Latest news with #TriangleShirtwaistFactory
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Breaking Barriers: Ashland Chautauqua brings history to life this summer
Ashland Chautauqua is set to return for its 26th season this summer. The event will take place July 15-19, featuring the theme of Breaking Barriers. Evening performances will occur at the Guy C. Myers Memorial Band Shell in Ashland's Brookside Park. The Breaking Barriers theme will highlight various characters who achieved what seemed very unlikely or impossible, according to an announcement. The opening night July 15 will showcase Lucille Ball, known for her comedic talent and business acumen. Ball played a significant role in shaping television programming in America during the mid-20th century. Scholar Leslie Goddard will portray Ball, having appeared as Lizzy Borden in 2022. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, became the first woman in a U.S. presidential cabinet when appointed Secretary of Labor by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ashland's Deleasa Randall-Griffiths will portray Perkins. Randall-Griffiths has a long history with Ashland Chautauqua, having played Carrie Chapman Catt in 2015. Wernher von Braun, an aerospace engineer, contributed to both Germany's Third Reich wartime efforts and America's space program. His complex legacy will be represented by Larry Bounds, who entertained audiences as Harry Houdini in 2023. Annie Sullivan, who overcame her own challenges to teach Helen Keller, will be portrayed by newcomer Anne Pasquale. Sullivan's work with Keller led to significant breakthroughs, making Keller a prominent advocate for disabilities. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided, funded by the Ashland County Community Foundation. Steve Jobs, a key figure in technology, co-founded Apple Inc. and revolutionized personal computing and mobile technology. Jeremy Meier, who portrayed John Dillinger in previous years, will take on the role of Jobs. Daytime workshops will be held at various locations in Ashland and Loudonville Public Library. The schedule for adult and youth workshops will be published in June. The workshops will be led by Chautauqua scholars, focusing on topics related to their characters or the historical context of their lives. The popular 'Coffee with the Scholars' discussions will return on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 9 a.m. This informal gathering will take place at the Board of Realtors building at 107 E. Main St. in downtown Ashland. Events related to Ashland Chautauqua are free and open to the public. Evening performances and workshops will take place at accessible venues, with accommodations for mobility and sensory issues. Ashland Chautauqua provides an opportunity for the community to celebrate history in an educational format. However, recent federal cuts to humanities organizations have impacted resources for this year's programming, according to the announcement. Currently, the event is supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the City of Ashland's Parks & Recreation Department, Explore Ashland, local businesses and residents. Ashland Main Street serves as the fiscal agent, while local volunteers plan and implement the programming. This story was created by Jane Imbody, jimbody@ with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at or share your thoughts at with our News Automation and AI team. This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Ashland Chautauqua 2025 explores history's barrier breakers
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Yahoo
On This Day, March 25: Saudi King Faisal assassinated
March 25 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1807, the English Parliament abolished the slave trade. In 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killed 146 people, mostly female immigrant workers. The tragedy led to the eventual enactment of many state and national workplace safety laws. In 1947, a mine explosion in Centralia, Ill., killed 111 men, most of them asphyxiated by gas. In 1954, the Radio Corporation of America began commercial production of color television sets. In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and West Germany signed a treaty in Rome establishing the European Economic Community, also known as the common market. In 1965, white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo of Detroit, 39, was killed on a road near Selma, Ala. Three Ku Klux Klansmen were convicted of violating Liuzzo's civil rights, but not for murder. In 1975, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death at his palace in Riyadh by a "mentally deranged" nephew who was later executed. In 1990, an arson fire swept an overcrowded social club, the Happy Land, in the Bronx borough of New York City, killing 87 people. Cuban refugee Julio Gonzalez, the arsonist -- whose former girlfriend worked at the club and survived the fire -- was convicted on multiple counts of arson and murder. He died in prison in September 2016. In 1994, U.S. forces completed a withdrawal from Mogadishu, Somalia, except for a small number of soldiers left behind to provide support for U.N. peacekeepers. In 2006, an estimated 500,000 people protested in Los Angeles against U.S. House-approved bill that would make it a felony to be in the United States illegally. The legislation, which also led to protests in other cities during this period, did not pass in the Senate. In 2010, an explosion sank a South Korean warship on patrol in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors. North Korea denied accusations it had torpedoed the ship. In 2022, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died of a drug overdose in Bogatá, Colombia, shortly before the band were scheduled to perform. He was 50 years old. In 2024, federal agents raided the Los Angeles and Miami homes of musician Sean "Diddy" Combs as part of a sex trafficking investigation.
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A memorial in Yiddish, Italian and English tells the stories of Triangle Shirtwaist fire victims − testament not only to tragedy but to immigrant women's fight to remake labor laws
The 10-story Brown Building, site of one of the deadliest workplace disasters in United States history, stands one block east of Washington Square Park in New York City. Despite three bronze plaques noting its significance, it has long been easy to pass by without further thought. On March 25, 1911, however, thousands of New Yorkers gathered outside what was then known as the Asch Building, home of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Drawn by a brief but raging inferno, they bore horrified witness to dozens of factory workers with no way to escape gathering on the ninth-floor window sills, desperately jumping, and smashing onto the sidewalks far below. Horse-drawn fire crews responded within minutes to reports of the fire, which broke out on a Saturday afternoon at closing time, and it took only a half-hour to douse the flames. But the fire had had its way. One hundred and forty-six people lost their lives. Most of those who died worked on the ninth floor, where safety measures consisted of little more than pails of water, despite the potential fire bomb around them: overflowing bins of discarded cloth and lint, combined with tissue-paper patterns hung across the ceiling. Locked doors, an inadequate fire escape and other fire code violations meant many workers could find no way out except the windows. Firemen were left to stack the lifeless bodies on the sidewalk. The vast majority were girls or young women: meagerly paid laborers, and most of them Jewish or Italian immigrants. On Oct. 11, 2023, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition dedicated a striking memorial at the site of this tragedy. The initial installation features a stainless steel ribbon extending in two parallel strands along the ground floor, displaying victims' names and survivors' testimony, written in their native languages: English, Yiddish and Italian. Over the next few months, another gently twisting ribbon traveling from the window sill of the ninth floor to the ground level and back up again will be added. The memorial offers a bold and graceful reminder not only of the fire but of its imprint on the world we inhabit today. When I asked the students in my history class at the University of Michigan if they had heard of the Triangle fire, I was shocked to see almost all raise their hands. Many were familiar with how the disaster inspired the growth of labor activism and worker protections. Few of them, however, had thought about the central role of American Jewish women, the focus of my research. Only two years before the fire, a walkout over working conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory had sparked a series of labor actions that culminated in the Uprising of the 20,000, the largest American women's strike ever. That disciplined activism was led by a small cadre of young Jewish immigrant working-class women. Years earlier, they had essentially created a branch of their own – Local 25 – within the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Their example led to a surge of strikes nationwide and forced the labor movement to finally take the needs of unskilled workers and women workers seriously. The Triangle bosses and other owners hired thugs to assault strike leaders and picketers. The police likewise felt free to beat the picketers, which only abated when upper-class partners in the Women's Trade Union League joined the picket lines – raising fear among the police that they might be striking society matrons. The Triangle Factory was among the 339 shops that 'settled' with the union in February 1910, with concessions that included higher wages, a 52-hour week, four paid holidays per year and a promise to no longer discriminate against union members. The strikers' call for better safety standards, however, had been ignored by the male union representatives and owners who had worked out the settlement. Local 25 grew from a few hundred to 10,000 members over the course of the 1909-10 strike. That organizing prowess would be seen again in the wave of protest and indignation that followed the 1911 fire. The unions' strength could be seen in the funeral march that accompanied the fire's seven unidentified victims to a municipal burying ground, as a crowd of 400,000 assembled to march or watch the procession. The power of the activists' moral indignation emerged in full force at a memorial meeting held a few days later. Workers grew restive as wealthy philanthropists, city officials and liberal reformers promised investigatory commissions – which they feared would mean little real change. Rose Schneiderman, one of the working-class immigrant labor activists who had helped organize the 1909 strike, was also on the platform. Reformer Frances Perkins, who would soon become a close ally, noted Schneiderman trembling over the loss of comrades, friends and co-workers. Schneiderman took the podium, excoriating the industry's brutality and focusing on the unrealized power of the workers themselves. 'I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies,' she declared, 'if I were to come here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public – and we have found you wanting.' 'I know from experience it is up to the working class to save themselves,' Schneiderman told the audience. Yet the working class ended up needing allies like Perkins, who was instrumental in establishing a citizens' Committee on Safety, and then a legislative Factory Investigating Commission as well. On the day of the fire, Perkins had been enjoying tea at a friend's house on Washington Square and rushed toward the commotion across the park, arriving on the scene to see bodies falling from the sky. That scene and Schneiderman's speech left an indelible impression on her – as they did on many New Yorkers. For several reasons, including public outcry about the fire, this was the moment when New York City's political machine began to shift its focus and address workers' needs. Schneiderman and other activists worked with Perkins on investigations that led to the overhaul of New York's safety and labor laws, such as a 54-hour maximum work week. The young women whose pain had galvanized public response continued their union work, traveling around the country to help organize many of the strikes their activism inspired. Some also made an impact at the governmental level. Schneiderman became a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and influenced her views on workers' needs, as well as those of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perkins became President Roosevelt's secretary of labor in 1933 and was the first woman to serve in a U.S. cabinet position. She brought the New York reforms born in the wake of the fire into the New Deal, the slew of social programs the Roosevelt administration introduced to help Americans struggling through the Great Depression. Schneiderman, too, had a role: the only woman to serve on the New Deal's Labor Advisory Board. As Perkins later recalled, the day of the Triangle fire was 'the day the New Deal was born.' For 112 years, the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory have called out silently from the sidewalks and window frames of the Brown Building, which is now part of New York University's campus. The new memorial calls on the passersby to stop, note and honor that one horrific half-hour, etched indelibly into the story of the city and the nation. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Karla Goldman, University of Michigan Read more: What today's labor leaders can learn from the explosive rise and quick fall of the typesetters union Judaism's rituals to honor new mothers are ever-rooted, ever-changing – from medieval embroidery and prayer to new traditions today America is in the middle of a labor mobilization moment – with self-organizers at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe's and Chipotle behind the union drive Karla Goldman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
