Do American students learn about the violent massacres of striking laborers?

Great Debates
1

Bay View Tragedy, 1886 - immigrant miners and their families are fired on by National Guard. Thirteen year old boy, among others, killed.

Lattimer Massacre, 1897 - sheriff’s posse kills 19 unarmed demonstrators.

Ludlow Massacre, 1914 - 20 striking coal miners killed by national guard.

Everett Massacre, 1916 - five unionists killed, 27 wounded.

Centralia massacre, 1919 - American Legion attacks IWW Union and 4 are killed when workers strike back. Unionist Wesley Everest arrested, then kidnapped by mob who tortured and castrated him before lynching him.

Anaconda Road Massacre, 1920 - protesters shot at by company police. 2 killed.

Memorial Day Massacre, 1937 - police kill 10 protesters.

I didn’t learn about a single one of these incidents in high school. Did you?

While some of the cases seem to have involved reciprocal violence between the workers and the police, others were most certainly instances of unarmed demonstrators being gunned down. I just wonder if classroom curriculums in America are teaching kids these unfortunate chapters in labor history. All I seem to recall hearing about was the Haymarket Riot.

I don’t know if GD is really the right place for this, but I don’t know where else to put it. What’s your take on all this? Is this stuff actually being taught in classrooms and I just happened to have teachers who omitted it? I think it’s something that people should definitely learn about, but I would suspect that unless you take college courses on American labor, you won’t. Out of all the people of my generation I’ve talked to, almost none seem to know anything about American labor history.

2

I didn’t, except for Haymarket Square. You won’t find much about this stuff in the standard HS American history text, The American Pageant.

3

We don’t teach it, and I don’t have a problem with the omission. We have a limited amount of time, and every interest group possible demanding inclusion in the curriculum. Talk about Haymarket, say that it wasn’t an isolated incident, and move on. If it isn’t on the test (Thank you, NCLB!) it gets a cursory treatment at best these days. If you want depth, take the aforementioned college class.

4

No. Now that I think about it, we barely touched on slavery.

  • Honesty
5

I didn’t learn too much about specific protests, we covered ‘labor unrest’ and a bit about Haymarket Square in high school. However, the high school general American History class probably isn’t going to cover too much detail about these types of events. I don’t think it is because of some great conspirarcy, just that there is so much material out there to cover. From exploration to the 20th century, there isn’t a lot of time to go into any one period of American history in depth. I think high school classes tend to concentrate on a few keys aspects of American history: Colonization and the War for Independence, Slavery/Civil War, and WWII. Why? Well, those events really changed history. I don’t think anyone could understand the United States without a grasp of those three events.

The Industrial Revolution and labor unrest are important, but I think they’re handled better in college level classes. It helps if the students have a basic grasp of economics.

6

If I had my way, The American Pageant would be supplemented (as a standard HS American history text) with A People’s History of the United States and (for balance) A Patriot’s History of the United States.

Am I being unrealistic?

7

Yes. That would be fine for a college level class in American history or an Advanced Placement class. But, for a typical 16 year old US high school student?

8

I remember covering that topic for a week or so in sophmore year history (1997), though I admit I don’t remember the specifics too well. It was part of a year long interdisciplinary “American Studies” program (i.e. if I remember correctly, at around that time we watched “Once Upon a Time in America” in film class, went through anti-trust/labor dispute stuff in History, and read The Great Gatsby in English). Then again, my HS wasn’t ruled by the NYS Board of Regents so we had more time to explore areas of interest to each teacher.

9

Why not? Is it so inconceivable that we have high school kids read more than one book in a class? I own both of the books BrainGlutton mentions on my shelf and I have pulled *People’s * out and used it as a reference when talking to my 4th and 7th grader.

When Andrew did a report on the Cherokee for third grade, I made sure I talked to him about the Trail of Tears and Relocation in general, he used a cite from one of my books in his report and ::yells into the LR to distract the kids from AI for a sec:: I just asked Andrew to tell me one thing about the Cherokee report he did two years ago and he said we treated them like crap because we wanted their land and felt we deserved it:)

10

Could it be that these incidents are very hard to put in current context? Most high school history except possibly for the Civil War is taught in an easy to understand context with some sort of relation to current affairs. Women’s rights, Civil Rights, World War II, the Cold War all show some sort of progress and reason for it.

Organized labor stories are not popular at all in most places and (unfortunately) may solicit an ambiguous or even contrary message to what the stories might convey to big labor proponents. It isn’t that they aren’t history but there are hundreds of such incidents that are ambiguous in their meaning and therefore not a great teaching tool at that level.

How are high school students supposed to process those incidents if they are taking some type of economics or current affairs class that shows them how big unions are helping to destroy some of our most vital industries right before their eyes?

11

We were definetly taught that these sorts of events happened, but I don’t think we learned much about the specifics of any of the incidents.

This was in 1990-1994, btw.

12

Right. We don’t want to confuse school kids by offering both sides of an issue, or anything.

13

That was sort of, but not exactly what I meant. This is a complex issue and black and white can get flip-flopped many times during its discussion.
That type of thing isn’t well suited high school history. It is actually most suited to a semi-dedicated college class. There isn’t much use in throwing some random incidents (from all available, not just this topic) and expecting it to do much for them.

14

I don’t even think they represent two sides of an issue…the issues a 100 years ago were very different from what they are now. But I certainly think that high school kids are certainly capable of understanding the history of labor unions, as is relevant to those times, and ours.

I do not recall learning about any of the important events in labor reform in high school, myself…even about Haymarket. I learned of its significance on my own, in reading I was doing about the history of Chicago. I think this is a major oversight in my education. I don’t think your average HS-level American History class has the time to get into much detail about it, but I do think it’s important to spend a little bit of time talking about the formation of labor unions, why they were necessary, and the people who fought for fair labor practices.

15

I discuss Haymarket Square, and the Pullman strike, but don’t really get into the other events listed, primarily because I have 33 weeks to cover close to 400 years of history.

16

I learned about some of these in school - Ludlow for sure, I think it was before high school, tho. May or may not have done the others specifically, but certainly covered this time period and the strikes and etc.

We didn’t do much on civil rights back in my day, however. Kids now get a lot more on MLK, we got a lot about Communism.

17

Other than the Haymarket riot I can’t remember anything in specific. We did learn that companies tended to hire goons to break up unions, violence could be used against strikers, etc., and we might have covered a specific instance of violence, but It’s been a while so I don’t remember.

Marc

18

No. I think class struggle and class stratification are among the most undertaught concepts in American History. I don’t know, we read about “scabs” and about some events involving violence, but they were never described as “massacres.” It was more like, “Oh, you know, a bunch of angry strikers, someone was bound to get hurt.” We never really discussed issues like unions or labor rights. Nobody here really cares about the working class… they are invisible, taken for granted, devalued, ignored… and in leaving their role in American History out of the story, this sense of social Darwinism remains a dominant part of our culture–regardless of political orientation.

19

Well, I dropped out, but I think I had the history requirements…

I don’t think it’s really taught in any depth or serious context. I might have had a teacher who mentioned Sacco & Vanzetti, but labor? I’ve met way too many people (not just my age, but my mom’s age & younger) who have no idea of what unions actually accomplished, see labor unions as essentially criminal extortion rackets, &/or simply believe, “the unions didn’t work, did they?”

It’s really sad.

But with that prejudice so endemic, who will actually dare to teach the truth?

20

We did in my high school, but then again, it was in a very heavily labor-oriented, unionized region of the country.