Topic: Labor
The health care visionaries who founded Group Health Cooperative in Seattle in 1945 were activists in the farmers' grange movement, the union movement, and the consumer cooperative movement. Their ins...
Harbor Island is a manmade feature of Seattle’s Elliott Bay. After its construction in 1909 it became a hub of ship-related work, including building or converting vessels for World War I. World ...
Michael Fox, now a retired King County Superior Court judge, was a young and idealistic lawyer in the early 1970s when he got involved in the legal struggle for farmworkers rights in Eastern Washingto...
Elliott Allen, of Shorecrest High School, won a special HistoryLink award in the 2006 North Puget Sound History Day competition with this account of his grandfather George Starkovich's persecution by ...
Hoquiam Local No. 21 of the International Shingle Weavers' Union of America was the lone stable source of unionism in the Grays Harbor lumber industry during the early part of the twentieth century. T...
The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, was founded in 1905 in Chicago, and by 1908 had become influential among migrant laborers in the Pacific Northwest. Members were dubbed "Wobblies" and soon...
In this People's History, Irene (Borlaug) Wilson recounts her memories of the Igloo Restaurant and World War II in Seattle. HistoryLink's Heather MacIntosh interviewed her in Seattle in May 1999.
When coal was king in Black Diamond, a small mining town in the Cascade foothills of southeastern King County, immigrants from Italy provided much of the muscle power that operated the coal mines. The...
In 1936, King County undertook a major property survey, the King County Land Use Survey, which was financed by the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA). The project greatly added to the county'...
This is a tour of Seattle's historic South Lake Union neighborhood, including the Cascade neighborhood and portions of the Denny Regrade. It was written and curated by Paula Becker with the assistance...
From the 1890s to 1910, when he retired, Maxwell Levy was the "king of the crimpers" in the booming port of Port Townsend. A crimp or crimper is one who forces or entraps sailors into service against ...
This People's History is an interview with Margaret Reed conducted by Jyl Leininger on April 7, 1999, in Seattle, Washington. Margaret Reed describes herself as an every-day individual. "Believe me, I...
Alice Lord sparked organization of the Seattle Waitresses Union, Local 240 (in 1999, Dining Employees Local #2) in March 1900, and orchestrated the union's successful campaigns to promote pioneering w...
When Walt Sickler (b. 1927) was promoted from line crew foreman to Supervisor of Overhead Construction at Seattle City Light, he brought to the utility's management his knowledge of field operations a...
This interview with Herb Goodman (b. 1907) is part of the Vanishing Generation Oral History Project in the Nordic Heritage Museum. Herb Goodman is a Ballard resident of Icelandic heritage who was inte...
John Boitano (b. 1922) is a first generation Italian American from Ballard interviewed on August 4, 2000. In this Nordic Heritage Museum Vanishing Generation Oral History Project Interview by Richard ...
This file contains Seattle historian and photographer Paul Dorpat's Now & Then photographs and reflections on Seattle's General Strike of 1919.
This file contains Seattle historian and photographer Paul Dorpat's Now & Then photographs and reflections on The Great Depression and Seattle's shantytown of homeless and jobless people called Ho...
This file contains Seattle historian and photographer Paul Dorpat's Now & Then photographs and reflections on the Kalmar Hotel which once stood in Seattle at 6th Avenue and James Street.
In its relentless expansion westward, the Northern Pacific Railroad reached its Puget Sound terminus in November 1873. The race to build the final link, from Kalama on the Columbia River to Tacoma, wa...
In the spring of 1893, a precipitous drop in United States gold reserves triggered a national depression. Because Seattle was still rebuilding from the disastrous fire of 1889 and depended heavily on ...
In September 1953, Meter Reader Pat Maloney described one of his experiences recording Seattle City Light customers' electricity useage.
Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was a singer, actor, and political activist. This essay contains his remarks made during his historic concert at Peace Arch Park in Blaine, Washington, on the United States/Ca...
Terry Pettus was a progressive-minded newspaper reporter who became Washington state's first member of the American Newspaper Guild. He was a key organizer of the Seattle chapter of the Guild, which i...