to Web resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms." Great for labor history at all levels

Teacher Lesson Plan: Using Oral History: This lesson presents social history content and topics through the voices of ordinary people. It draws on primary sources from the American Memory Collection, American Life Histories, 1936-1940.

Resources For Teachers: Oral History Overview using Southern Oral History interviews But the guide is useful for any teacher

Tenement Museum Lesson Plans including "teaching with objects" "doing oral history" "primary source activities" for all levels, from from elementary level to high school

Teaching the Local These sample teaching projects represent the work done by Mahoning Valley teachers in Center for Working Class Studies Summer Institute. 

Teaching Students to Become Producers of New Historical Knowledge on the Web by Kathryn Kish Sklar S.U.N.Y. Binghamton

Special Issue on Labor History (OAH Magazine of History) includes articles such as "Why Teach Labor History?" "Using Songs to Teach Labor History (pdf) "It's About People": Social and Labor History in the Classroom Bret Eynon and William Friedheim

American Social History Project dedicating to revitalizing the study of history by challenging the ways that people learn about the past

Steeltown USA: A Digital Library of Poetry, Images, and Documents
Another site "provides a variety of resources for secondary and college teachers who want to include attention to work and working-class studies in their courses."

See my booklist and/or filmlist for specific subjects for classroom use

Glossary of Labor Terms from the American Labor Studies Center

College and Labor Education Syllabi

If you are not yet a member of LAWCHA, please consider joining: www.lawcha.org

Workers and Work in America, 1600 to the Present: A Multimedia Course Professor Zahavi has posted his course on-line, with links to sources. This might be a good starting point

Center for Working Class studies syllabus library- mostly not history, but great ideas here

Teaching About Class includes Readings about Class Class Theory Table and ideas developed by participants in the 2006 "Class in the Classroom" Summer Institute

Bill Barry's Labor Education courses History, Labor Law, Oral history projects.Also posting posting streaming audio of radio shows and streaming video of guest speakers

Andy Arnold's syllabus Working for a Living in America Spring 2010 Kutztown University

Jennifer Brook's The South since 1877 syllabus

Michelle Haberland's The Global South syllabus

Greta deJong's The African American Freedom Struggle since Reconstruction syllabus

Greta deJong's Social Movements in the United States course

Cindy Hahamovitch's Women and Work Syllabus

Cindy Hahamovitch's Workers in American Life Syllabus

Robert Korstad's Insurgent South syllabus

Max Krochmal's Behind the Veil African American Oral History & the Jim Crow South Syllabus

Jana Lipman's US Migration and Labor syllabus

O'Donovan's HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS FROM THE SLAVE TRADE TO 1900 syllabus

Steven Reich's American Workers in the Industrial Age intensive seminar syllabus

Pamela Voekel's Race, Gender, and Revolution in the Americas syllabus

Broad chronological or topical lesson frames

Labor Matters Introduces students to the role of the labor movement in securing contemporary benefits such as the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, and workplace safety regulations.

Studs Terkel’s “Working”: A Teaching Guide An invaluable educational resource for introducing Studs Terkel’s classic 1974 work of oral history to today’s students.

Curriculum plans from the Wisconsin Labor History Society --most of these are usable beyond Wisconsin --including "What are unions?", "why did they develop", lessons on the Jungle, women's labor, WWII and labor --all are connected to Wisconsin standards, but many of these standards are transferable to other state standards

Curriculum guide for k-12 from the Illinois Labor History Society some of these are very well developed, with handouts, etc; some have vague ideas for approaching the topic

Servitude to Service: African-American Women as Wage Earners Rita G. Koman

Creating a Right to Childhood: Child Labor and Social Reform -timelines, background, primary sources, photos, teaching ideas, classroom assignments

Giving Voice to Child Laborers Through Monologues language arts/performance from Read/Write/Think

Documents from the Fulton Cotton Bag mill on child labor

Exploring child labor with young students - Rethinking Schools article see also confronting child labor

Child Labor in the Cotton Mills Univ. of North Carolina

AFT curriculum unit on child farmworkers

Child Labor, safety and health, and other "performance task" Lesson plans f rom Wisconsin Labor History Society

Child labor website page for students

Your Rights on the Job "information assembled is designed to help young workers understnad their rights in the workplace as protected in federal law"

U.S. Steel Gary Works – Lesson plans on the steel industry and the workers

Harry Bridges Project High School Lesson Plans including surveillance, cold war, unions

Strikes in US and Texas history compare famous strikes in U.S. and Texas history.

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project some materials offer starting points for thinking about engaged learning strategies

Teaching plans for specific chronological time frames, arranged according to chronology

• Website on the Diary of Martha Ballard terrific site--with documents, teaching lessons, lots more; Ballard was a midwife in 18th century Maine
• Lesson Plan for K-12 on Jobs in Jamestown, Virgini from Virtual Jamestown there are also other lesson plans on same site Lesson Plan for K-12 on Language and Runaway Slaves
• Comparing Plantation and Factory Rules - a lesson plan with links to primary documents, showing comparison between northern “free labor” textile mills and slave labor plantations
• Servitude and Rebellion Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 3 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States on the role and dissent of indentured servants in American colonial history.
• Slave Resistance Lesson plan for high school, using slave narratives and other primary documents
• Slavery in the United States, 1790-1865 This lesson introduces students to primary sources -- what they are, their great variety, and how they can be analyzed.
• White into Black: Seeing Race, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery in Antebellum America from Picturing History website
• Talk Show on the Lowell Strike of 1834 or 1836   lesson plan for High school, with links to primary documents
• Pretend to be a Lowell Mill Girl
• Liberty Rhetoric and the Lowell Mill Girls -"a website for student discovery": documents with questions for discussion/reflection
• New Hampshire Mill Girls struggle for 10 hour day
• Hunger on Trial: An Activity on the Irish Potato Famine and Its Meaning for Today
• Civil War and Class Conflict from Rethinking schools
• "After Slavery" site multiple classroom units, all with a labor component, generated by the "gathering consensus among historians that this period can best be understood as an important chapter in American labor history" each unit has primary source documents and teaching suggestions; limited to the Carolinas

  1. Emancipation: Giving Meaning to Freedom
  2. Freed Slaves Mobilize
  3. Land and Labor 4. Freedom, Black Soldiers & the Union Military 5. Conservatives Respond to Emancipation 6. Pursuing Citizenship: Justice and Equality 7. Gender and the Politics of Freedom 8. Planters, Poor Whites and White Supremacy 9. Coercion, Paramilitary Terror & Freedpeople's Resistance10.Freedpeople and the Republican Party

• Materials on 1877 from Maryland State Archives, with links to primary documents (newspaper, government, photos) and suggested reading materials and lesson plans
• The Corporation film website has teaching curriculum ideas, including about corporate personhood and its meaning for labor issues
• Teaching With Documents: Affidavit and Flyers from the Chinese Boycott Case from National Archives "coolie" labor boycotts
• Teaching Forum: Chinese Exclusion resource on how to pose the fundamental question: Is the U.S. a nation of immigrants or a gatekeeper?
• Curriculum on Labor day origins
• John Peter Altgeld and the Haymarket Riot
• The Miners of the Prairie --essay and lesson plan on mining in Illinois in the 19th century
• Strikers and Populists from Zinn Education Project
• When Worlds Collide: The 1894 Pullman Strike in Decatur, Illinois essay and lesson plan
• The Pullman Strike of 1894 Jonathan Bassett
• Strikers and Populists in the Golden Age Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 11 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States on the Gilded Age.
• Study Guide to Out of this Furnace (steel mills Pittsburgh, 1890s-1930s)
• Back Stairs at Brucemore: Life as Servants in early 20th-Century America (Iowa) National Park Service curriculum on site
• Hull-House (Chicago working class ) Neighborhood 1889-1963 teachers page
• Florence Kelley and the Illinois Sweatshop Law 1890-1920
• Teachers page from the Samuel Gompers papers offers some basic guidelines on how to use the materials at the site, which include timelines, primary sources and other materials
• Exploring Women’s Rights: The 1908 Textile Strike in a 1st-grade Class
• Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine from National Archives
• Using Lewis Hine's Child Labor Photographs an open forum on how to interpret Hine's photographs of child laborers taken between 1908 and 1912 for the National Child Labor Committee. A great teaching resource/ background
• Using Lewis Hine Child Labor Photographs, Part Two: Miners uses the newly available Library of Congress originals to interrogate Hine's intentions. Great resource for exploring the deeper meaning of iconic photography in Progressive era.
• Meatpacking in Illinois History essay and lesson plan
• The Triangle Factory Fire Tragedy: An Inquiry Unit Key question: What were the caused the Triangle fire of 1911?
• Worker Safety: The Triangle Fire Legacy
• Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry
• Socialists and Wobblies Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 13 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States on the labor movement at the turn of the century.
• 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike Lesson plan
• Lawrence 1912: the Singing Strike
• The Singing Strike and the Rebel Students: Learning from the Industrial Workers of the World
• Paterson, New Jersey Silk Strike Lesson Plan
• Colorado Coal Field War Project, with Photos, bibliography, links, teachers’ lesson plans corner, archaeology
• Mother Jones website (video and curriculum)
• Bisbee Deportation of labor activists 1917 (grades 6-12, Arizona, civil rights and labor)
• THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EMMA GOLDMAN  A Curriculum for Middle and High School Students  (free speech fights)
• Teaching plan on Schneiderman by Jewish Women's archive site
• Female Office Workers in Chicago
• Boston Police Strike of 1919 (pdf) A unit that allows you to teach public worker unionism or WWI issues
• Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World  Follow the links to teaching ideas
• 38 documents and a lesson plan on the Chicago Race Riot (this site has middle school and high school lesson plans for a number of other historical issues as well)
• From the Jazz Age to the Uprisings of the 1930s Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 15 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States on the economic and social realities of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the corresponding rise of unions and the Communist Party.
• 40 Documents and lesson plan on the Bonus March of veterans to Washington in 1932, a pivotal point in the Great Depression
• Hard Times in Illinois 1930-1940
• Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union: Black and White Unite? This teaching activity examines efforts by black and white workers to overcome deep divisions and suspicions of racial antagonism.
• How Did Women Needleworkers Influence New Deal Labor Policies in Puerto Rico?
  • lesson plan with 16 documents and images
• 1938 San Antonio Pecan Shellers strike; Mexican American activists and civil rights issues in the 1930s
• Walter Reuther No Greater Calling; lesson plans on the UAW leader (1930s-1970s) and his times
• the Great Depression and the 1990s
• Teaching Tools on Eleanor Roosevelt, Human Rights and Workers Rights
• Salt of the Earth-grounds students in hope uses the classic blacklisted labor film Salt of the Earth (1951) about a miners strike, and how the workers won through solidarity and women's prefigurative feminist activism
• Memphis Sanitation Workers 1968 strike lesson plan for a different view on Dr. King's involvement and the history of public workers
• California Department of Education lessons on Cesar Chavez and farm labor 
• The Hard Hat Riots - 1970  When Construction workers fought war protestors at Wall Street, the media built a perception that working class people were pro-war. Beneath the surface were bitter feelings of working class people against college-educated draft-dodgers, as well as assertions of manliness in a society in which gender norms were being challenged by the women’s movement. This site has historians accounts of the events and lesson plans for teachers
• Lessons in Solidarity: Grady Hospital Workers United Looks at civil rights movement from a labor perspective
• The Human Lives Behind the Labels The Global Sweatshop, Nike, and the race to the bottom from Rethinking Schools
• Teaching about the WTO from Rethinking schools
• Teaching Economics As If People Mattered: A Curriculum Guide to Today’s Economy (2007) Economics curriculum for high school with lessons on the human implications of economic policies.
• Chicago Political Economy Group activities and lesson plans on the recent economic crisis, global banking meltdown. Developed by Bill Barclay, they are designed to convey to high school and adults how the crisis resulted from human actors. These are very excellent tested demonstrations. Highly recommended