PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Cesar Chavez: Labor Leader and Civil Rights Activist
Students will watch a short video and examine two primary sources in order to understand how Chavez was able to successfully organize a movement among some of America's poorest and most oppressed workers.
University of Houston
University of Houston: An American Industrial Revolution Unit: Rise of Labor
Students learn about the history of the labor movement in Industrial America, including some of the major unions that emerged and the most well-known strikes. Next, they make connections to the role of unions today. They then work in...
Library of Congress
Loc: Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
This learning page features an overview of labor relations during the 1930s with links to many primary source documents from the era.
Digital History
Digital History: Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor
A good look at not only Samuel Gompers and the formation of the American Federation of Labor, but also of the course of unionism in general, its successes and failures, its goals, and membership in the late 19th century.
Hartford Web Publishing
World History Archives: Uwa: Nationlist Movements and Labor in Southern Africa
An article on the relationship between labor and nationalist/liberation movements.
OpenStax
Open Stax: Progressive Movement 1890 1920: Progressivism at the Grassroots Level
Read about some of the grassroots movements at the heart of Progressivism, and the changes they were pushing for and what they accomplished. Discusses labor issues, including the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Also discusses...
Other
Hillsborough Community College: The Rise of Unions and Labor Activism [Pdf]
Lengthy article on the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States. Looks at the growth of businesses into corporations with large workforces and manufacturing facilities, and the labor issues and organizations that arose as...
Chicago History Museum
Chicago Historical Society: The Dramas of Haymarket
The Chicago Historical Society presents extensive information about the 1886 bombing at Haymarket Square that helped change the course of the labor movement. Read about the bombing, arrests, trial, executions, and other events that...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: City of Immigrants
Players navigate New York's Lower East Side as Lena, a young Jewish immigrant from Russia who is trying to save money to bring her parents to America. She works long hours in a factory for little money and gets caught up in the growing...
Other
Key People in Labor History: Asa Philip Randolph (1889 1979)
Biographical essay on A. Philip Randolph, one of the organizers of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He was also very active in civil rights and the movement to end discrimination in the military and defense industries.
Library of Congress
Loc: Learning Page: Labor in America
A rich collection of resources, including primary sources, student activities, and lesson plans, to support study of Americans at work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
New York University
Nyu: Labor & the Holocaust: The Jewish Labor Committee
Resource traces the Jewish Labor Committee from its inception in American labor history, through its anti-Nazi work during WW II.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: America's History in the Making: Industrializing America
Comprehensive teaching unit that explores the "second industrial revolution" and the mass production of consumer goods. This, in turn, caused an increase in the labor force and immigration. Learn how these changes brought about the start...
Other
Afl Cio America's Union Movement
The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) enables working people to have a voice on the job and in the government through the creation of labor unions. This very extensive website offers...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Biography of America: Capital and Labor
This thirty-minute video, the seventeenth in a series on American history, examines the rocky relationship between labor, management, and industry from 1882 to 1901. You can also read the transcript, find a map of the Anthracite Strike,...
Steven Kreis, PhD
The History Guide: Lech Walesa
A brief biography of Lech Walesa and the independent labor movement in Poland. Describes how labor used strikes to improve their working conditions and qualities of life. Their struggles have been an inspiration to labor movements all...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: The Industrial Age in America
In this lesson plan from EDSITEment, students will discuss the significance of the labor movement, the industrialists involved and the attitude of the American people toward working conditions in the United States. Contains links to many...
University of Maryland
University of Maryland: The Samuel Gompers Papers
Site from the University of Maryland provides primary source documents, a brief history of the labor movement, and biographical information about Samuel Gompers. A great resource for teachers and students.
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Education: Spotlight Biography: Labor Reformers
Biographical information on Samuel Gompers, Frances Perkins and Cesar Chavez. All three were inspirations for the labor union movement.
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: Movement South and Westward
Following Eli Whitney's invention in 1793 of the cotton gin -- a machine that separated raw cotton from seeds and other waste -- the cotton market boomed. Planters in the South bought land from small farmers who frequently moved farther...
University of Pennsylvania
Mary Harris Mother Jones
A short, easy-to-understand biography of Mother Jones (1837-1930 CE) who was active in union and labor movements.
Siteseen
Siteseen: American Historama: Knights of Labor
Learn interesting details about the Knights of Labor, the first major American labor union to be established.
University of Washington
University of Washington: Strikes and Unions
The Great Depression built the modern labor movement by growing and strengthening unions. Follow the labor movement through a day-by-day database of newspaper articles chronicling strikes in Washington State. Additionally, students can...
University of Illinois
University of Illinois: The Chinese Experience in 19th Century America: The Rock Springs Massacre
This lesson plan is from a larger site examining the Chinese Experience in the United States in the 19th century. Discover the role the official support by the labor movement played in the discrimination, and in the case of the Rock...