Classroom Activities
- Begin with an introductory exercise about unions.
- Lead this exercise about power to illustrate common tensions and challenges facing groups of workers.
-Ask the students to make a list of the major events of the strike, explaining the significance of each and discussing their relationship to the other events. How did one event lead to the next?
- Ask the students to imagine being alive during the strikes in 1934. Ask them to write a letter to the editor expressing whether they agree or disagree with the strike and why. As preparation, visit the online archives of the Minneapolis Labor Review and review articles written during this period. You may wish to assign the students specific roles or identities for this exercise (brother of a striker, high school teacher, small business owner, etc.)
- Ask the students to imagine that they are members of Teamsters Local 574 during the strike and have been asked to write a short article for the “Organizer”– the union’s newspaper. The “Organizer” is distributed daily to other strikers as well as to the general public. Ask the students to consider what they think would motivate their co-workers.
- Ask the students to work in small groups, brainstorming two lists-- one cataloging the Union’s tactics and methods and the other cataloging the Citizens’ Alliance tactics and methods. Compare and contrast.
- Examine photos of the strike. Ask what students notice and what the photos indicate about power iand the economy in 1934. Ask the students to find one person or image that interests them and to explain why.
- Compare coverage of the strike in the Minneapolis Labor Review with other press at the time. Many archived papers are available at the University of Minnesota’s Wilson Library and the Minnesota Historical Society. Ask the students to compare articles from the same dates. Discuss differences in tone and perspective. Discuss whether such differences exist today.
- Analyze Bertolt Brecht’s poem “A Worker Reads History.” This lesson is taken from The Power In Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States, by Bill Bigelow and Norman Diamond.
- Distribute the lyrics to “The Soup Song” and listen to the song. Discuss the meaning of the lyrics and what they communicate about what life was like for unemployed people in 1934.
- Read and discuss “Waitin’ on Roosevelt" by Langston Hughes. Ask the students to consider the syle of the poem as well as the reasons for Hughes’ complaints with Roosevelt.
- Examine the original document of the National Industrial Recovery Act (especially Clause 7 (a). See these suggestions for integrating primary documents in the classroom. Discuss similar contemporary legislation.
- Ask the students to select a current popular song to re-write. Ask them to write new lyrics about the 1934 strikes and/or about current labor issues. Explain that the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) often did this and that many unions continue the tradition today. See these contemporary song parodies. Larry Long’s 1934 Truckers’ Strike version of "Which Side are you On?" (on the home page of this website) is another great example.
- Ask the students to view and discuss Ben Fisher’s zine, "Seven Snippets" about the ’34 Minneapolis strikes. Ask what they think the artist is trying to express and what the words/ images communicate. Ask the students to design their own zine about the truckers’ strikes or about current labor issues. See this sample assignment. Another example of a zine about a labor strike is here.
- Ask the students to read V.R. Dunne’s 1939 letter. Discuss why the author would be considered a "rebel in thought. " What does Dunne feel are the key lessons of the ’34 strikes?
- Ask the students to imagine that they are a member of the "Committee of 100," the democratically elected group of strike union leaders. What do they think would be rewarding and/or challenging about serving in this position?
- Ask the students to imagine that they are a part of a committee of strikers tasked with designing a new handbill (flyer) for the strike. See this example of a handbill printed during the strike. Ask the students to decide who their intended audience is (general public, farmers, members of other unions, etc.)
- Create a timeline of the different strikes across the country in 1934. Compare the strategies and tactics employed by the strikers in different locations and across industries; the demographics of the striking workers (the Toledo Auto-Lite strike, for example, had many women leaders); and the different ways that the strikes have been commemorated.
