The Holiday You May Have Missed

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

International Workers' Day is celebrated with rallies and protests all over the world on May 1, but it's not a big deal in the United States. Back in 2018, Brooke spoke with Donna Haverty-Stacke of Hunter College, CUNY about the American origin of May Day — and about how it has come to be forgotten. The first national turnout for worker's rights in the U.S. was on May 1, 1886; contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, it wasn't the same thing as the Haymarket Affair. Haverty-Stacke is also author of America’s Forgotten Holiday: May Day and Nationalism, 1867–1960, and she explains that the fight over May 1, or May Day, is also about the fight for American identity and what it means to be radical and patriotic at the same time.

The OTM crew (in 2018) sings "Into The Streets May First," a never-before-professionally-recorded 1935 Aaron Copland anthem:

Transcript

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0:00.0	Around the world nearly everywhere, but the U.S. May 1st is a big deal.
0:11.5	It's called International Workers' Day, or May Day.
0:15.2	Here in the U.S. it's called Next Sunday.
0:19.2	In a way, the American worker last year revived International Workers' Day's American
0:25.2	roots.
0:26.2	We did create it after all.
0:28.3	A few years ago, we spoke with Donna Havirti Stack, a professor of history at Hunter College
0:34.3	at the City University of New York.
0:36.6	She's also the author of America's Forgotten Holiday, May Day and Nationalism, 1867 to
0:44.8	1960.
0:46.4	She began the story in 1886.
0:49.4	Labor unions had been fighting for the eight-hour work day for years and years, but they
0:53.9	only won battles, city by city.
0:57.2	They needed a new strategy.
1:00.0	This was the era of the Second Industrial Revolution, the rise of corporate capitalism.
1:04.8	They needed to come together, and so that was the goal for 1886.
1:09.4	Why did these labor unions, going for that big push, choose May 1st?
1:16.4	For the building trades, May 1st was the date when the annual contracts were renewed.
1:22.1	The goal was they began organizing in 1884, making demands, hopefully they would succeed,
1:29.6	and they would celebrate on May 1st, 1886.
1:32.0	If they did not succeed, they held out the threat of striking on May 1st, 1886, which in
1:37.0	many cases happened.
	...

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