Labor History Links

Teachers Corner – Lesson Plans and helpful links

Sites of special interest :

History Matters - Many documents and website links relating to labor. Site is keyword-searchable.  Links to other labor history websites and on-line exhibitions. Links to syllabi, lesson plans and information on teaching. Links to discussion groups for subjects that include labor and social history

Women and Social Movements, 1820-1940 - A fabulous teaching resource, with some of it geared toward labor history--though most of it is now subscription-based only. Example: primary documents and lesson plans on women and labor, including the 1909-1910 New York shirtwaist strike,  Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strike of 1912, the 1938 Pecan Shellers strike in San Antonio, and much much more;

American Labor Studies Center " mission is to collect, analyze, evaluate, create and disseminate labor history and labor studies curriculum and related materials to kindergarten through 12th grade teachers nationwide."

Curriculum plans from the Wisconsin Labor History Society curriculum --most of these are usable beyond Wisconsin

Curriculum guide for k-12 from the Illinois Labor History Society some of these are very well developed, with handouts, etc; some have rough ideas for approaching the topic

Labor in the Schools Committee of the California Teachers Federation --- multiple ideas and lesson plans, See also their resource list

Workers and Work in America, 1600 to the Present: A Multimedia Course Professor Zahavi has posted his course on-line, with links to sources. This might be a good starting point for an introduction to labor history

Picturing U.S. History by Josh Freeman "digital project based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. This website provides online "Lessons in Looking," a guide to Web resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms." Great for labor history at all levels

Teacher Lesson Plan: Using Oral History: This lesson presents social history content and topics through the voices of ordinary people. It draws on primary sources from the American Memory Collection, American Life Histories, 1936-1940.

Tenement Museum Lesson Plans including "teaching with objects" "doing oral history" "primary source activities" from elementary level to high school

Center for Working Class studies syllabus library- mostly not history, but great ideas here

Teaching About Class includesReadings about Class Class Theory Table and ideas developed by participants in the 2006 "Class in the Classroom" Summer Institute

Teaching the Local These sample teaching projects represent the work done by Mahoning Valley teachers in Center for Working Class Studies Summer Institute. 

Teaching Students to Become Producers of New Historical Knowledge on the Web by Kathryn Kish Sklar S.U.N.Y. Binghamton

Special Issue on Labor History (OAH Magazine of History) includes articles such as

• "Why Teach Labor History?" (pdf)
• "Using Songs to Teach Labor History (pdf)
• "It's About People": Social and Labor History in the Classroom Bret Eynon and William Friedheim

American Social History Project dedicating to revitalizing the study of history by challenging the ways that people learn about the past

Steeltown USA: A Digital Library of Poetry, Images, and Documents
Another site "provides a variety of resources for secondary and college teachers who want to include attention to work and working-class studies in their courses.

A brief history of the labor movement (audio) Historian Jeff Cowie on NPR (5:49 minutes) for the completely uninitiated, a broad brush overview

See this site's booklist and/or filmlist for specific subjects for classroom use

Glossary of Labor Terms from the American Labor Studies Center

Broad chronological or topical lesson frames

Who Really Built America Library of Congress site with lesson plans

Curriculum plans from the Wisconsin Labor History Society curriculum --most of these are usable beyond Wisconsin --including "What are unions?", "why did they develop", lessons on the Jungle, women's labor, WWII and labor --all are connected to Wisconsin standards, but many of these standards are transferable to other state standards

Curriculum guide for k-12 from the Illinois Labor History Society some of these are very well developed, with handouts, etc; some have vague ideas for approaching the topic

Servitude to Service: African-American Women as Wage Earners Rita G. Koman

Exploring child labor with young students - Rethinking Schools article see also confronting child labor

Child Labor, safety and health, and other "performance task" Lesson plans from Wisconsin Labor History Society

Child labor website page for students

Your Rights on the Job "information assembled is designed to help young workers understnad their rights in the workplace as protected in federal law"

U.S. Steel Gary Works – Lesson plans on the steel industry and the workers

Strikes in US and Texas history compare famous strikes in U.S. and Texas history.

Teaching plans for specific chronological time frames, arranged according to chronology

• Website on the Diary of Martha Ballard terrific site--with documents, teaching lessons, lots more; Ballard was a midwife in 18th century Maine
• Lesson Plan for K-12 on “Jobs in Jamestown, Virginia” from Virtual Jamestown – there are also other lesson plans on same site Lesson Plan for K-12 on “Language and Runaway Slaves”
• Comparing Plantation and Factory Rules - a lesson plan with links to primary documents, showing comparison between northern “free labor” textile mills and slave labor plantations
• Slave Resistance Lesson plan for high school, using slave narratives and other primary documents
• Talk Show on the Lowell Strike of 1834 or 1836   lesson plan for High school, with links to primary documents
• Pretend to be a Lowell Mill Girl
• Liberty Rhetoric and the Lowell Mill Girls -"a website for student discovery": documents with questions for discussion/reflection
• New Hampshire Mill Girls struggle for 10 hour day
• "After Slavery" site multiple classroom units, all with a labor component, generated by the " gathering consensus among historians that this period can best be understood as an important chapter in American labor history"

  1. Emancipation: Giving Meaning to Freedom
  2. Freed Slaves Mobilize
  3. Land and Labor 4. Freedom, Black Soldiers & the Union Military 5. Conservatives Respond to Emancipation 6. Pursuing Citizenship: Justice and Equality 7. Gender and the Politics of Freedom 8. Planters, Poor Whites and White Supremacy 9. Coercion, Paramilitary Terror & Freedpeople's Resistance10.Freedpeople and the Republican Party

• Materials on 1877 from Maryland State Archives, with links to primary documents (newspaper, government, photos) and suggested reading materials and lesson plans
• Teaching With Documents: Affidavit and Flyers from the Chinese Boycott Case from National Archives "coolie" labor boycotts
• John Peter Altgeld and the Haymarket Riot Pardons
• The Miners of the Prairie --essay and lesson plan on mining in Illinois in the 19th century
• When Worlds Collide: The 1894 Pullman Strike in Decatur, Illinois essay and lesson plan
• The Pullman Strike of 1894 Jonathan Bassett
• Study Guide to Out of this Furnace (steel mills Pittsburgh, 1890s-1930s)
• Teachers page from the Samuel Gompers papers offers some basic guidelines on how to use the materials at the site, which include timelines, primary sources and other materials
• Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine from National Archives
• Meatpacking in Illinois History essay and lesson plan
• Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry
• Colorado Coal Field War Project, with Photos, bibliography, links, teachers’ lesson plans corner, archaeology
• Mother Jones website (video and curriculum)
• THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EMMA GOLDMAN  A Curriculum for Middle and High School Students  (free speech fights)
• Female Office Workers in Chicago
• Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World  Follow the links to teaching ideas
• 38 documents and a lesson plan on the Chicago Race Riot (this site has middle school and high school lesson plans for a number of other historical issues as well)
• 40 Documents and lesson plan on the Bonus March of veterans to Washington in 1932, a pivotal point in the Great Depression
• How Did Women Needleworkers Influence New Deal Labor Policies in Puerto Rico?
  • lesson plan with 16 documents and images
• the Great Depression and the 1990s
• California Department of Education lessons on Cesar Chavez and farm labor 
• The Hard Hat Riots - 1970  When Construction workers fought war protestors at Wall Street, the media built a perception that working class people were pro-war. Beneath the surface were bitter feelings of working class people against college-educated draft-dodgers, as well as assertions of manliness in a society in which gender norms were being challenged by the women’s movement. This site has historians accounts of the events and lesson plans for teachers
• The Human Lives Behind the Labels The Global Sweatshop, Nike, and the race to the bottom from Rethinking Schools
• Teaching about the WTO from Rethinking schools