Global #ClimateStrike: September 20 & 27, 2019

Millions worldwide will be joining thousands of youth-led events in over 100 countries to mobilize for effective responses to the environmental consequences of fossil fuels. To learn more and to locate a climate strike near you, visit the Global Climate Strike website.

Of related interest, see the earlier Common Curator posts: Climate of Concern: Shell's 1991 Warning of Global Environmental Damage; James Hansen: Why I Must Speak Out about Climate Change; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Champions of Change for Sustainable and Climate-Smart Agriculture).

The First Monday in September

To commemorate Labor Day 2018, here is musician Billy Bragg's version of "There Is Power in a Union," a song written in 1913 by Joe Hill [1879-1915], a Swedish-American labor activist and member of the Wobblies, or Industrial Workers of the World.

Risking Everything: The Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964

1964 was a critical year for the Civil Rights Movement, seeing the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-352) and the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). It was also the year of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, which was a campaign to register African-American voters and support equal rights.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer Project, the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) has launched a new digital collection, which draws upon its substantial archival holdings of civil rights organizations, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), as well as activists, including Amzie Moore, Mary King, and Howard Zinn. The collection contains over 25,000 pages of manuscript material and images, and offers complementary resources for educators.

In addition, WHS Press has published Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader, an anthology of documents from the project. Its editor, Michael Edmonds, is featured in an interview in the video above. To learn more about the Wisconsin Historical Society, visit its website, and peruse its many online collections.

MayDay 2014: Saving Our History

Since 2006, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) has designated May 1st as MayDay, or a day of action for both individuals and organizations such as archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies to improve their capacities to deal with emergencies that can threaten or destroy historical collections. The ravages of natural disasters such as the tornadoes and hurricanes of recent years are just some of the physical risks facing cultural heritage institutions.

Although the landmark study, A Public Trust at Risk: The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America's Collections (2005), systematically documented that most institutions lack an adequate disaster preparedness plan, the SAA has worked to mitigate these deficiencies. The SAA web site provides recommendations for MayDay activities, as well as a compilation of resources, including technical literature and tools, disaster plan templates and examples, tutorials and courses, bibliographies, and other resources.

May 1st, of course, is also International Workers' Day, which serves to commemorate the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago. The eight-hour workday was a central demand of the Chicago labor movement in the 1860s, and a week-long, city-wide strike began on May 1, 1867. The strike collapsed, but the issue remained, with the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1884 calling for workers to take direct action and begin observing the eight-hour day on May 1, 1886. More on IWD can be found in the Common Curator post, the 125th Anniversary of the Haymarket Affair.