Today in Labor History May 22

1300s-1500s

Today in Labor History May 22, 1370: Mobs murdered hundreds of Jews during the Brussels Massacre for allegedly desecrating the Host. And they banished the survivors, virtually the entire Jewish community.

May 22, 1520: The Alvarado Massacre, Tenochtitlan, Mexico. Spanish conquistadores, under the command of Pedro de Alvarado, slaughtered unarmed Aztec warriors and noblemen who were celebrating the Fiesta of Huitzilopochitli. This unprovoked attack happened after Alvarado had given Moctezuma permission to have the celebration. In response, the Aztecs attacked the Spaniards, killing or capturing most of them and driving the rest them from the city.

1800s-1810s

Today in Labor History May 22, 1807: A grand jury indicted Aaron Burr on treason. During the Revolutionary War, Burr had served as an officer in the Continental Army. In 1785, he supported a bill to end slavery, despite having been a slave-owner himself. He served as Vice President under Thomas Jefferson. And in 1804, he killed his rival, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel. Despite the fact that dueling was illegal, he was never tried.

After this, he traveled west to the frontier, in search of new opportunities. However, he was very secretive about his activities. Consequently, the authorities were suspicious and arrested him for treason in 1807. They brought him to trial numerous times for the “Burr conspiracy,” a supposed plot he was leading to create an independent country. He was acquitted each time. In 1973, Gore Vidal published a historical novel, Burr, featuring a fictionalized memoir by Aaron Burr.

May 22, 1816: Riots occurred in Ely and Littleport, England, between May 22 and May 24, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. The riots resulted from high unemployment combined with high grain prices. One reason that grain prices were so high was the tax the state imposed in order to pay for the Napoleonic Wars. Some of the hardest hit were the veterans returning from the Battle of Waterloo. Rioters accosted the town elites, demanding money and destroying their property. Soldiers killed one rioter. They condemned another 23 men and 1 woman. They hanged five of the men on June 28. The others received sentences from 1 year to life.

1840s

Today in Labor History May 22, 1840, Britain abolished the transport of convicts to New South Wales. However, it did not truly end until 1850, and continued in other parts of Australia and New Zealand for even longer. The practice began in the 1770s, after Captain James Cook claimed Australia for the British crown. The British sent convicts there in order to prevent French expansion and because they had lost their American penal colonies with the American Revolution. Conditions were brutal. Many of the convicts starved to death. Punishment was harsh and included vicious whippings.

May 22, 1846: Rita Cetina Gutierrez was born in the Yucatan, Mexico. She was a poet and educator, and one of Mexico’s first feminists. She opened Mexico’s first secular school for poor girls. At the same time, she created a scientific and literary society and newspaper written by and for women. She rejected the idea that girls should only be taught domestic skills. Her school taught them astronomy, constitutional law, math, history and geography. It also included curriculum on female sexuality, love and marriage. Many of her students went on to become some of the Yucatan’s first female elected officials in the early 1920s.

May 22, 1848: The island nation of Martinique abolished slavery.

1850s-1870s

Today in Writing History May 22, 1859: Writer Arthur Conan Doyle was born. He was most famous for his character, Sherlock Holmes. However, he was also a physician and a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination. He wrote several articles denouncing the views of anti-vaxxers. However, he was not particularly successful as a doctor. So, as he sat around waiting for patients to show up, he took to writing stories.

Perhaps his most well-known book was The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901). But it was his 1914 Holmes story, The Valley of Fear, that piqued my interest. It is about the Molly Maguires, like my book, Anywhere But Schuylkill, and involves some of the same characters (but with different names). Unfortunately, Doyle relied heavily on the testimony of Allan Pinkerton as his original source and, consequently, makes many of the same historical errors as so many others who’ve written about those events.

Today in Labor History May 22, 1871: The “Bloody Week” continued in France for the second day, as government forces brutally suppressed the Paris Commune.

1880s-1890s

Today in Writing History May 22, 1880: Victor Hugo died. Hugo wrote poetry, novels and drama over the course of sixty years. His most famous works include Les Miserables (1862) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831). Though he was a conservative early in his life, he broke with the conservatives in 1848, calling for the end of misery and poverty. He also supported universal suffrage and free education for all children. Additionally, he was known worldwide for his advocacy to abolish the death penalty and slavery. In 1859, he asked the U.S. to spare John Brown’s life. He also begged Benito Juarez to spare the life of Maximilian I.

When Napoleon seized power, Hugo publicly called him a traitor. After that, he lived in exile from 1855 to 1870. While in exile, he published his most famous political pamphlets, Napoleon le Petit and Histoire d’un Crime. Both were banned in France. However, in spite of these progressive views, he supported colonialism because of its “civilizing” effects on the colonized peoples. And he wrote that the Paris Commune was as “idiotic as the National Assembly is ferocious. From both sides, folly.” But he did offer his support to Commune participants when they were being brutalized.

Today in Labor History May 22, 1895: The authorities imprisoned Eugene Debs for his role in the Pullman Railway Strike (also known as the “Debs Rebellion”).

1900s-1910s

May 22, 1901: Italian-American anarchist Gaetano Bresci died. He assassinated King Umberto I of Italy on July 29, 1900. However, because the death penalty had been abolished in 1889, he was sentenced to life. He supposedly hung himself, but many believe he was murdered.

Today in Labor History May 22, 1909: During a strike by white locomotive firemen on the Georgia Railroad, the bosses hired African Americans as scabs. White citizens who weren’t part of the strike were outraged that blacks were being hired over whites. Consequently, they whipped and stoned the black men. The Engineers union threatened to stop work because their members were being affected by the violence.

May 22, 1913: IWW loggers were on strike in Coos Bay, Oregon. They were demanding a 25% wage increase twenty-five percent. IWW loggers were also on strike in western Montana because the bosses were making them work overtime instead of hiring other unemployed workers. And the IWW Patterson silk strike was also still going on at this time. 25,000 silk workers participated. Mill workers in Pennsylvania and New York struck in solidarity.

1920s

Today in Labor History May 22, 1920: Congress passed the Civil Service Retirement Act of 1920, giving federal workers a pension.

Today in Labor History May 22, 1927: An 7.6-8.3 magnitude earthquake struck near Xining, China. It killed 40,000-200,000 people. And another hit the same region 5/22/2021. This one was 7.0 on the Richter scale.

Today in Writing History May 22, 1927: Author Peter Matthiessen was born. Matthiessen was an environmental activist and a CIA officer who wrote short stories, novels and nonfiction. He’s the only writer to have won the National Book award in both nonfiction, for The Snow Leopard (1979), and in fiction, for Shadow Country (1908). His story Travelin’ Man was made into the film The Young One (1960) by Luis Bunuel.

Perhaps his most famous book was, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983), which tells the story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s war on the American Indian Movement. Peltier is still in prison (43 years so far) for a crime he most likely did not commit. The former governor of South Dakota, Bill Janklow, and David Price, an FBI agent who was at the Wounded Knee assault, both sued Viking Press for libel because of statements in the book. Both lawsuits threatened to undermine free speech and further stifle indigenous rights activism. Fortunately, both lawsuits were dismissed.

1930s-1950s

Today in LGBTQ History May 22, 1930: Harvey Milk, gay rights activist and San Francisco’s first openly gay city Supervisor, was born. Former supervisor Dan White assassinated him and Mayor George Moscone. White only got a couple years in jail using the infamous Twinkie defense. As a result, this led to the White Night Riots in San Francisco.

Today in Labor History May 22, 1958: Race riots began in Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) that lasted until May 29. Most of the attacks were made by Sinhalese mobs against Tamils. However, there were some retaliatory attacks by Tamil mobs, as well. As a result, at least 1,500 ethnic Tamils died.

The Great Chilean Quake of 1960

May 22, 1960: An earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, hit southern Chile. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. The massive quake lasted for 10 minutes. It caused tsunamis in Chile, Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia and Alaska. In Chile, there were waves measuring over 80 feet high. 35-foot waves hit Hilo, Hawaii, devastating that state’s second largest city and killing 61 people. Between 1,000 and 6,000 people died. Over the course of two weeks, Chile experienced three earthquakes registering in the year’s ten most powerful on the planet.

Langston Hughes

Today in Writing History May 22, 1967: Writer and activist Langston Hughes died. Hughes was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the early pioneers of Jazz Poetry. During the Civil Rights Movement, from 1942-1962, he wrote a weekly column for the black-owned Chicago Defender. His poetry and fiction depicted the lives and struggles of working-class African Americans. Much of his writing dealt with racism and black pride. Like many black artists and intellectuals of his era, he was attracted to communism as an alternative to the racism and segregation of America. Hughes travelled to the Soviet Union and many of his poems were published in the CPUSA newspaper. He also participated in the movement to free the Scottsboro Boys and supported the Republican cause in Spain. He opposed the U.S. entering World War II and he signed a statement in support of Stalin’s purges.

1968-1969

May 22, 1968: New York police broke through the barricades at Columbia University, busting the student occupations there. As a result, 998 were arrested and over 200 injured. Students were demanding a black studies program and an end to military recruitment and ROTC on campus.

Today in Labor History May 22, 1969: The first official strike by Chicago teachers began on this day and lasted for three days. Teachers won a raise, class size reductions and teachers’ aides. In 1968, there were a series of wildcat strikes by long-term substitutes over racist practices around hiring and promotions.

1970s-2000s

Today in Writing History May 22, 1972: Cecil Day-Lewis died. Anglo-Irish poet, author, communist. However, after Stalin’s purges, he became disillusioned with communism and eventually renounced his former views. His 1964 novel, Sad Variety, includes a scathing portrayal of dogmatic communists.

May 22, 2002: A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicted former KKK member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 16^th Street Baptist church bombing that killed four girls.