Item no. 10002
| 1980 |
| 60x45cm (24x18in) |
| Collection: Bread & Roses |
Painting by Sue Coe, inspired by a quote from a sit-down striker about the 1936 strike in Akron, Ohio, on a poster from the Images of Labor poster series.
"Those machines had kept going as long as we could remember... I finally remembered something... that I was a human being, that I could stop those machines, that I was better than those machines anytime."
Rubberworkers in Akron, Ohio and autoworkers in Flint, Michigan pioneered the sit-down strike, in response to speed-ups, unsafe working conditions, low pay and lack of job security. The pioneering tactic became widely used (see the photo of the 1937 Woolworths sit-down strike ) until the Supreme Court ruled it to be illegal in 1939.
Image from Images of Labor Collection, Bread and Roses, artist Sue Coe.
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