Education Modules

American Labor Movement (Laney 2025)

[All are password protected]

Week One Module

• Purpose of the Course
• Glossary
• Indigenous Americans
• The “Making” of the Working Class
• Slave Revolts
• Slavery as Stolen Lives
• “Apartheid Division” of Labor Historian

Week Two Module

• Origins
• Bacon’s Rebellion
• The First American Revolution
• The Industrial Revolution

Week Three Module

• Slave Labor, Free Labor
• The Second American Revolution
• When Slaves Go on Strike
  • How to Make Art Out of Confederate Monuments
• 1867 Chinese Railroad Strike

Week Four Module

• The Great Upheaval
• Knights of Labor
• Haymarket & May Day

Week Five Module

• “Gilded Age” & Railroad Labor
• Rainbow Working Class
• Progressive Era
• Labor Radicalism & The Wobblies
• Ben Fletcher IWW Local 8
• The IWW & Asian Workers

Week Six Module

• Corruption
• Hardship & Resurgence
• ’34 San Francisco General Strike
• Working Class Self-Activity
• Class War Lessons: The ’46 Oakland General Strike

Week Seven Module

• World War Two & Aftermath
• Cold War & Social Compact
• American Dream
• Unfinished Business
• Reviving the Strike in the Shadow of PATCO
• Smithfield Food Struggle

Week Eight Module

• Marine Cooks & Stewards
• Labor History of Queer America
• Rude Awakenings
• Where to, What Next?
• Conclusion: History from Below & Reviving the Strike

1. 1934 San Francisco General Strike
2. Immigration, Labor Power, and Working Class Solidarity
3. Pictures of a Gone City (book talk, by author Richard Walker)
4. Striking to Survive (Chinese Worker-Activist Book Tour)