In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Labor’s Hidden History: Bloomington, Illinois and the Labor Party

La Lubu

As I watch the election coverage, read and listen to endless arguments about the value of third parties and/or shifting a major one to the left for a change…..I can’t help but think about how much history has been vanished from the standard-issue history books, how historical amnesia is no accidental occurence. And especially, how much labor history has been erased, forgotten. Every time the phrase “What’s the matter with Kansas?” is invoked (ostensibly to brand midwesterners as die-hard conservatives), I think of the unknown history of midwestern radicalism, socialism, populism, and radical unionism—history still sitting in the attic, waiting for the dust to be blown off.

Practically every midwestern city had an active radical movement in the not-so-distant past; Bloomington, Illinois was no exception. In fact, so much so, that the 1919 mayoral election almost went to the Labor Party. Yes, even during the first Red Scare, with the Palmer Raids in full swing, even after Eugene Debs’ imprisonment for daring to speak out against WWI, not to mention the assassinations of IWW members in the recent past, voters took to the polls and damn near elected a slate of socialists to govern the city.

(psst! admin! can we get a labor category? I think I’ll be using it a lot for the next two weeks!)

16 thoughts on Labor’s Hidden History: Bloomington, Illinois and the Labor Party

  2. Huh, now that’s something I didn’t read about at the local history museum. Maybe next time I’m working with the 8th graders I’ll bring it up.

  3. psst! admin! can we get a labor category? I think I’ll be using it a lot for the next two weeks!

    I’m going to be so in love with you. 🙂

  4. And not to mention that these people seem to forget where the hell a bunch of progressive democrats come from: Half of the progressive caucus is Midwestern, with people like Tom Harkin, Russ Feingold, and Dick Durbin. If Al Franken gets elected, he sure as hell ain’t joining the blue dogs.

    It’s not quite radicalism, but it’s not nothing, and I’m kinda sick of hearing how conservative the Midwest is as the East coast elects democrats like Liberman and Bob Casey (in addition to a bunch of good progressives, but still…)

  8. Just for the record, I really enjoy reading your posts! Labor rights issues aren’t something I’ve thought a lot about except when I have history tests on the topic, but it seems very interesting!

  9. Sing it, sing it! Minnesota’s popular 3-term Gov. Floyd B Olson was from the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, which was so strong that When Hubert Humphrey got the party to merge with the Democrats, they kept the name in. That’s why in MN it’s the DFL (Democratic Farmer-Labor) Party, not the Democratic Party.

    Olson was a skilled governor. Here’s what Wikipedia says: “During his three terms as governor, Olson proposed, and the legislature passed, bills that instituted a progressive income tax, created a social security program for the elderly, expanded the state’s environmental conservation programs, guaranteed equal pay for women and the right to collective bargaining, and instituted a minimum wage and a system of unemployment insurance.”

  10. I wrote an article on the Indiana primaries for The American Prospect that included some early, radical Indiana history, and you’d have thought by the comments and trackbacks that I’d kicked somebody’s kitten. YES, we, as does every other Midwestern, backward-ass state, have sundown towns. YES, we have fundamentalist churches that seek to curb the rights of queer folks and their families, people of color, immigrants. YES. But we also have a history of radicalism that is so central to our being that, for fuck’s sake, there is hope for liberal, radical, fair immigration practices, feminist, pro-queer, and labor values. It’s hard for those of us in the red states to see our home culture slammed again and again while we truck along as activists and advocates, working our asses off to make our values a reality, while it seems like the coastal elites scoff at us en masse while reaping the benefits of circumstances they had no hand in creating.

    /rant

    *ahem*

  12. Lauren–

    And it’s not like there’s not a history of severely fucked up behavior in all 50 states of the union. It pisses me off so severely every time that I meet an east coaster with an ivy degree who has never set foot between the Appalacians and the Rockies treat me like an uneducated rube with a bible in one hand and some whippins in another when I tell them where I’m from.

    You have dumb racists in Boston. You have dumb racists in NYC, you have dumb racists in Bloomington, in Savannah, Chicago, and in LA.

    And Midwesterners, especially as all the manufacturing jobs are eroding, are damn receptive to a progressive, anti-business, red meat stance. If only someone would effing give it to them. For example, why won’t anyone ask John how Cindy McCain voted on the Anheuser-Busch buyout?

  13. I’ve always been very interested in some of the radical leanings that midwesterners have held in the past. I just moved to Bloomington, Illinois myself, and before that I’d been a Hoosier all of my life. My family, and the whole area where I grew up, has an extensive Quaker background, and Indiana in particular has a fascinating Friends history that I’ve really delved into recently.

  14. squee! as someone living firmly in-between chicago and bloomington, i have to say i loooove reading about illinois on here, and it not being just focused on chicago. the fact that its labor stuff makes it all the sweeter, as my family is union for generations on both sides! i think i’m in love.

  16. The East Coast’s absurd notion that IQ drops 10 points every state west of the Hudson River (until it goes up in California) is always insulting. Thanks for noting about progressive politics in the Midwest.

    I lived in Kansas for awhile and was always fascinated to learn about the depth of its liberal political history. For what it’s worth, the infamous abolitionist John Brown came out of Kansas. To quote (because it’s written succinctly) from http://www.city-data.com
    ” The so-called agrarian revolt of the late 19th century, characterized politically by populism, evolved into the Progressive movement of the early 1900s, which focused attention on control of monopolies, public health, labor legislation, and more representative politics. Much of the Progressive leadership came from Kansas; Kansan newspaper editor and national Progressive leader William Allen White devoted considerable energy to Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose campaign in 1912.”

    Cary A. Nation, the women who attacked bars with axes, was also from Kansas. Certainly an independent woman. Check out info at the Kansas historical site: http://www.kshs.org/exhibits/carry/carry1.htm

    Kansas, like Illinois, like so much of the country is not as black-and-white as some people may think. Thanks for the post and to everyone for re-thinking.

Comments are currently closed.