This Week in Peoples’ History, Sep. 3–9, 2025
No Job Is Worth Dying For
SEPTEMBER 3 IS THE 34TH ANNIVERSARY of a deadly 1991 fire in Hamlet, North Carolina’s, ramshackle Imperial Foods Products chicken processing plant. Some 90 workers needed to get out of the 1-story factory quickly. They thought they had a choice of nine different exit doors.
But seven of the exits were either locked shut or completely blocked by large objects on the plant’s exterior. When the workers rushed to get out, most found themselves trapped by a door that could not be opened. Twenty-five were killed and 60 were seriously injured.
None of those casualties would have occurred if the owner of Imperial Foods had not ignored dozens of laws and regulations intended to prevent such a fire and to ensure that fire exits can be opened.
But perhaps even more dispiriting during the Labor Day week is the fact some five thousand U.S. workers are killed on the job each year, and at least 120,000 die from an occupational disease. https://portside.org/2017-12-26/when-deregulation-deadly
Racist Terror in Mississippi
SEPTEMBER 4 IS THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY of the beginning of the Clinton, Mississippi, massacre, which started when terrorist Red Shirts attacked an 1875 election rally of some three thousand citizens, most of whom were Black, who gathered to hear speeches by prominent Republicans including Mississippi’s anti-racist governor Adelbert Ames.
The attacking Red Shirts broke up the rally and continued to attack and terrorize everyone in the area who was thought to support the Republican governor’s re-election. The Red Shirts’ killed at least 50 people (but the complete death toll was never publicized), including Black schoolteachers and religious leaders and anyone who tried to defend them.
The federal government responded by sending troops to Clinton, but the violence came to an end before the troops arrived.
Sporadic deadly attacks on pro-Republican campaign activities continued throughout Mississippi until election day. On election day, the intimidation of pro-Republican voters, plus outright election fraud, was so effective that Democrats regained control of the state legislature. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/clinton-riot/
Max Roach Lays Down the Freedom Suite
SEPTEMBER 6 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of the 1960 recording session during which Max Roach and an all-star crew of musicians, including vocalist Abbey Lincoln, laid down the final tracks for their album “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite,” which put the politics of protest for civil rights front and center. Issued in the midst of the widespread lunch-counter sit-in movement, the album’s cover depicts three Black men sitting at a lunch counter; it’s not clear whether they are sitting-in or just waiting for their meals.
Roach and lyricist Oscar Brown composed the album’s five tracks, all of which concern the Civil Rights Movement and the Emancipation Proclamation, in honor of the Proclamation’s upcoming centennial.
The album’s five great tracks are Driva Man, Freedom Day, Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace, All Africa, and Tears for Johannesburg. You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/SAzTCfZod4c?si=HVo6ivgZwhuIH-Pm
‘Never Again’
SEPTEMBER 8 IS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY of a memorable event in 2000 marking the 175th anniversary of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, when Kevin Gover, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs offered a long, formal apology for much of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ past work, ending with these words:
"Never again will we allow unflattering and stereotypical images of Indian people to deface the halls of government or lead the American people to shallow and ignorant beliefs about Indians. Never again will we attack your religions, your languages, your rituals, or any of your tribal ways. Never again will we seize your children, nor teach them to be ashamed of who they are. Never again."
You can watch, and listen to Kevin Gover’s 12-minute presentation here: https://vimeo.com/404428918
‘They Shall Beat Their Swords Into Plowshares’
SEPTEMBER 9 IS THE 45TH ANNIVERSARY of the public debut of the anti-nuclear weapons Plowshares Movement, whose first non-violent protest was to break in to the untended General Electric munitions factory in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where Philip Berrigan and seven other protesters hammered on the nosecones of two missiles being built to carry nuclear warheads. In addition, the protesters poured blood on missile-related documents. https://web.archive.org/web/20130925030826/http://www.craftech.com/~dcpledge/brandywine/plow/
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