On holidays, especially ones like Memorial Day and Veterans Day, I see Facebook filled with memes and statements honoring soldiers and their sacrifices. Which is fine. I appreciate their sacrifices, too. But have you ever seen one asking people to honor the sacrifices of the labor movement on Labor Day? I’ll bet not. And if you think that soldiers are the only ones who’ve sacrificed their lives for your rights, you’re quite mistaken.

So, I’ve made a list, although it only scratches the surface, of what we should be honoring on Labor Day. Shares are great. People need to know that America’s labor history is far more violent than they ever imagined.

Who We Honor on Labor Day

Labor Day honors the 40+ miners killed by their employer, Colorado Fuel & Iron, in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. This is in addition to the over 100 Colorado coal miners killed in mine accidents in 1913.

It honors the 146 workers, mostly women, killed by their employer when they either burned to death or jumped to their death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911.

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It’s about the coal miners of West Virginia killed by their employer in the Coal Creek and Paint Creek strike of 1913.

It’s about the Paterson textile strike of 1912.

It honors the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of African American sharecroppers murdered in Elaine, Arkansas, in 1919 when they tried to organize.

It’s about the Arkansas railroad workers killed in the Polk County Race War in 1896.

It’s for the IWW workers who demonstrated for freedom of speech and were killed for it by authorities at Everett, Washington in 1916 and Centralia, Washington in 1919.

We’re honoring the numberless agricultural workers, many of them Latino, who fought the fruit growers of California for union recognition with Cesar Chavez.

We honor other labor leaders who were murdered by authorities for trying to organize workers—Frank Little, Lou Tikas, August Spies and the rest of the Haymarket Eight, and so many others.

We honor the 249 labor leaders deported to the Soviet Union after the Palmer Raids of 1919 without trial.

Labor Day is for the steel workers killed at Homestead in 1892. It’s for the railroad workers killed by federal troops in West Virginia in 1877 and in the Pullman Strike in 1894 because they dared go on strike.

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Labor Day is for the children that Mother Jones led to Theodore Roosevelt‘s house in 1903 to protest child labor conditions. Mother Jones also led 16,000 children in a silk strike in Philadelphia. These children wanted their work week cut from 60 hours per week to 55, so that they could go to school.

I could go on. Chances are you’ve heard of none of these things because of the never-ending conservative effort to kill the labor movement in the US. So, just this once, turn off your damn barbeque on Labor Day and pick up some labor history. Show the working people of this country the same respect you think soldiers deserve. They’ve died by the thousands, too, for your freedoms.

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