Today in 1919, Connecticut companies throughout the state were effectively shuttered as thousands of workers across a multitude of different industries joined in a massive regional strike that, within the course of a week, spread from Maine to New York and brought New England commerce to a screeching halt. Connecticut, like many other states…
Tag: labor history
May 30: 12,000 Bridgeport Workers Mobilize to Support Striking Trolleymen
On this day in 1922, Bridgeport’s Central Labor Union issued a formal call to all of its 12,000 members to support the striking trolleymen who worked for the Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company, triggering months of labor unrest in one of Connecticut’s largest cities. The Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company was the primary operator…
March 26: The First State in the US to Raise the Minimum Wage Above $10
On March 26, 2014, Connecticut became the first state in the country to pass legislation that set its minimum wage above $10 an hour. The new law mandated slight increases rolled out over three years, slowly building up the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by the start of 2017, and would affect…
January 16: Yale Breaks Graduate Students’ Grading Strike
On this day in 1996, graduate student teachers at Yale University finally turned in final grades for the classes they taught during the previous semester — a deceptively simple action that ended what had become an incredibly tense standoff over teacher compensation and labor rights that was closely watched by students and university…
January 12: Mary Townsend Seymour, Civil Rights Champion
Born in Hartford in 1873, lifelong civil rights activist Mary Townsend lost both her parents at the age of 15, and was adopted into the family of local black activist and Civil War veteran Lloyd Seymour. A few years later, she married one of his sons, Frederick Seymour, and the newlyweds settled in the…
September 12: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Transformative Summer in Simsbury
As a teenager, years before he became an internationally famous speaker and advocate for social change, Martin Luther King, Jr. worked a number of jobs to make ends meet for his family, just like many of his peers in northern Georgia. During the summer of 1944, after he gained early admission to Morehouse College…
August 7: Statewide Strikes Bring Connecticut to a Halt
Today in 1919, Connecticut companies throughout the state were effectively shuttered as thousands of workers across a multitude of different industries joined in a massive regional strike that, within the course of a week, spread from Maine to New York and brought New England commerce to a screeching halt. Connecticut, like many other states…