Live Breaking News & Updates on Novelist Laura Maylene Walter

Say “labor” and “Akron” and the likely response will be “rubber.”  That’s as it should be, but in “Labor in Akron, 1825-1945” the historian John Tully reaches back far earlier, even as far back as the founding of the city.
The laborers who dug the Ohio & Erie Canal, mostly Irish immigrants seeking opportunity after a famine and cholera epidemic, were paid a pittance and vulnerable to rattlesnakes and diseases like malaria. There were a few unorganized strikes, but conditions did not improve.
Other early labor activities included the forming of a carpenters’ union in 1837 and a factory workers’ strike in 1845. Akron was important in women’s rights, with early suffrage efforts and the momentous 1851 “Ain’t I A Woman” speech by Sojourner Truth. ....

New York , United States , Cuyahoga County , Erie Canal , University Of Akron , Canal Fulton , Dover Public Library , Cuyahoga Valley National Park , Medina County District Library , South Euclid , Hudson Library , Abby Collette , Barbara Mcintyre , Laura Maylene Walter , Sojourner Truth , Denis Michael Griesmer , Jason Rosenthal , Terry Gilbert , John Verdon , Ku Klux Klan , Maggie Sullivan , Bill Haywood , Zack Meisel , Andrew Sean Greer , David Giffels , Dave Gurney ,