Charlie’s Monday Marker
Pittsburgh has undergone immense physical and cultural changes the last few years, but there’s still a bedrock of working-class history that continues to shape our city today. A new video series, Charlie’s Monday Marker lets the viewer pause at familiar spots and take a quick trip back in time.
Hosted by Dr. Charles McCollester and produced by the Battle of Homestead Foundation, Charlie’s Monday Marker are 10-minute videos delving into the fascinating stories behind the more than 60 historic sites listed in Labor History Sites in the Pittsburgh Region, a book authored by McCollester and Howard Scott in 2016 and published by Allegheny County Labor Council.
“History isn’t as remote from their lives as people often think,” McCollester observes. “A lot of the time, it’s literally right around the corner.”
Charlie’s Monday Marker ~ Episode 24: Pittsburgh Working-Class Sports
THIS episode of “Charlie’s Monday Marker” looks at the legacy of Pittsburgh "working-class" sports in 20th-century baseball, football and boxing. Hear the stories of Captain Bill Jones, the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, Billy...
Charlie’s Monday Marker ~ Episode 23: Frances Perkins Visits Pittsburgh; JFK-Nixon McKeesport Debate
JULY 1933: U.S. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins visited Homestead and Pittsburgh, speaking to hundreds of steelworkers ... Perkins was the first woman named to a White House cabinet position and known as "The Architect of the New Deal"...
Charlie’s Monday Marker ~ Episode 22: Industrial Unionism and the CIO
PITTSBURGH WAS the site of one of the landmark gatherings of modern unionism — the founding on Nov. 14, 1938, of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), with 34 unions represented and spirited invocation delivered by Fr. Charles...
Charlie’s Monday Marker ~ Episode 21: The New Deal and Labor Rights
IN 1937, in the case of National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, or Wagner Act. J&L Steel, the nation’s third...
Charlie’s Monday Marker ~ Episode 20: Mother Jones and Fannie Sellins
TWO MARKERS in this episode, each recounting the leadership and heroism of two early 20th-century labor organizers working in the industrial valleys of Western Pennsylvania — *Mother Jones* and *Fannie Sellins*. CHARLIE'S MONDAY MARKER is...
Charlie’s Monday Marker ~ Episode 19: The 1919 Braddock Steel Strike
Charlie’s Monday Marker ~ Episode 18: Washington and Guyasota
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 17: Simon Girty
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 16: McKees Rocks Mound
Charlie Monday Marker ~ Episode 15: Queen Aliquippa
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 14: The McKees Rocks Strike of 1909
The 1909 strike at the Pressed Steel Car Company in McKees Rocks marked a major industrial rebellion by Eastern and Southern European immigrants. Two months of intense labor struggle demonstrated the immigrants' fighting spirit and...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 13: Harwick Mine Explosion 1904
Coal mining in Pennsylvania took a terrible toll of death and injury for workers and environmental degradation for communities. For 26 years between 1890 and 1920, mining deaths exceeded one thousand per year in the Commonwealth. The worst...
Charlie’s Monday Makers ~ Episode 12: The Allegheny Arsenal and Pittsburgh Fortifications
On September 17, 1862, while the armies of the North and South wrestled to a bloody stalemate at Antietam in Maryland, a mighty explosion ripped through the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville killing 78 workers, mostly women and girls who...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 11: The Founding of the Ironworkers Union, 1896
The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers was formed on February 4, 1896 at a meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with 16 delegates from the local unions in Boston, Massachusetts, Buffalo,...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 10: Morewood Mass
The Morewood massacre was an armed labor-union conflict in Morewood, Pennsylvania, in Westmoreland County, west of the present-day borough of Mount Pleasant in 1891. Nine coke workers were shot and killed during a strike for higher wages...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 9: Mammoth Mine Explosion, 1891
The Mammoth Mine disaster or Frick Mine explosion occurred on January 27, 1891 just after 9:00 AM in the Mammoth No. 1 mine in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Newspapers reported that fired was ignited by a...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 8: Founding of the American Federation of Labor
The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (FOTLU) was a federation of labor unions created on November 15, 1881, at Turner Hall in Pittsburgh. It changed its name to the American Federation of...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 7: The 1877 Railroad Strike
The Pittsburgh railway strike occurred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as part of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. It was one of many incidents of strikes, labor unrest and violence in cities across the United States, including several in...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode Six: Jane Grey Swisshelm
Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm was an American journalist, publisher, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate. She was one of the first women journalists hired by Horace Greeley at his New York Tribune. She was active as a writer in...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode Five: Blocking the Cannons, Pittsburgh, 1863
IN THE ANTEBELLUM period, Pittsburgh was a center of popular resistance to slavery. The Republican Party had its founding convention in Pittsburgh on the basis of Free Soil and Protective tariffs. When South Carolina seceded, President...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 4: Allegheny Cotton Mill Strikes
The Allegheny Textile Strike of 1845 began on September 15th in what is now known as the North Side in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the Market House where more than 400 textile workers awaited an update on their push for a ten hour day, as...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 3: 1892 Homestead Strike
128 years later, the Homestead Strike of 1892 retains its capacity to shock. It was a defining event which revealed in the starkest terms the respective strength of labor and management in America in the 1890s. The crushing defeat of the...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 2: Martin Delany
Martin Robison Delany was born free on May 6, 1812, in Charles Town, Virginia, now within West Virginia. The youngest of five children, Delany was the son of a slave and grandson of a prince, according to family reports. Delany was home...
Charlie’s Monday Markers ~ Episode 1: Crystal Eastman
Dr Charles McCollester is the Retired Director of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Labor Center, and he is a founding member and past President of the Battle of Homestead Foundation. In this video he is describing the life and...