Working Class History
Working Class History#OtD 13 Aug 1973 five Black independence activists were sentenced to eight life sentences in the US Virgin Islands. After the killing of eight tourists, Black people were rounded up and tortured into confessing, and jurors were threatened to convict https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8457/fountain-valley-five-convicted
Working Class History#OtD 13 Aug 1880 Mary Macarthur was born in Glasgow, Scotland. She was central to the working-class wing of the suffragettes who opposed WWI and votes just for rich women, which made her unpopular with middle-class suffragettes https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8451/mary-macarthur
Working Class History#OtD 12 Aug 1887 pioneering Colombian socialist and women's rights advocate María Cano aka "flor del trabajo" ("flower of labour") was born. She gave fiery speeches to crowds of mining, oil and banana workers, and was repeatedly arrested https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8368/maría-cano-born
Working Class History#OtD 12 Aug 1889 agitation, which later caused the London Great Dock Strike, began as a response to appalling working conditions for casual workers. The strike ended in a massive victory for workers https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8369/great-dock-strike
Working Class History#OtD 12 Aug 2017 32-year-old anti-racist Heather Heyer was killed and 19 injured in a neo-Nazi terror attack in Charlottesville, VA. Heather was one of many protesting a white supremacist rally when a Nazi drove his car deliberately into the crowd https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8376/heather-heyer-murdered
Working Class History#OtD 11 Aug 1964 18-year-old Scottish anarchist Stuart Christie was arrested in Madrid, Spain with explosives to assassinate dictator Franco. He was wearing a kilt, which confused the Argentinian press, who described him as "a Scottish transvestite" https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8273/stuart-christie-arrested
Working Class History#OtD 11 Aug 1958 young African Americans in Wichita, Kansas won a key early sit-in protest against segregated lunch counters at Dockums Drug Store. They confronted bosses, police and racists for 23 days until they won. More info in this short history: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8272/dockum's-drug-store-sit-in-wins
Working Class History#OtD 11 Aug 1979 2000 riot police attacked 187 women workers in Seoul, South Korea, who had been occupying the HQ of the New Democratic Party in protest at closure of the factory they worked at. One woman was killed and union leaders were arrested https://workingclasshistory.com/2021/03/24/e51-jeon-tae-il-and-lee-so-sun/
Working Class History#OtD 10 Aug 1889 Polish WWII resistance activist Zofia Kossak-Szczucka was born. During Nazi occupation she founded a group to help save Jewish people. She was sent to Auschwitz but got out, joined the Warsaw uprising and survived the war https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8173/zofia-kossak-szczucka-born
Working Class History#OtD 9 Aug 1956 20,000 women in Pretoria, South Africa, marched against pass laws: apartheid laws curtailing freedom of movement for Black and Indian people. A wave of civil disobedience followed. The day is commemorated in South Africa as Women's Day https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10880/south-africa-women's-day