Building workers' power in Roanoke, VA
In October of 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions declared that May 1st, 1886 would be the last day that anyone worked over 8 hours in a working day. And that if this goal had not been achieved, a general strike would begin. The day came, so the workers struck.
In the annals of labor history, particularly Appalachian labor history, there are few events as important and long-echoing as the Battle of Blair Mountain, a culturally defining moment of worker organization and an enduring display of the violence the ruling class is willing to inflict upon them. Blair Mountain is treated as a conflict of... Continue Reading →
Virginia had no public local police force until 1932, before then, policing was almost totally a private affair. The protection of private property & reinforcing the white supremacist social order were & are the two major functions of police in America. Roanoke has its contribution to that history in the form of the Baldwin-Felts Detective... Continue Reading →
(photo: James Rucker, Langston Hughes in Madrid | credit: Langston Hughes Estate) Here is James Bernard “Bunny” Rucker (1912-1992), born in Roanoke, Virginia, raised in Columbus, Ohio, veteran of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Spanish Civil War (as a volunteer with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade), and World War II (three bronze stars and a purple heart), one-time Communist... Continue Reading →
The United States, like most western industrial democratic experiments, underwent an iteration of the intensive land redevelopment process often known as “urban renewal” in the postwar period. Under the auspices of liberal progress, massive amounts of civic space were reconfigured to address “urban blight,” facilitate the growth of highway systems, and to enable faster connective... Continue Reading →
"Who came first? There have been people living in what we today call Virginia for many thousands of years. There is mounting evidence from archaeological data ascertained from the Cactus Hill site, in SE Virginia, that pre-Clovis culture existed in what is today Virginia over 16,000 years ago. People lived in small units or bands... Continue Reading →
Federal Poverty Levels: Way Off By "poverty" we mean generally not having or being able to afford the basic costs of living (including food, housing, clothing, hygiene, transportation, childcare, phone). In the so-called U.S., who is officially considered poor and thus "deserves" assistance and who's not is determined by the federal poverty levels (FPL), a... Continue Reading →
Roanoke hasn't seen many May Day events in recent history (there was one in 2011, and the last one before that was in 1940); most of us likely haven't even heard of it, and that is no doubt for a reason. May Day (aka International Workers' Day) was founded in the U.S. as a day... Continue Reading →