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RIBCO
Articles of Interest
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2006-09-07
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Remembering 1912 History Clebrated at Bread and Roses Festival |
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By Colin Steele
Eagle-Tribune
LAWRENCE - Wearing a "100% union" T-shirt, Ed Currier clapped and sang along with folk musician Anne Feeney at yesterday's Bread and Roses Labor Day Heritage Festival.
"You can't scare me," Feeney sang. "I'm stickin' to the union till the day I die."
It reminded Currier of the pro-workers rights anthems that Joan Baez sang at Woodstock - and the songs that striking mill workers sang in Lawrence nearly a century ago.
"It choked me up," said Currier, a 26-year union worker. "It started here, where people began to stand up for their rights. And they backed it up with their lives. If people only realized."
Currier and his wife, Beth, both Lawrence natives, were among the hundreds who gathered on Campagnone Common yesterday for the 22nd annual celebration of the Bread and Roses strike. In the winter of 1912, most of Lawrence's 30,000 textile workers stopped working for nine weeks to protest a pay cut, and it was a landmark moment in the American labor movement when the mills gave in to most of their demands.
"This is our roots," said Donna Milloux, a member of the Friends of Lawrence Heritage State Park. "Anyone who's from the Greater Lawrence area should be proud of it. A lot of the rights they have stem from the labor strike of 1912."
Yesterday's festival featured music and dancing on three stages, exhibits by local artists and vendors, and information booths set up by historical, political and labor groups.
The Barre Historical Society in Vermont also had a table touting that town's role in the Bread and Roses strike.
The Old Labor Hall in Barre housed 39 children of striking workers, and society members are now trying to find those children and their descendants. They distributed photographs of the children on the steps of the hall and asked for help identifying them.
"It's a very important connection (between Barre and Lawrence)," said Karen Lane, who is leading the effort to restore Old Labor Hall. "People cherish that history."
Katherine Paterson, who wrote a novel about a Lawrence girl sent to live in Barre during the strike, also sat at the historical society's table.
"This is a very amazing story, probably the most successful strike in American history," she said.
Many visitors came yesterday to honor the history behind the festival. But for others, like Maura Wentworth of Hampstead, N.H, it was simply a nice day to spend outside with family.
Wentworth brought her children Emily and Benning "just to walk around and get some fried dough and stuff," she said. "It's a good fair atmosphere."
The Bread and Roses Heritage Committee holds the festival each year to remember the strike and celebrate Lawrence's diversity - both then and now. The striking mill workers came from 30 different countries and spoke 50 different languages.
"This is our history, the city of Lawrence," Beth Currier said. "We're a melting pot."
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