Labor's Untold Story: a Textbook Case
Labor’s Untold Story A Textbook Case of Neglect and Distortion ornell Th k c a /J oto AP Ph
He who controls the present, controls the past. In the high school history textbooks our children read, too He who controls the past, controls the future.1 often we find that labor’s role in American history—and labor’s important accomplishments, which changed American life—are By The Albert Shanker Institute misrepresented, downplayed, or ignored. That is a tragedy because labor played (and continues to play) a key role in the magine opening a high school U.S. history textbook and find- development of American democracy and the American way of ing no more than a brief mention of Valley Forge, the Mis- life. This article, and the more detailed report* from which it is souri Compromise, or the League of Nations. Imagine not drawn, examines four high school textbooks developed by some finding a word about Benjamin Franklin, Lewis and Clark, of the leading publishers in the country: The American Vision, ISitting Bull, Andrew Carnegie, or Rosa Parks. That is what has hap- published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill in 2010; American Anthem: pened to labor’s part in the American story, and to most of the Modern American History, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Win- men and women who led the labor movement. ston/Harcourt in 2009; United States History, published by Pren- tice Hall/Pearson in 2010; and The Americans, published by McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin in 2009.2 Together, these The Albert Shanker Institute is committed to four fundamental principles: vibrant democracy, quality public education, a voice for working people books represent a significant percentage of the purchasing market in decisions affecting their jobs and their lives, and free and open debate for high school history textbooks. about all of these issues. This article is drawn from American Labor in U.S. Spotty, inadequate, and slanted coverage of the labor move- History Textbooks: How Labor’s Story Is Distorted in High School History ment in U.S. history textbooks is a problem that dates back at least Textbooks, which the Institute published in 2011. Several experts in labor to the New Deal era. By the late 1960s, a number of scholars had history contributed to this report: Paul F. Cole, director of the American Labor Studies Center; Jeff Hilgert, doctoral student in industrial and labor begun documenting the biased treatment of organized labor in relations at Cornell University; Lori Megivern, Fulbright Fellow and Ameri- high school curricula. In a 1966 study, Labor in Learning: Public can Councils for International Education Teacher of Excellence; and Jeff School Treatment of the World of Work, University of California Mirel, professor of education and history at the University of Michigan. researcher and high school history teacher Will Scoggins found Christina Bartolomeo, a freelance writer (who has since joined the AFT that the history and government textbooks used in most high staff), assisted with researching, writing, and editing.
*To read the full report, go to www.shankerinstitute.org/ publications/american-labor-in-textbooks. 30 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 schools either ignored or inadequately treated topics such as collective bargaining, unfair labor A Note on Methods practices, company unions, strikes, right-to-work laws, and the role of government in labor dispute We selected the four leading textbook Data on the exact market share of mediation and conciliation.3 companies (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill; these books is not in the public Holt, Rinehart, and Winston/Harcourt; domain, but it appears that these four Scoggins and other scholars understood that Prentice Hall/Pearson; and McDougal publishers may have a combined high school textbooks had come to reflect a nega- Littell/Houghton Mifflin) and reviewed market share of more than 80 percent tive view about unions that was prevalent in the the most detailed high school U.S. of the U.S. high school textbook American business community, as well as in poli- history textbook from each publisher. industry. In an effort to get as accurate tics—often expressed by various business-ori- We limited our review to the hard a picture as possible, we approached ented and ultra-conservative factions of the copy student editions. We made this representatives of each publisher at a Republican Party. In a sense, as Scoggins and decision because these editions are the curriculum conference in June 2009 others found, American history textbooks have actual books to which students are and asked them for their company’s taken sides in the nation’s intense political debate exposed in the classroom. We did not nationwide market share in the U.S. about organized labor—and the result has been investigate or assess any materials history textbook market. Each of the that generations of students have had little con- from the teacher editions, nor did we four textbook publishers’ representa- review any supplemental teaching tives said their company’s share was cept of labor’s role in American history and the materials. All of the textbooks we greater than 25 percent of the labor movement’s contributions to American examined were written for high school nationwide market in U.S. history. workers’ rights and quality of life. U.S. history classrooms. –ASI One illustration of this trend: in the late 1930s and early 1940s, conservative, business-oriented groups launched a highly successful attack on the supposedly “left-wing” textbook series written by Harold Rugg, a eral Motors Corporation as union propaganda designed to con- professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College.4 Among vince students that there was nothing wrong with the sit-down other complaints, the books’ critics denounced Rugg’s “positive” strike. (The Flint Sit-Down Strike led to the unionization of the depiction of the 1936–1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike against the Gen- U.S. auto industry, enabling the fledgling United Automobile Workers to organize 100,000 workers almost at a stroke.5) In the early 1940s, these criti- cisms of Rugg gained traction and his books disappeared from public schools.6 After the Second World War, the business community continued to devote significant resources to the development and promotion of a high school social studies curriculum that promoted its vision of society and its perspec-
, tive on U.S. history. This vision was skeptical on i s i of government programs and wary of orga- v i
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AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 31 unionism in the 1960s and 1970s. This silence serves all of our students poorly, and reflects a lack of perspective about what has been one of the more impor- tant legacies of the 1960s to contempo- rary life.”9 Public employee unionism has been a focus of intense political conflict and media attention in recent months, with attacks on public employees’ union rights and the public sector labor move- ment arising in Wisconsin, Michigan, Images
Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, and /AP s other states. Because of the lack of infor- i Corb mation in history textbooks, most citi- / zens are probably not prepared to fully ettman B understand these attacks. t h g i How Today’s Leading Copyr Textbooks Shortchange Labor Today’s major high school history texts do not ignore unions and are and have done the labor movement altogether. Each of the books we reviewed in the past; they
presents a modicum of important information, including facts neglect the labor Images /AP
about organizations such as the Knights of Labor, the American movement’s role s i Federation of Labor (AFL), and the Congress of Industrial Orga- in shaping and Corb nizations (CIO). We should note that there are several instances defending Ameri- /
in which the textbooks get it right—for example, two of the text- can democracy, ettman B t
books include descriptions of the too-often-forgotten Women’s and they pay h g Trade Union League, which encouraged women to form trade hardly any atten- i
unions, fought for laws to protect the rights of women factory tion to organized Copyr workers, and is credited with establishing the nation’s first strike labor in the past fund.10 Another example: The Americans contains an excellent half century. two-page spread on NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp., the The textbooks fall short in their coverage of labor in three spe- 1937 Supreme Court case that affirmed the authority of the cific ways. First, they devote little space to the labor movement National Labor Relations Board and gave some protection to and the development of unions generally. Second, when they do workers’ right to organize.11 cover the development of unions, the textbooks’ accounts are Still, these textbooks provide what we believe to be a narrow often biased against the positive contributions of unions to Ameri- and sometimes seriously misleading view of what unions can history, focusing instead on strikes and “labor unrest.” Third,
Working for Freedom
For a more balanced discussion For the series homepage— of the role of labor during and links to extensive teaching industrialization, see “Working guides, photos, timelines, and for Freedom,” which is other resources—see www.pbs. webisode 9 in Freedom: A org/wnet/historyofus/index. History of US. Created by PBS html. To jump to labor during based on Joy Hakim’s A History industrialization, see segments of US textbooks (see www. 6–8 of “Working for Freedom” joyhakim.com/works.htm), this at www.pbs.org/wnet/ 16-webisode series makes the historyofus/web09/segment6. struggle for freedom the html. central topic in American –Editors history.
32 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 and the development of the Ameri- can social structure as it exists today. There is little disputing that the labor movement has been a key actor in our country’s history, inar- guably as important as scores of other figures and movements that cross the stage in history class, from Whigs to prohibitionists, from Daniel Boone to Joe McCarthy. Here are five specific reasons why not telling labor’s story deprives stu- dents of the real American story and leaves them ignorant of forces that continue to shape their lives today.
s 1. Labor played a vital role in the i establishment and growth of democ- Corb © racy in America. Few high school history textbooks demonstrate that Above left: Members of the Transportation Workers Union, who the labor movement in America sprang directly from the move- were employees of New York’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel ment’s understanding of Americans’ constitutional rights. For Authority, picket the office of the New York City construction coordinator in 1950. Left: The president of the American Federation example, the Bill of Rights protects “the right of the people peace- of Labor, William Green, testifies in favor of President Franklin D. ably to assemble.” From this right to freedom of assembly arises Roosevelt’s Economic Security Bill, which became the Social Security workers’ claim to the right of freedom of association—the crucial Act of 1935. Above: Child laborers, like these Pennsylvania coal miners in 1911, were quite common before unions helped win right to meet together, to organize a union. Along with the right passage of child labor laws. to bargain contracts with employers, freedom of association is a central element of both American and international labor rights their discussions of other important social, political, and eco- and standards.* nomic movements (such as the civil rights movement or the Unfortunately, not one of the American history textbooks we Progressive movement) and their gains often downplay or ignore reviewed illustrates that the right to freedom of association springs the important role unions and their members played in these directly from the right to freedom of assembly—i.e., that labor movements. rights spring from constitutional and human rights as envisioned The following are some of the most significant examples of by the Founders. these problems, drawn from the four textbooks. The books: Labor activists understood this principle from the movement’s earliest days. In the 1830s, female textile mill workers in Lowell, • often implicitly (and, at times, explicitly) represent labor orga- Massachusetts (often known as the Lowell Mill Girls), fought for nizing and labor disputes as inherently violent; a living wage and a 10-hour day. In an 1834 proclamation urging • virtually ignore the vital role of organized labor in winning other mill workers to join them in a walkout to protest a wage cut, broad social protections, such as child labor laws, Social Secu- the women wrote:12 rity, Medicare, Medicaid, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency; Our present object is to have union and exertion, and we • ignore the important role that organized labor played in the remain in possession of our unquestionable rights. We circu- civil rights movement; and late this paper wishing to obtain the names of all who imbibe • pay scant attention to unionism after the 1950s, thus com- the spirit of our Patriotic Ancestors, who preferred privation pletely ignoring the rise of public sector unionization, which to bondage, and parted with all that renders life desirable— brought generations of Americans into the middle class and and even life itself—to procure independence for their gave new rights to public employees. children. Giving the union movement its proper place in the teaching of All the textbooks we assessed provide extensive coverage of our history is not simply special pleading for the cause of labor, the formulation and adoption of the Constitution and enactment as some critics might assert. Our central argument is that the study (Continued on page 36) of American history itself is incomplete and inaccurate without labor history. Regardless of their personal values, serious scholars *Labor’s source of inspiration from the First Amendment right of association is aspirational. The rights contained in the First Amendment provide protection against of American history do not deny that the labor movement has government action that would limit the exercise of the right of association. The First played a major role in our nation’s development. Amendment does not apply to the actions of private parties. Nonetheless, many of the Whether in light of labor’s championship of universal social values imbedded in the First Amendment right of association became the foundation for the National Labor Relations Act, which was adopted by Congress and does apply programs or its formative role in the industrial and postindustrial to the private sector. See Jacksonville Bulk Terminals, Inc., et al. v. International workplace, labor has changed our nation’s history, its economy, Longshoremen’s Association, et al., 457 U.S. 702 (1982).
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 33 Distorting the Historical Record One Detailed Example from the Albert Shanker Institute’s Report
Perhaps the most glaring error in these can workers into nonsegregated unions. In and organized the United Rubber Workers textbooks is the treatment of the role that addition, organized labor provided crucial during and after World War II.5 unions and labor activists played as key support to the civil rights movement from Likewise, none of the textbooks participants in the civil rights movement. the 1940s through the 1960s, most of which mentions E. D. Nixon, a leader in the For example, while coverage is thin on the the textbooks ignore. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and an relationship between organized labor and The textbooks do mention A. Philip associate of A. Philip Randolph. Nixon was the civil rights movement in the 1940s, it is Randolph (the founding president of the also a leader of the NAACP in Alabama and virtually nonexistent from the 1950s on. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who the initial organizer of the Montgomery bus In general, the textbook coverage of the led the union’s 12-year fight for recogni- boycott and the Montgomery Improvement civil rights movement is quite good, but the tion by the Pullman Company and won the Association, which managed the boycott. omission of organized labor’s contribution union entry into the AFL) as both a union There is no mention in the textbooks of the to that movement is deeply problematic leader and a civil rights leader.4 The books role of union support for the boycott.6 Finally, none of these texts introduces students to Bayard Rustin, a master strategist and hero of both the labor and civil rights movements, and the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washing- ton. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and into the ’80s, Rustin was instrumental in linking organized labor and the civil rights movement.7 Moreover, the textbooks simply fail to reflect the extent and depth of organized labor’s support for the civil rights move- ment, and how closely the two move- ments—labor rights and civil rights—were intertwined. This close relationship between labor and civil rights is often called Images 8
/AP “civil rights unionism.” s i Just a few examples of omitted content Corb / on labor and civil rights can demonstrate the extent to which textbooks ignore ettman
B labor’s contributions to the modern civil t h g i rights struggle. Consider the contributions of just a few of the many unions that sup- Copyr ported civil rights that are not covered in history textbooks. For example, the United Above: As these signs remind us, the 1963 concentrate on Randolph’s 1941 plan for Auto Workers (UAW) sent money to support March on Washington was for jobs and a march on Washington to protest racial dis- the Montgomery bus boycott led by Dr. freedom. The ties between labor and civil crimination in the military industries and to Martin Luther King Jr., endorsed a national rights were so strong that while planning propose the desegregation of the American boycott of Woolworth stores to integrate the march, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked in the United Auto Workers’ headquarters in armed forces, which led to the Fair Employ- their lunch counters, and funded voter Detroit. ment Act, an early success for civil rights registration drives in predominantly black advocates. When the textbooks move into areas. In 1963 alone, the union donated and seriously distorts the historical record. the 1950s, however, they ignore other $100,000 to King’s Southern Christian To be sure, unions have their own troubled strong links between leaders of organized Leadership Conference.9 King worked out history of racial discrimination,1 with many labor and the civil rights movement. of the national UAW headquarters when unions banning the inclusion of African The textbooks do not cover the extent he and Rustin were planning the March on American members through the 19th and to which many civil rights activists were Washington. Two months before the March, early 20th centuries.2 Nonetheless, African also labor activists and leaders, and how some 150,000 supporters of civil rights American workers understood quite well closely intertwined the struggle for African marched in Detroit, led by UAW President that they needed to organize to protect American workers’ labor rights was with the Walter Reuther and King. UAW members their rights. Accordingly, in New York City struggle for civil rights. Consider union lead- bused in large numbers of marchers.10 in 1850, black workers formed the Ameri- ers such as Clarence Coe, who played a key Early in its history, the International can League of Colored Laborers, the first role in building the National Association Brotherhood of Teamsters would not allow organization of black workers.3 for the Advancement of Colored People Southern locals to follow the practice of Beginning in the 1930s, however, most (NAACP) in Memphis in the 1930s, worked segregation, and threatened to pull large unions began to recruit African Ameri- at Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, charters in cases where this rule was
34 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 stores in New York those who profit by exploiting us. They City. Such unions as the deplore our discontent, they resent International Ladies’ our will to organize, so that we may Garment Workers’ guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted. They are Union contributed shocked that action organizations, upward of 800 picket- sit-ins, civil disobedience and protests 14 ers per day. are becoming our everyday tools, just There are many as strikes, demonstrations and union more examples of organization became yours to insure union participation in that bargaining power genuinely the area of civil rights. existed on both sides of the table. For instance, the We want to rely upon the goodwill American Federation of those who oppose us. Indeed, we of Teachers and its have brought forward the method ty i of nonviolence to give an example locals supported the vers i of unilateral goodwill in an effort to n civil rights move- U evoke it in those who have not yet felt ment in many ways, tate it in their hearts. But we know that if S including by filing an we are not simultaneously organizing yne a amicus brief in support our strength we will have no means to , W of Brown v. Board of move forward. If we do not advance, brary Education in 1954, by the crushing burden of centuries of Li er actively supporting neglect and economic deprivation h will destroy our will, our spirits and eut the 1963 March on our hope. In this way, labor’s historic P. R P. Washington for Jobs
ter tradition of moving forward to create and Freedom, and by al vital people as consumers and citizens W e giving King more than h has become our own tradition, and for t $40,000 worth of sta- of
the same reasons. tion wagons to be used in the voter registra- Finally, there is no mention in the text-
Courtesy tion drive in Selma, books of labor’s role in supporting the Civil Alabama. In 1963, AFL- Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights 16 Above: Bayard Rustin, the architect of the CIO President George Meany paid $160,000 Act of 1965. In short, the picture painted March on Washington, joins Albert Shanker, in bail to release King and 2,000 protesters by U.S. history textbooks simply airbrushes president of New York City’s United being held in a Birmingham jail. labor out of this vital historical period Federation of Teachers, for a rally in support and, in the process, paints an incomplete of paraprofessionals in 1970. Other omissions reveal selective bias quite clearly. One glaring example: King picture of both the labor and civil rights was murdered in Memphis in 1968 while movements. ☐ violated. By 1906, editorials in the Team- he was aiding a unionization effort of Endnotes sters’ magazine were making impassioned black Memphis sanitation workers under 1. As Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership pleas for all local unions, but especially the auspices of the American Federation Conference on Civil and Human Rights, put it in congressional those in the South, to organize African of State, County and Municipal Employees. testimony: “Although many unions attempted to defy workplace racial hierarchies, others acquiesced and focused primarily American workers. The union supported The Southern Christian Leadership Confer- on organizing white workers, while either neglecting African the work of King and provided money and ence made the Memphis struggle a focal Americans or relegating them to the worst job classifications. point of its Southern cities organization Notably, the United Auto Workers (UAW) stood bravely athwart supplies to many civil rights groups, some of its own members in demanding equal treatment of including more than 700 families living in effort. King believed that unionization was African-American workers within Detroit’s auto plants.” See a key part of the struggle for civil rights. Wade Henderson, “A Strong Labor Movement Is Critical to the “Freedom Village,” who faced retribution Continuing Advancement of Civil Rights in Our Nation” (testi- for registering to vote in 1960.11 And, few Yet, while the textbooks mention the mony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Americans today know of Viola Liuzzo, a reason why King was in Memphis, none Labor, and Pensions, March 10, 2009). mentions the specific union involved in the 2. For example, the American Railway Union, which was at the civil rights activist and the wife of a center of the 1894 Pullman strike, did not admit black railway Teamster business agent; Liuzzo was shot strike—clearly a central actor—by name. workers. See Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Worse, not one mentions King’s strong Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001). and killed on March 25, 1965, by Ku Klux See also James Gilbert Cassedy, “African Americans and the Klansmen while driving a Selma marcher belief that labor rights and civil rights were American Labor Movement,” Prologue 29, no. 2 (Summer 1997). home. King, Teamster leaders (including inextricably linked. 3. For more on the American League of Colored In 1961, King spoke to the AFL-CIO on Laborers, see “American League of Colored Laborers Teamster General President James R. Hoffa, (1850–?),” BlackPast.org, www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/ who offered a $5,000 reward for the the shared values of the organized labor american-league-colored-laborers-1850. capture and conviction of those who and civil rights movements. This speech 4. For a biography of A. Philip Randolph, see “Gentle Warrior: 12 should be included in all U.S. history A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979),” A. Philip Randolph Institute, murdered Liuzzo), and other labor and www.apri.org/ht/d/sp/i/225/pid/225. 13 textbooks. In the speech, King declared:15 civil rights leaders attended her funeral. 5. See William P. Jones, “Black Workers, Organized Labor, Another example of union support for and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” Left History 8, no. 2 (2003), Negroes in the United States read the 145–154. the civil rights movement: in 1960, when history of labor and find it mirrors their 6. For a biography of E. D. Nixon, see “E. D. Nixon,” Encyclope- the Woolworth store sit-ins began in the own experience. We are confronted dia of Alabama online, www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/ South, the New York Central Labor Council by powerful forces telling us to rely Article.jsp?id=h-1355. organized picketing at the Woolworth on the goodwill and understanding of (Continued on page 40)
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 35 (Continued from page 33) about important reforms in the areas of labor relations.”13 The of the Bill of Rights, and the importance of rights like free speech passage goes on to discuss the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of as America’s democracy developed. Yet, not a single textbook 1938, in which the 40-hour week was finally achieved for many provides an analysis of the relationship of freedom of association workers. Labor was the key player in the fight for the 40-hour to freedom of assembly as articulated in the First Amendment. week, and supported the FLSA, but is given no credit for decades Nor do the textbooks cover the labor movement’s long history of of advocacy and activism. fighting corporate and government attempts to deprive Ameri- Through their role in winning progressive social legislation, can workers of their constitutional rights to freedom unions brought genera- of assembly, freedom of speech, and due process. tions of American fami- Without this aspect of labor’s history, students lose lies into the middle class a key narrative about how our democracy was shaped and kept many Ameri- and tested. cans out of poverty.14 Yet the central facts about unions’ economic and Images
/AP social contributions to s i American life are given Corb / short shrift in high school history textbooks. If, ettman B t
h while driving to school, g i students happen to
Copyr see the bumper sticker “Unions: The Folks Who Labor unions were strong Brought You the Week- supporters of Solidarity, the end,” that may be more trade union movement that brought freedom to Poland. exposure to American Above: In 1980, Lane Kirkland, labor’s historic role as a president of the AFL-CIO, force for social progress receives a movement T-shirt from Stanislaw Walesa, the than they will ever get in stepfather of the movement’s the classroom. head, Lech Walesa. Left: A Solidarity rally in Warsaw in 3. Labor has been a leader oto 1982. in the fight for human
AP Ph rights at home and abroad. U.S. labor has a long-standing history of supporting 2. Labor has been a crucial force for social progress in America. As human rights in our country and globally, but little of that history a result of the glaring deficiencies in how labor is treated in stan- is acknowledged in high school textbooks. Perhaps the most glar- dard high school U.S. history textbooks, students are likely not to ing error in the textbooks we reviewed is their failure to cover the understand that unions have played a crucial role—far beyond role that American unions and labor activists played as key par- benefiting their own members—in helping to achieve decent liv- ticipants in the civil rights movement. While labor leader and ing standards and vital social programs for all Americans. Most Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters founder and president A. textbooks cover significant social legislation but rarely mention Philip Randolph is mentioned as an inspiration for Dr. Martin the contribution of the labor movement in its advocacy and Luther King Jr. in two of the books,15 nowhere else in the textbooks adoption. do we see a description of the remarkable support that labor then American labor was central to winning child labor protections, poured into the civil rights movement. (For details on how labor unemployment insurance, workers’ injury compensation, Social supported the civil rights movement, see page 34.) Security benefits, the minimum hourly wage, the eight-hour day The textbooks also fail to mention the many other contribu- and other limits on working hours, the Occupational Safety and tions made by American labor to the human rights struggle Health Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, Medicare, and around the world—from the work of the International Ladies’ Medicaid. Yet the textbooks are largely silent on labor’s role in Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) with the Jewish Labor Com- these achievements. For example, no mention is made of con- mittee and its outspoken opposition to the Nazi terror, to the tinual union advocacy efforts on behalf of the Social Security Act active role played in the 1930s and 1940s by organized labor in the of 1935, a key social reform of the second New Deal establishing United States in fighting against totalitarian regimes abroad (both old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and disability relief. Communist and Fascist), to unions’ and the AFL-CIO’s active In the textbooks, these laws are credited essentially to President support for the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland in the Franklin D. Roosevelt, not portrayed as the result of diligent, late 1980s, to the labor movement’s efforts to aid anti-apartheid nationwide, grass-roots mobilization of American workers and groups in South Africa. In its account of President Ronald Reagan’s their unions. For example, The Americans notes: “During the opposition to the Soviet empire, American Anthem describes the Second New Deal, Roosevelt, with the help of Congress, brought success of the Solidarity movement in Poland, for example, but
36 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 fails to mention the extensive support American labor unions gave pears in chapters covering the decades since 1950, except (in three to Solidarity.16 of the textbooks) for a brief and in some cases admiring mention Today, the American labor movement continues to fight for of how Reagan fired air traffic controllers in the Professional Air human rights worldwide: for the rights of oppressed workers, Traffic Controllers Organization strike of 1981. women, children, trade unionists, and journalists, from Iran to 5. Learning about labor is part of students’ civic education. “In China to El Salvador. This story largely fails to make it into the high every democracy, the people get the government they deserve,” school history classroom.17 wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, a famous early observer of the fledg- 4. Labor is one of the major American political and social forces of ling American democracy. History class is one place where stu- the 19th and 20th centuries—and continues to be a political and dents learn what it means to be a citizen of our democracy—and social force today. High school history textbooks also simply do teaching labor history is a way to educate students to be question- not convey the scale and significance of labor as a political and ing, active citizens in that democracy. social force in American society for two centuries, and as a con- Labor unions possess an encompassing vision of an authenti- tinuing force in those areas today. Many students will never learn cally democratic life that is arguably broader and more inclusive that, as recently as the late 1960s, around 30 percent of nonagri- than almost any other force or constituency in American society, cultural workers in America were union members,18 and an and they have worked hard to realize that vision for members and American might identify him‑ or herself as a Teamster, Ironworker, nonmembers alike. When we give students a full and accurate or ILGWU member just as readily as he or she might self-identify account of labor’s history, we are illustrating that it is possible to as a Democrat or a Methodist. Many American communities once challenge established social and economic systems and structures centered around the union hall as much as they did around the and act collectively to bring about change—just as when we teach church or the town hall. Yet the textbooks, which cover other them about the American Revolution, the Progressive and Popu- social institutions and movements with some detail, from the list movements, the civil rights struggle, and the fight for women’s American film industry to the conservation movement, give short suffrage. The textbooks cover all these in detail, but too often leave shrift to labor’s decades-long centrality and continuing impor- out the accomplishments and struggles of American labor. This is tance in American life. unfortunate because labor is a strand without which the American The textbooks also fail to portray the role of labor as a political narrative of principled dissidence and the struggle for social prog- force: as a decisive force in electing presidents, in passing legisla- ress by activist citizens is incomplete. tion, in energizing political parties, in shaping events in our politi- cal history. For example, the American labor movement played a e undertook this review in a spirit of hope that key role in supporting the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s. It sup- American history textbook publishers will meet ported U.S. efforts in two world wars. It helped pass the Civil the challenge of covering the labor movement Rights Act. And, despite a decline in membership, organized more fairly, accurately, and extensively going labor’s political voice is still strong. For example, in the 2008 elec- forward.W We have seen the textbook publishing industry make tion, 21 percent of voters were from union households—despite similar changes in other key areas of American history. For the fact that organized labor represented only 12.4 percent of example, as a result of demands from leaders of the civil rights workers. Yet, in the textbooks, the labor movement virtually disap- movement and others over the last 40 years, textbook publishers today produce books that more accurately reflect the contributions of Americans of all races and origins to the country’s narrative, history, and life. We urge them to consider textbooks’ coverage of labor in the same critical light, to ask the same questions about labor’s contribution to the American story: Are there voices missing? Are there key American events and great American themes being left out? ☐
Endnotes 1. A paraphrase of George Orwell’s famous line in Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Secker and Warburg, 1949): “ ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ ” 2. Joyce Appleby, Alan Brinkley, Albert S. Broussard, James M. McPherson, and Donald A. Ritchie, The American Vision (New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2010); Edward L. Ayers, Robert D. Schulzinger, Jesús F. de la Teja, and Deborah Gray White, American Anthem: Modern American History (New York: Holt,
ewell Rinehart, and Winston/Harcourt, 2009); Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, Peter B.
d J Levy, Randy Roberts, and Alan Taylor, United States History (Boston: Prentice
re Hall/Pearson, 2010); and Gerald A. Danzer, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Larry S. /F Krieger, Louis E. Wilson, and Nancy Woloch, The Americans (New York: oto McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin, 2009). Note: McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin and Holt, Rinehart, and Winston/Harcourt are now Houghton Mifflin AP Ph Harcourt. 3. Will Scoggins, Labor in Learning: Public School Treatment of the World of Above: Nelson Mandela in Chicago in 1993, just a year before he Work (Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, 1966). was elected president of South Africa, at a union-sponsored rally in support of his tireless efforts for free multiracial elections. (Continued on page 40)
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 37 Why Teach a 100-Year-Old Strike? The “Bread and Roses” Centenary
By Norm Diamond attracted from surrounding farmsteads and they allocated work by ethnicity so that rural communities. Housing was to be airy particular jobs were given only to Lithu- Today’s movement in support of the 99 and spacious, with grass yards and limits on anians, or to French Canadians, or to the percent is a reminder that throughout U.S. the number of tenants, and wages were to Irish. Supervisors used ethnic and racial history, a major engine of change has been be adequate for a healthy diet. slurs and sexual harassment as intentional grass-roots organizing and solidarity. As an By 1912, the drive for profits had means of control. old Industrial Workers of the World song destroyed the vision. Workers lived in fetid, When individual states attempted goes:* crowded tenements. Working nine- and regulation, companies threatened to move. ten-hour days, six days a week, their main There was a race to the bottom (which is “An injury to one, we say’s an injury to meal was usually little more than bread and being repeated today on an international all, molasses. The drinking water inside the mills scale), with states competing to offer United we’re unbeatable, divided, we must fall.” was foul; supervisors developed a lucrative companies the best deal, the least over- sideline selling water that was actually sight. Companies claimed they could not act Major history textbooks, however, potable. Life expectancy for mill workers to improve conditions on their own; doing downplay the role of ordinary people in was 22 years less than for non–mill worker so would put them at a competitive shaping events—especially those who residents of Lawrence. formed labor unions and used the strike to “If the women of this assert their rights. One of the most country knew how the significant strikes in U.S. history occurred cloth was made in 100 years ago, in the Lawrence, Massachu- Lawrence and at what setts, textile mills, and yet it merits barely a price of human life they mention in the most widely used U.S. would never buy another history textbooks. yard,” said Vida Dutton It was known as the “Bread and Roses” Scudder, a professor at strike because underlying the demand for Wellesley College who adequate wages (“bread”) was a demand spoke at one of the for dignity on the job and in life more strikers’ rallies. generally (“roses”). The workforce was Until this strike, the U.S. Congress was one that unions and indifferent to working conditions. The Wool bosses alike thought Trust was as powerful as the Oil Trust and impossible to organize. the Steel Trust. William Madison Wood, Mostly unskilled, a chairman of the American Woolen Com- majority of them women, pany, was mentioned in the same breath as kept apart by more than John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and a dozen languages, mill J. P. Morgan. With the largest and most workers were both modern textile mills in the world and more vanguard and victims of than 30,000 workers, Lawrence was the the new U.S. industrial- epicenter and symbol of the new ization. The textile industry was the first to Above: When conditions became especially industrialization. use new sources of power to drive its difficult, with food and heating fuel scarce It had been founded only six decades machines. It led the way in subdividing jobs and attacks by hired thugs and the state earlier, a planned city derived from a militia increasing, strikers sent some children into limited, repetitive movements, making to families of supporters in New York and utopian vision. The mills themselves were to workers interchangeable and replaceable. Boston. provide cultural opportunities and educa- Hundreds of thousands were enticed tion, refining the young women and men from poor areas of Europe by posters and postcards showing happy mill hands leaving disadvantage. The responsibility, their Norm Diamond, a labor historian, is the former president work with smiles and sacks of gold. But spokespeople said, was not theirs: it was of the Pacific Northwest Labor College and a former once mill owners had a surplus of workers that of the economic system that bound professor at Antioch College. He has worked in steel desperate for jobs, they drove down wages them together and produced all the marvels mills and a sawmill, and he is a coauthor of The Power in and sped up the work. of modern life. Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and They also experimented with different Workers in the United States, which has a full chapter on techniques to divide workers. In some mills, The Strike Begins teaching the Bread and Roses strike, including they deliberately placed workers together On January 12, 1912, the owners of all the day-by-day lesson plans. To learn more about the book, who spoke different languages. In others, Lawrence companies suddenly cut workers’ go to http://bit.ly/HutZ8C. Portions of this article were drawn, with permission, from “One Hundred Years After pay, and this seemingly docile workforce the Singing Strike,” an article he wrote for the website *“Dublin Dan” Liston, “The Portland Revolution.” See walked out. With no preparation and little Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People’s History. It is Joyce L. Kornbluh, ed., Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology prior organization, 23,000 workers went on available online at http://bit.ly/wAc3h8. (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 1998), 34. strike. They set up communal kitchens and
For details, photos, biographies, and more, see the Bread and Roses Centennial Exhibit at 38 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 www.exhibit.breadandrosescentennial.org. created a committee structure responsible their old ways of under- to daily mass meetings that took place in standing the world around each of the ethnic constituencies. them no longer making In the beginning, men led the strike sense. These are the times , on i s i
committees as well as the picketing and when people reach for v i D demonstrations. As the strike wore on, new ideas and new forms s h some of those early leaders faltered while of social organization. women’s participation and confidence These are the times we otograp grew. Sometimes having to overcome learn most about human resistance from their husbands and aspiration and capability. & Ph nts i fathers, women joined strategy discus- The Lawrence strike of r , P -B2- 2369-14 [P&P] LOT 10878 sions, chaired committees, and took the 1912, the “singing strike,” C , L on lead in picketing. was an exceptional product i t Congress c And they sang, women and men alike. of
Colle Songs became a common language, the n i brary a
means of uplifting their spirits and forging Li B solidarity. For those who couldn’t read, , on i s i v singing provided a political education, a i Left: A woman spins yarn in a Lawrence D
s mill. Above: The state militia guards the
way of learning about the world and h putting their own struggles in a larger approach to Lawrence’s textile mills. context. Composer and singer otograp Bernice Johnson Reagon called & Ph 62-96856 songs of the civil rights move- Z of them had joined the chorus and nts i -US r
C personally participated.
ment “the language that , P , L s
focused the energy of the d For the workers, the strike was also
people who filled the streets.”† Car about experiencing democracy in their h Congress own lives and awakening the nation’s The same was true in Lawrence. of
About 14,000 mill workers, conscience to the exploitation of brary tereograp S half the workforce, held firm for Li children and other vulnerable workers. It , on
i nine and a half weeks. Despite was about new and effective tactics: “We s i v i repression, cold, and hunger, of one of those times. We should teach will win this strike by keeping our hands in D
s
h they won. They gained a raise in Lawrence because it opened possibilities our pockets,” said one of their leaders, pay, with the largest increases that continue to resonate. Because it was meaning that the strikers should ignore
otograp for the lowest paid workers, as important in building some of our free- provocations and not respond to violence with violence. And it was about defending
& Ph well as a higher rate for working doms that are now endangered. And nts
i overtime and a fairer system for because there are parallels and lessons for labor rights under attack. When a striker r
, P was killed—eyewitnesses said by a police-
-B2- 2377-16 [P&P] LOT 10878 calculating wages. After one last the challenges we face today. C
, L joyous march, on March 18 they There were dueling narratives during man—two of the strike leaders were on i
t charged as accomplices in her murder, even Congress went back to work. the strike, with some of the attacks on c
of They won because the mills strikers framed in ways familiar to us a though the prosecution acknowledged they Colle
n had been addressing a rally miles away at i couldn’t function with so many hundred years later. According to the brary a B Li workers showing no signs of Lawrence Citizens’ Association, formed the time. According to the prosecutor, it coming back. They won because during the strike and composed of the local was their militant pro-union speech that they forced congressional hearings and business and political elite, outside incited the crime. When a Lawrence jury focused national outrage on living and agitators were to blame for riling up the found those leaders not guilty, all who working conditions and child labor. They otherwise docile and responsible work- value the First Amendment’s provisions for won because wool industry profits were force. (Their actual words were “godless, free speech and freedom of assembly were based on a tariff against foreign competi- unpatriotic outsiders.”) Somewhat in the beneficiaries. tors, and mill owners feared that public contradiction with that characterization, We should teach Lawrence for its outrage would prevent Congress from they also faulted their own workers, calling victorious solidarity and for its contributions renewing the tariff. Most of all, they won them “illegal immigrants” who had come to democracy. We should teach it because it because of their own solidarity. to this country just to ship their rich wages is the gritty underpinning for topics that we back to their families abroad. do teach: populism, the Progressive Era, Lasting Lessons For the workers, the story was different. settlement houses, immigration, female Historic change is continuous but seldom It was about human solidarity across race, suffrage, movements for public health and smooth. More often, it happens the way ethnicity, and gender. It was about civil rights, and naturalism and realism in tectonic plates grind together, lock under community support and the possibility of literature. Most of all, we should teach increasing tension into seeming stability, new forms of workplace organizing. The Lawrence because it was an exceptional then spasm into a new configuration. It is in industrial-type unions we have today, historical event whose lessons still reverber- these times of spasm when people find founded in the 1930s and ’40s, grew ate. In this time of renewed popular directly out of the struggle in Lawrence. activism, we must revisit this country’s rich †Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom Not only did later union activists take history of social movements, labor struggle, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 261. inspiration from the “singing strike,” some and solidarity. ☐
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012 39 wage cuts as an effort to ‘enslave’ them—to deprive them of the independent status as ‘daughters of freemen.’ ” Dublin points out that this proclamation (and, we believe, many of the group’s other writings) makes clear that the women saw their right to band together to fight for better pay and working conditions as a natural outgrowth of the rights defended by their ancestors in the American Revolution and enshrined in the Constitution. 13. Danzer et al., The Americans, 705. 14. See David Madland, Karla Walter, and Nick Bunker, Unions Make the Middle Class: Without Unions, the Middle Class Withers (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, April 2011). 15. Appleby et al., The American Vision, 864; and Danzer et al., The Americans, 911. 16. Ayers et al., American Anthem, 703. 17. For examples, see the international labor activism website LabourStart at www.laborstart.org. 18. For a chart of union membership rates historically, in the United States and several other countries, see Gerald Friedman, “Labor Unions in the United States,” EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History, ed. Robert Whaples, March 16, 2008, www.eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ friedman.unions.us.
Distorting the Record (Continued from page 35)
7. For more on Bayard Rustin’s life and the new award-winning documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, see www.rustin.org. 8. For an analysis of civil rights unionism and the forces that shaped it, see Michael Honey, “A Dream Deferred,” The Nation, May 3, 2004. Honey, a professor at the University of Washington, writes: “It is crucial to remember that Brown was as much the product as the precipitator of mass movements. Yes, the decision resulted from the incredibly hard-working and astute battle led by Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall and others in the NAACP. But it also resulted from mass movements and a vast shift in status among poor and working-class African-Americans, millions intentionally of whom moved out of rural areas and into cities and mass- Labor’s Untold Story production industries in the 1930s and ’40s. They created an expanding membership base for the Congress of Industrial Orga- left blank (Continued from page 37) nizations (CIO), the NAACP and an American left that challenged segregation at every level. Domestic workers, sharecroppers, day 4. See Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts over laborers, factory workers and other poor people, especially the American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the women among them, organized economic boycotts, picket lines, Present (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003). marches, sit-ins, strikes, church and community groups, unions, 5. During the strike, corporate and police brutality against consumer cooperatives and mass meetings. Their role as workers, the strikers led Michigan Governor Frank Murphy to send in soldiers and activists in the fight against white supremacy at the National Guard, not to attack strikers or to evict them home and fascism abroad created vast social changes that set from the GM plant they had occupied (ways in which the the stage for Brown. As one example, in the Deep South city of National Guard was often used against strikers), but rather Memphis, African-Americans, who had been organizing unions to protect them, both from the police, who used tear gas since after the Civil War, provided the main support that made against the strikers, and from corporate strikebreakers. the rise of the CIO possible, at a time when supporting a union could cost one’s life. The purge of the interracial left from the 6. Moreau, Schoolbook Nation, 245. CIO during the cold war undermined civil rights unionism, yet a 7. Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The number of black industrial unionists continued to challenge white Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–60 (Urbana: supremacy in the 1950s and ’60s. Union wages also made it more University of Illinois Press, 1994). possible to send children to college, and some of those students led sit-ins and demonstrations against Jim Crow.” 8. For example, Jon Bekken’s 1994 analysis of journalism curricula found unions to be neglected or unrepresented. 9. For a more detailed account of the UAW’s history in supporting See Jon Bekken, “The Portrayal of Labor in Reporting civil rights, see “UAW History,” United Auto Workers, www.uaw. Textbooks: Critical Absences, Hostile Voices” (paper org/page/uaw-history. presented at the annual meeting of the Association for 10. Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberal- Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Atlanta, ism, 1945–1968 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 176. GA, August 10–13, 1994), www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ ED375414.pdf. 11. For more on the Teamsters’ support of civil rights, see “Team- sters and Civil Rights,” International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 9. Robert Shaffer, “Where Are the Organized Public www.teamster.org/history/teamster-history/civil-rights. See also Employees? The Absence of Public Employee Unionism from www.teamster.org/content/teamsters-honor-black-history-month. U.S. History Textbooks, and Why It Matters,” Labor History 43, no. 3 (2002): 315. 12. See “This Day in History,” International Brotherhood of Teamsters, www.teamstermagazine.com/day-history. 10. See Appleby et al., The American Vision, 435; and Lapsansky-Werner et al., United States History, 558. 13. An all-white jury acquitted the men accused in Viola Liuzzo’s slaying. For more on Liuzzo, see “Civil Rights Martyr Viola 11. See Danzer et al., The Americans, 708–709. Liuzzo,” International Brotherhood of Teamsters, March 11, 12. From the proclamation, printed in the Boston Evening 2010, www.teamster.org/content/civil-rights-martyr-viola-liuzzo. Transcript, February 18, 1834. See also, Thomas Dublin, 14. Peter B. Levy, The New Left and Labor in the 1960s (Urbana, “Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: ‘The IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 17. Oppressing Hand of Avarice Would Enslave Us,’ ” Labor History 16 (1975): 99–116, www.invention.smithsonian.org/ 15. James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The centerpieces/whole_cloth/u2ei/u2materials/dublin.html. As Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (New Dublin notes, “At several points in the proclamation the York: HarperCollins, 1991), 202–203. women drew on their Yankee heritage. Connecting their 16. See “Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” on turn-out with the efforts of their ‘Patriotic Ancestors’ to the CongressLink website, available at www.congresslink.org/ secure independence from England, they interpreted the print_basics_histmats_civilrights64text.htm.
40 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2012