On This Day In Labor History

June 21, 1877 - Ten miners, allegedly members of the Molly Maguires, were hanged in Pennsylvania. Many historians argue that the Molly Maguires, a secret miners’ organization allegedly responsible for violence and social conflict in the coal regions, never really existed. The investigation into the miners’ involvement with the Molly Maguires was conducted by private detective agency. A private police force arrested them and coal company attornies prosecuted them.

June 21, 1937 -- The Ohio Steel Strike of 1937 continued.

June 21, 1943 – The Detroit race riots continued.

June 21, 1964 - Civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner went to Longdale, Mississippi to visit Mt. Zion Methodist Church, a building that had been fire-bombed by the Ku Klux Klan because it was going to be used as a Freedom School. On the way back to the Congress Of Racial Equality office in Meridian, the three men were arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price. Later that evening they were released from the Neshoba jail only to be stopped again on a rural road where a Ku Klux Klan mob shot them dead and buried them in a earthen dam. Their mangled bodies were later found by F.B.I agents. On June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime, Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of the manslaughter of the three men.

June 21, 1994 – The UAW began a strike at Caterpillar plants in Peoria, Decatur, & Pontiac.

June 21, 1997 – 100,000 marched in solidarity with striking newspaper labor workers in Detroit.