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Have an idea for Subject of the Month?
May's Subject of the Month
May Day
Hughes, A. (2020). Warehouse Workers for Justice: Earth Day to May Day. Justseeds. https://justseeds.org/graphic/warehouse-workers-for-justice-earth-day-to-may-day-day-6/.
Selector: Meghan McGowan
Excerpt from Chant for May Day by Langston Hughes (1938)
WORKER: The first of May;
When the flowers break through the earth,
When the sap rises in the trees,
When the birds come back from the South.
Workers:
Be like the flowers,
10 VOICES: Bloom in the strength of your unknown power,
20 VOICES: Grow out of the passive earth,
40 VOICES: Grow strong with UNION,
All hands together—
To beautify this hour, this spring,
And all the springs to come
50 VOICES: Forever for the workers!
WORKER: Workers!
10 VOICES: Be like the sap, rising in the trees,
20 VOICES: Strengthening each branch,
40 VOICES: No part neglected—
50 VOICES: Reaching all the world.
May Day art
Global Revolution Playlist
Books (print + electronic)
May Day Speech
Transcript, in English, of Genet's May Day Speech, delivered at Yale on the occasion of the 1970 May Day Rally in support of Bobby Seale (recently imprisoned) and the Black Panthers. A 25-page stapled booklet. Introduction by Allen Ginsberg.
Walter P. Reuther Library, Archive of Labor and Urban Affairs
The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, located on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, contains millions of primary source documents related to the history of the labor movement, urban affairs, and the Wayne State University Archives. The building is named for UAW President and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) President Walter Reuther.
Like all archives, our material is arranged into collections based on their origins. If you are working with the Wayne State University English Department Records, for example, you can assume that all the material in that collection was gathered together and used by the WSU English Department in their normal functions as an organization.
Working with archives can be a lot like a journalistic iinvestigation into your research topic, so try to treat everything as a clue. Remember, each archival document is a piece of evidence of the past, so you likely need to look at many sources to understand an event.
Explore our three collecting areas in the tabs at the lefthand side of this page to learn more.
Democracy Now! segment, “Historian Peter Linebaugh on “The Incomplete, True, Authentic & Wonderful History of May Day.”
Databases
- Independent Voices This link opens in a new windowIndependent Voices is a digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
- Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new windowAlternative Press Index is a bibliographic database of journal, newspaper and magazine articles from hundreds of international alternative, radical and left periodicals. Covering 1991 to the present, it provides access to emerging theories and practices of social change.
- Add databases using "Add / Reorder > Database" and searching for the one you'd like to add.
- Left index. This link opens in a new windowThe Left Index is a complete guide to the diverse literature of the left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. It is a good place to find significant but little known sources of news and ideas. Historically significant early Left publications such as The People (est. NY 1891), and The Class Struggle (1931-1937) along with classic texts by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and others, are also covered.
- America: history and life This link opens in a new windowOnline version of: America: history and life. Includes full-text of hundreds of journals originally published in paper.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, and other fields of the humanities and social sciences. WSU has perpetual access to the Arts and Sciences I-XV, Hebrew Journals and Sustainability Collections. JSTOR invites you to explore an AI Interactive Research Tool in beta. Developed in collaboration with the academic community, this tool employs AI and other technologies to empower people to deepen and expand their research with JSTOR’s trusted corpus.
Memorial Day Massacre
Watch the whole episode here: PBS: Memorial Day Massacre
The Haymarket Affair
Watch the whole episode here: The Haymarket Affair
Finally Got the News
Watch the whole film here: Gessner, Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter. Finally Got the News. Brooklyn, NY: Icarus Films, 1970.
Walter Crane
Excerpt from The Worker's Maypole
by Walter Crane
World Workers, whatever may bind ye,
This day let your work be undone:
Cast the clouds of the winter behind ye,
And come forth and be glad in the sun.
Now again while the green earth rejoices
In the bud and the blossom of May
Lift your hearts up again, and your voices,
And keep merry the World's Labour Day.
Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope.
Written: April 13, 1894 for The Workers Maypole cartoon;
Published: Justice, 1894
Find more information about Walter Crane's work here: Walter Crane, The work of Walter Crane, (London: J.S. Virtue and Co.,1898).
Online Resources
- IRL Labor Action TrackerThis website hosted by Cornell University allows you to track ongoing labor disputes. Advanced search options will let you filter results based on size, duration, industry, location, and more.
- Labor's Turning PointThis film discusses one of the most important labor actions in American history, the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike. Available through a YouTube channel belonging to a school of the University of Minnesota.
- Working Class History PodcastA podcast that takes a global view of labor history, chronicling various social movements against racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, and economic exploitation all over the world.
- Digital TamimentExplore the digital collection of the NYU Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, including posters, film, and oral histories.
