On this day in labor history, the year was 1921.
That was the day President Warren G. Harding ordered Eugene V. Debs released from prison.
The Socialist Party leader had been convicted of Sedition in 1918 and sentenced to ten years in prison for an anti-war speech he made in Canton, Ohio earlier that year.
He noted in that speech, “Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder… And that is war, in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles… To turn your back on the corrupt Republican Party and the corrupt Democratic Party—the gold-dust lackeys of the ruling class—counts for something.
It counts still more...to join a minority party that has an ideal, that stands for a principle, and fights for a cause.”
His arrest and conviction was part of a wider crackdown against dissent during World War I of anti-war activists, including the Socialist Party, IWW, labor unions, and immigrants.
From his jail cell, he won close to a million votes on the Socialist Party ticket in the 1920 presidential elections.
He was also stripped of his citizenship, posthumously restored in 1976. “On the day of his release, the warden ignored prison regulations and opened every cell-block to allow more than 2,000 inmates to gather in front of the main jail building to say good-bye to Eugene Debs,” according to historian Howard Zinn. “As he started down the walkway from the prison, a roar went up and he turned, tears streaming down his face, and stretched out his arms to the other prisoners.”
November 25 - Chicago Printers Walk Off the Job
November 24 - The Hollywood Ten
November 23 - The Thibodaux Massacre
November 22 - Uprising of the 20,000
November 21 - Autoworkers Join the Postwar Strike Wave
November 20 - Birth of the Time Clock
November 19 - Joe Hill’s Final Words
November 18 - Accident or Murder?
November 17 - Resisting Impressment
November 16 - NFL Players End Strike
November 15 - The IWW is Raided
November 14 - The Origins of CWA
November 13 - The Holland Tunnel Opens
November 12 - Striking Against Privatization
November 11 - Haymarket Martyrs are Executed
November 10 - Suicide or Murder?
November 9 - Remembering Philip Murray
November 8 - Dorothy Day is Born
November 7 - Eisenhower Wields Taft-Hartley
November 6 - The Fight for Equality
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