Labor Day is just around the corner and this year we’ll travel back in time to a largely forgotten piece of Labor Day history — right here in Durham.

Seventy two years ago this September, over 7,000 textile mill workers in Durham went on strike, joining hundreds of thousands of others around the country to demand better pay and better working conditions.

This Friday, Traction returns to Culture Crawl and we’re bringing our ReelPolitik film series with us. We’ll be showing an outdoor movie: The Uprising of ‘34, about the textile worker strike in the South that was the largest mass strike in U.S. history.This is what Labor Day is really about — celebrating and honoring the legacy of the millions of largely unknown folks who fought for things we take for granted today — like a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage and safer workplaces.

We’ll be joined by special guests Mary Cole, who lived through the strike as the 11 year old daughter of an Erwin Mill union organizer, and Jim Wise, a local historian and newspaper columnist who has written about the strike in Durham. Plus, we’ll benefit from cameo appearances by current labor organizers in North Carolina, who can update us on how to support the labor struggles of the 21st century.

The vitals:
“The Uprising of ‘34″
Fri, Aug 18th, 8pm
Outside Jo and Joe’s Pub
427 W. Main St. in downtown Durham
FREE
–> BuyYOB at everyone’s favorite local pub, Joe & Jo’s
–> BYOBlanket to sit in the grass

Background:
On September 4th, 1934, over 7,000 workers in Durham went on strike, completely shutting down the city’s seven textile plants for weeks. At Erwin Mills in West Durham, 1700 stayed out of work, while at the Golden Belt in the East End, hundreds walked the picket lines to turn away workers and supplies. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of other striking workers from Maine to Alabama in one of the largest mass strikes in United States history.

Join Traction as we mark the 72nd anniversary of this largely forgotten event with the showing of “The Uprising of ‘34,” which documents the textile strike across the South and especially in North Carolina. We’ll be joined by local historians, special guests and organizers from the current North Carolina labor movement.
For more information on the 1934 textile strike in Durham, we encourage you to read Jim Wise’s 2004 newspaper article.

Glossary:
ReelPolitik: a sociopolitical experience
film + drinks + action-focused conversation + you = change

See you there. And hey, we could use a few volunteers. Write use_me@getTraction.org if you can help.

Theo Luebke
Durham Native, Teacher and Tractivist.