Lula Viramontes dreams of one day becoming someone whom no one can ignore: a daring ringleader in a Mexican traveling carpa, despite her father's traditional views of what girls should be. When her family arrives for the grape harvest in Delano, California, Lula meets activist Dolores Huerta and el Teatro Campesino (the official theater company of the United Farm Workers). She discovers an even more pressing reason to raise her voice: the upcoming...

Between May 4 and 13, 1926, unions across Great Britain participated in a sympathy strike to support coal miners who were facing reduced pay and longer hours. The government responded by filling positions in essential industries with volunteers. The government's success in marshalling resources broke the strike after nine days. The miners continued their strike for several more months, but eventually returned to work with reduced wages. Following...

In May 1968, French officials closed the University of the Sorbonne because of large student protests against the Vietnam War and demanding university reform. The closure provoked a student strike and weeks of rioting. Initially, many labor groups joined the students in sympathy strikes, which threatened to topple President Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic government but public opinion slowly turned against the protestors. Although De Gaulle held...

French Coal Strike

How a New York City newspaper delivery drivers' strike in 1945 failed to divert readers' interest in their favorite newspapers. Shows the newspapers of the day and huge lines of people outside newspaper offices waiting to purchase updated editions. In Kodachrome.

The New Deal's National Recovery Administration (NRA) and 1935 National Labor Relations Act established workers' right to collective bargaining for better work conditions. As a result, the mid-1930s was a period of great unionization in the auto industry. A six-week strike of General Motors (GM) by the United Auto Workers (UAW) increased UAW membership and helped to establish the UAW at GM. During World War II, the auto industry shifted to war production....

When Duncan arrives at school one morning, he finds a stack of letters, one from each of his crayons, complaining about how he uses them.

"In 1903, a fifteen-year-old girl named Ichi Aoi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan. Despite her modest beginnings in a southern fishing village, she becomes the protégée of an oiran, the highest-ranking courtesan at the brothel. Through the teachings of her oiran, Shinonome, Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. And in her mandatory school lessons, her writing instructor, Tetsuko, encourages Ichi...