The Great Railroad Strike of 1877: The Summer America's Cities Burned

In the summer of 1877, a decade after the Civil War, a new kind of war erupted in the streets of Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. It began with a pay cut for railroad workers and exploded into the first nationwide labor uprising in U.S. history. For two weeks, the engines of industry ground to a halt, militias battled citizens, and presidents feared revolution. We track the spark from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad through a tinderbox of postwar inequality, mass unemployment, and the ruthless practices of the "Robber Barons." The episode plunges into the street battles, where strikers seized rail yards, burned hundreds of railroad cars, and faced down Gatling guns wielded by state militias and federal troops. Listeners will witness the violent birth of the American labor movement and the stark class divisions of the Gilded Age. This is the story of a nation realizing that the unity forged in the Civil War had shattered, replaced by a new conflict between capital and labor. The battle to define industrial America was fought on the tracks. #1877RailroadStrike #LaborHistory #GildedAge #RobberBarons #ClassConflict #Strike #19thCentury Hosted by Ibnul Jaif Farabi. Produced by Light Knot Studios (lightknotstudios.com).