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May Day History : Latinas Always Have Been on the Front Lines

13:46 H | Topics: Activism - History - Labor - Women

It is no accident that May 1st was chosen as the day to hold massive rallies across the country to defend the rights of immigrant workers. May 1st, commonly known as May Day, is the original labor day. It began in the United States and with a Latina at the head of the movement.

May Day has its roots in the labor movement of the late 1800's. In Chicago in 1886 labor activists held a general strike demanding an 8 hour day. Lucy Parsons Gonzalez, an African-, Native- and Mexican-, mother to two children and possibly born a slave in Texas, was leader in the strike along with her husband.

She began organizing for the May 1, 1886, general strike for the eight-hour day, concentrating her efforts on sewing women. On May 1, she and Albert [her husband] led 80,000 workers and supporters up Michigan Avenue. Three days later a labor rally at the Haymarket was the occasion of a fatal bombing incident. Police charged that radical activists were responsible.As her comrades were rounded up after the May 4 bombing, Lucy began organizing the Haymarket defense. After eight defendants, including Albert, were found guilty of murder, she traveled to many states, pleading her comrades' innocence to the charges, but defending their revolutionary goals. By February 1887, she had given forty-three speeches in seventeen states. When Albert was executed in November of that year, Lucy became a widow with a cause to carry on.

Strangely enough, despite its U.S. roots, May Day is not an official holiday here. This is because the labor movement , with its strong ties to anarchism and communism, was (and still is in many circles) considered anti-U.S. Therefore in 1921 the date was made the legal holiday of Americanization Day - a day set aside for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.

Oh the irony....

Via / Women's Space / The Margins and Wikipedia

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