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Launched centuries of European exploration and colonization of the American continent.

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Destroyed the Aztec empire, and the Spanish began to consolidate control over what became the colony of New Spain

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`The first English attempt at a permanent and stable English settlement in North America. It failed.

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War that pitted Native Americans against English settlers and their Indian allies. Paved the way for additional English settlements

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The first popular uprising in the American colonies. It was long viewed as an early revolt against English tyranny

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Part of the Seven Years' War in Europe. Britain and France fought for control of the Ohio Valley and Canada. The colonies fought under British commanders. Britain eventually won, and gained control of all of the remaining French possessions in Canada.

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A group of colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773

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A Philadelphia meeting that brought together representatives from each of the colonies, except Georgia, to discuss their response to the British "Intolerable Acts."

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A resolution created by the Continental Congress, which broke all ties between colonists and the British, creating the idea in America that the colonies were now "states"

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An uprising of rural, indebted farmers in western Massachusetts, against Boston creditors. It began in 1786 and lasted half a year, threatening the economic interests of the business elite and contributing to the demise of the Articles of Confederation.

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A Philadelphia meeting that brought together representatives form each of the colonies, except Georgia, to discuss the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation

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Printed in newspapers, this was largely a warning against political parties and permanent foreign alliances

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A land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million dollars

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A war between the U.S. and Great Britain caused by American outrage over the impressment of American sailors by the British, the British seizure of American ships, and British aid to the Indians attacking the Americans on the western frontier.

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General Robert Ross, a British force occupied Washington, D.C. and set fire to many public buildings following the American defeat at the Battle of Bladensburg

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Americans moving away from self-sufficient agriculture to production of goods for sale

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Congress admitted Maine as a free state in 1820 so that Missouri would become a slave state and prohibited slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of 36 30, the southern boundary of Missouri

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Women of all ages and even some men went to discuss the rights and conditions of women. There, they wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which among other things, tried to get women the right to vote.

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Sparked by a dispute over the annexation of Texas by the United States and a long-standing dispute over the southern border

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Since slaves are property of their masters, a slave is not automatically granted his freedom when his master moves him to a free state or territory

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Issued by Lincoln to free all of the slaves in the Confederate states. The slaves in border states loyal to the Union, however, remained enslaved, it only applied to Confederate states in rebellion.

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Period after the Civil War during which Northern political leaders created plans for the governance of the South and a procedure for former Southern states to rejoin the Union

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Where the surrender of the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee To Ulysses S. Grant took place on April 9, 1865

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John Wilkes Booth shot this leader in the head at Ford Theater, just days after the Civil War ended

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A labor protest rally in Chicago turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing

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The Haymarket Riot (also known as the "Haymarket Incident" and "Haymarket Affair") occurred on May 4, 1886, when a labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing. The Haymarket Riot was viewed as a setback for the organized labor movement in America, which was fighting for rights like the eight-hour workday. At the same time, many in the labor movement viewed the convicted men as martyrs.

U.S. Labor in the 1800s

Strikes by industrial workers were increasingly common in the United States in the 1880s, a time when working conditions were often dismal and dangerous and wages were low.

The American labor movement during this time also included a radical faction of socialists, communists and anarchists who believed the capitalist system should be dismantled because it exploited workers. A number of these labor radicals were immigrants, many of them from Germany.

Did you know? A statue dedicated to the policemen who died as a result of the violence at Haymarket Square was dedicated at the site of the riot in 1889. A monument to the men convicted in connection to the riot was erected in 1893 at the Forest Park, Illinois, cemetery where they are buried.

Haymarket Riot Begins

The May 4, 1886, rally at Haymarket Square was organized by labor radicals to protest the killing and wounding of several workers by the Chicago police during a strike the day before at the McCormick Reaper Works.

Anarchist leader August Spies, a German immigrant, was among the many people who were angered by the police's reaction to the McCormick strike. He had been giving a speech to strikers a short distance from the factory and had witnessed police open fire on workers.

Spies rushed to the offices of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, an anarchist newspaper he edited, and wrote a leaflet denouncing the incident. He headlined the flier "Workingmen, To Arms." That evening, as word of the McCormick killings spread, another group of Chicago anarchists planned an outdoor rally to protest police brutality. They scheduled the gathering for the following evening at Haymarket Square, a large space on Desplaines Street.

Around 8:30 p.m. on May 4, the streets near Haymarket Square swelled with some 2,000 workers and activists. August Spies opened the rally by climbing atop a hay wagon and giving a speech on the "good, honest, law-abiding, church-going citizens" who had been attacked at the McCormick factory. He was followed by Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier turned radical anarchist. Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison was even in attendance to ensure the protest was peaceful.

Toward the end of the Haymarket Square rally, a group of policemen arrived to disperse the crowd. As the police advanced, an individual who was never identified threw a bomb at them. The police and possibly some members of the crowd opened fire and chaos ensued. Seven police officers and at least one civilian died as a result of the violence that day, and an untold number of other people were injured.

Haymarket Riot Aftermath

The Haymarket Riot set off a national wave of xenophobia, as scores of foreign-born radicals and labor organizers were rounded up by the police in Chicago and elsewhere. In August 1886, eight men labeled as anarchists were convicted in a sensational and controversial trial in which the jury was considered to be biased and no solid evidence was presented linking the defendants to the bombing.

Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on seven of the men, and the eighth was sentenced to 15 years in prison. On November 11, 1887, four of the men were hanged.

Of the additional three who were sentenced to death, one committed suicide on the eve of his execution and the other two had their death sentences commuted to life in prison by Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby. The governor was reacting to widespread public questioning of their guilt, which later led his successor, Governor John P. Altgeld, to pardon the three activists still living in 1893.

In the aftermath of the Haymarket Riot and subsequent trial and executions, public opinion was divided. For some people, the events led to a heightened anti-labor sentiment, while others (including labor organizers around the world) believed the men had been convicted unfairly and viewed them as martyrs.

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The Haymarket Riot (also known as the "Haymarket Incident" and "Haymarket Affair") occurred on May 4, 1886, when a labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day.

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A violent strike in Pittsburgh over a decision to cut wages by nearly 20%. This strike ended with the destruction of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel workers, one of the largest unions at the time

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Homestead Strike, also called Homestead riot, violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers that occurred on July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The strike pitted the company's management (which included owner American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and American industrialist Henry Clay Frick), the strikebreakers (replacement workers) who had been hired, and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency against members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, who worked for the company. A gun battle resulted in which a number of Pinkerton agents and strikers were killed and many were injured.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Andrew Carnegie had built the Carnegie Steel Company into one of the largest and most-profitable steel companies in the United States. The Homestead steel mill, located a few miles from Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River, was one of the largest of Carnegie's mills. Over the course of the 1880s, several unions were broken at other mills and industrial plants around the country, but in 1892 the workers of the Homestead mill were still represented by the powerful Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Although the union was made up of skilled workers and craftsmen, they were also supported by some 3,000 nonunion workers, who were overwhelmingly eastern and southern European immigrants and their sons.

The contract between the union and Carnegie Steel was set to expire on July 1, 1892, and Carnegie, who was in Scotland at the time, gave his operations manager, Frick, carte blanche to break the union ahead of this deadline. Frick opened his campaign by cutting the workers' wages. The union, understandably, rejected the wage cut. In late June, Frick responded by locking the workers out and building a massive barbed-wire-topped fence around the plant. The workers dubbed the plant "Fort Frick." On July 2 Frick fired all 3,800 workers, and during the dark early hours of July 6, a force of 300 Pinkerton agents-private security guards hired by Frick-traveled up the river in two covered barges to occupy the plant.

The workers understood that this was the prelude to replacing them with nonunion labourers, whom they called "scabs." Thousands of workers and their families stormed the plant before dawn and rushed the pier where the guards were trying to dock. Inevitably, shots were fired, and for the next 12 hours, the Pinkertons and the workers exchanged intense fire. Eventually, the workers accepted the surrender of the Pinkertons, who were led off their barges and to the local jail for protection. However, many Pinkertons were savagely beaten by the crowd along the way to the jail, and the barges they arrived on were burned. Later that night the Pinkertons were released and sent away from the town on a train bound for Pittsburgh. At least three Pinkertons and seven workers were killed during the battle and its aftermath.

The workers then took control of the steel mill, but this did not last long. Frick asked Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Emory Pattison for help; he responded by sending in 8,500 soldiers of the state National Guard. The plant was turned over to the militiamen on July 12. By July 15 the plant was again operational but with replacement workers.

Public support for the strikers, undermined by the brutal treatment of the surrendered Pinkertons, suffered more damage with an assassination attempt on Frick by Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman, who was not connected to the union, on July 23. In the meantime, waves of criminal charges were lodged against scores of union leaders and workers. Although almost all were eventually acquitted, the charges meant that the union leaders languished in jail, out of touch with their members, as the strikebreaking proceeded.

The conflict between the union workers and the strikebreakers, meanwhile, took on racial overtones in the fall of 1892. The union barred African Americans; many of the strikebreakers, therefore, were African Americans brought in from the South. Given the alternatives they faced in the rural South, the steelworker jobs, even at the lower wages, provided them with a better life. Another riot in November 1892 pitted some 2,000 white workers against African American workers and their families, and several people were severely wounded by gunfire. However, by November 21 the union had given up, and some workers reapplied for jobs at the mill, agreeing to 12-hour days and reduced wages.

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Homestead Strike | Summary & Significance

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Survey of the Homestead Strike, the violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers that occurred on July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Learn more about who was involved, why the strike occurred, what its outcome was, and what its lasting significance is.

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A nonviolent strike that brought down the railway system in most of the West over wages. President Cleveland shut it down because it was interfering with mail delivery

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The Pullman Strike was two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression. First came a strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman factory in Chicago in spring 1894. When it failed, the ARU launched a national boycott against all trains that carried Pullman passenger cars. The nationwide railroad boycott that lasted from May 11 to July 20, 1894, was a turning point for US labor law. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, the main labor unions, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland. The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan. The conflict began in Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. Most of the factory workers who built Pullman cars lived in the " company town" of Pullman just outside of Chicago. It was designed as a model community by its namesake founder and owner George Pullman.

As the Panic of 1893 weakened much of the economy, railroad companies ceased purchasing new passenger cars made by Pullman. When his company laid off workers and lowered wages, it did not reduce rents, and the workers called for a strike. Among the reasons for the strike were the absence of democracy within the town of Pullman and its politics, the rigid paternalistic control of the workers by the company, excessive water and gas rates, and a refusal by the company to allow workers to buy and own houses. They had not yet formed a union. Founded in 1893 by Eugene V. Debs, the American Railway Union (ARU) was an organization of railroad workers. Debs brought in ARU organizers to Pullman and signed up many of the disgruntled factory workers. When the Pullman Company refused recognition of the ARU or any negotiations, ARU called a strike against the factory, but it showed no sign of success. To win the strike, Debs decided to stop the movement of Pullman cars on railroads. The over-the-rail Pullman employees (such as conductors and porters) did not go on strike.

Debs and the ARU called a massive boycott against all trains that carried a Pullman car. It affected most rail lines west of Detroit and at its peak involved some 250,000 workers in 27 states. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) opposed the boycott because the ARU was trying to take its membership. The high prestige railroad brotherhoods of Conductors and Engineers were opposed to the boycott. The Fireman brotherhood-of which Debs had been a prominent leader-was split. The General Managers' Association of the railroads coordinated the opposition. Thirty people were killed in riots in Chicago alone. Historian David Ray Papke, building on the work of Almont Lindsey published in 1942, estimated another 40 were killed in other states. Property damage exceeded $80 million.

The federal government obtained an injunction against the union, Debs, and other boycott leaders, ordering them to stop interfering with trains that carried mail cars. After the strikers refused, President Grover Cleveland ordered in the Army to stop the strikers from obstructing the trains. Violence broke out in many cities, and the strike collapsed. Defended by a team including Clarence Darrow, Debs was convicted of violating a court order and sentenced to prison; the ARU then dissolved.

The condition of laboring man at Pullman. The employee is being squeezed by Pullman between high rent and low wages, July 7, 1894.

Low wage, expensive rent, and the failing ideal of a utopian workers settlement were already a problem for the Pullman workers. Company towns, like Pullman, were constructed with a plan to keep everything within a small vicinity to keep workers from having to move far. Using company-run shops and housing took away competition leaving areas open to exploitation, monopolization, and high prices. These conditions were exacerbated by the Panic of 1893. George Pullman had reduced wages 20 to 30% on account of falling sales. However, he did not cut rents nor lower prices at his company stores, nor did he give any indication of a commensurate cost of living adjustment. The employees filed a complaint with the company's owner, George Pullman. Pullman refused to reconsider and even dismissed the workers who were protesting. The strike began on May 11, 1894, when the rest of his staff went on strike. This strike would end by the president sending U.S. troops to break up the scene.

The American Railway Union escalated the Pullman strike beginning with the blockade of the Grand Crossing in Chicago during the night of June 26, 1894.

Many of the Pullman factory workers joined the American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, which supported their strike by launching a boycott in which ARU members refused to run trains containing Pullman cars. At the time of the strike approximately 35% of Pullman workers were members of the ARU. The plan was to force the railroads to bring Pullman to compromise. Debs began the boycott on June 26, 1894. Within four days, 125,000 workers on twenty-nine railroads had " walked off" the job rather than handle Pullman cars. The railroads coordinated their response through the General Managers' Association, which had been formed in 1886 and included 24 lines linked to Chicago. The railroads began hiring replacement workers ( strikebreakers), which increased hostilities. Many African Americans were recruited as strikebreakers and crossed picket lines, as they feared that the racism expressed by the American Railway Union would lock them out of another labor market. This added racial tension to the union's predicament.

On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois. Afterward, groups within the crowd became enraged and set fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive. Elsewhere in the western states, sympathy strikers prevented transportation of goods by walking off the job, obstructing railroad tracks, or threatening and attacking strikebreakers. This increased national attention and the demand for federal action.

Violence erupted on July 7, 1894, with hundreds of boxcars and coal cars looted and burned. State and federal troops violently attacked striking workers, as this study by Frederic Remington illustrates.

The strike was handled by US Attorney General Richard Olney, who was appointed by President Grover Cleveland. A majority of the president's cabinet in Washington, D.C., backed Olney's proposal for federal troops to be dispatched to Chicago to put an end to the "rule of terror." In comparison to his $8,000 compensation as Attorney General, Olney had been a railroad attorney and had a $10,000 retainer from the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. Olney got an injunction from circuit court justices Peter S. Grosscup and William Allen Woods (both anti-union) prohibiting ARU officials from "compelling or encouraging" any impacted railroad employees "to refuse or fail to perform any of their duties." The injunction was disobeyed by Debs and other ARU leaders, and federal forces were dispatched to enforce it. Debs, who had been hesitant to start the strike, put all of his efforts into it. He called on ARU members to ignore the federal court injunctions and the U.S. Army:

Strong men and broad minds only can resist the plutocracy and arrogant monopoly. Do not be frightened at troops, injunctions, or a subsidized press. Quit and remain firm. Commit no violence. American Railway Union will protect all, whether member or not when strike is off.

Debs wanted a general strike of all union members in Chicago, but this was opposed by Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL, and other established unions, and it failed.

Debs first welcomed the military, believing that they would help to keep the peace and allow the strike and boycott to continue peacefully. The military was not, however, impartial; they were there to ensure that the trains ran, which would eventually weaken the boycott. Federal forces broke the ARU's attempts to shut down the national transportation system city by city. Thousands of US Marshals and 12,000 US Army troops, led by Brigadier General Nelson Miles, took part in the operation. President Cleveland claimed that he had a legal, constitutional responsibility for the mail; however, getting the trains moving again also helped further his fiscally conservative economic interests and protect capital, which was far more significant than the mail disruption. His lawyers argued that the boycott violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, and represented a threat to public safety. The arrival of the military and the subsequent deaths of workers in violence led to further outbreaks of violence. During the course of the strike, 30 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. Property damage exceeded $80 million.

Depiction of Illinois National Guardsmen firing at striking workers on July 7, 1894, the day of greatest violence.

The strike affected hundreds of towns and cities across the country. Railroad workers were divided, for the old established Brotherhoods, which included the skilled workers such as engineers, firemen and conductors, did not support the labor action. ARU members did support the action, and often comprised unskilled ground crews. In many areas townspeople and businessmen generally supported the railroads while farmers-many affiliated with the Populists -supported the ARU.

In Billings, Montana, an important rail center, a local Methodist minister, J. W. Jennings, supported the ARU. In a sermon he compared the Pullman boycott to the Boston Tea Party, and attacked Montana state officials and President Cleveland for abandoning "the faith of the Jacksonian fathers." Rather than defending "the rights of the people against aggression and oppressive corporations," he said party leaders were "the pliant tools of the codfish monied aristocracy who seek to dominate this country." Billings remained quiet but on July 10, soldiers reached Lockwood, Montana, a small rail center, where the troop train was surrounded by hundreds of angry strikers. Narrowly averting violence, the army opened the lines through Montana. When the strike ended, the railroads fired and blacklisted all the employees who had supported it.

In California the boycott was effective in Sacramento, a labor stronghold, but weak in the Bay Area and minimal in Los Angeles. The strike lingered as strikers expressed longstanding grievances over wage reductions, and indicate how unpopular the Southern Pacific Railroad was. Strikers engaged in violence and sabotage; the companies saw it as civil war while the ARU proclaimed it was a crusade for the rights of unskilled workers.

American Railway Union President Eugene V. Debs was pilloried in the press for the disruption of food distribution and passenger traffic associated with the 1894 Pullman Strike.

President Cleveland did not think Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld could manage the strike as it continued to cause more and more physical and economic damage. Altgeld's pro-labor mindset and social reformist sympathies were viewed by outsiders as being a form of 'German Socialism'. Critics of Altgeld worried that he was usually on the side of the workers. Outsiders also believed that the strike would get progressively worse since Altgeld, "Knew nothing about the problem of American evolution." Public opinion was mostly opposed to the strike and supported Cleveland's actions. Republicans and eastern Democrats supported Cleveland (the leader of the northeastern pro-business wing of the party), but southern and western Democrats as well as Populists generally denounced him. Chicago Mayor John Patrick Hopkins supported the strikers and stopped the Chicago Police from interfering before the strike turned violent. Governor Altgeld, a Democrat, denounced Cleveland and said he could handle all disturbances in his state without federal intervention. The press took the side of Cleveland and framed strikers as villains, while Mayor Hopkins took the side of strikers and Altgeld. The New York Times and Chicago Tribune placed much of the blame for the strikes on Altgeld.

Media coverage was extensive and generally negative. News reports and editorials commonly depicted the strikers as foreigners who contested the patriotism expressed by the militias and troops involved, as numerous recent immigrants worked in the factories and on the railroads. The editors warned of mobs, aliens, anarchy, and defiance of the law. The New York Times called it "a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital." President Cleveland and the press feared that the strike would foment anarchy and social unrest. Cleveland demonized the ARU for encouraging an uprising against federal authority and endangering the public. The large numbers of immigrant workers who participated in the strike further stoked the fears of anarchy. In Chicago the established church leaders denounced the boycott, but some younger Protestant ministers defended it.

Debs was arrested on federal charges, including conspiracy to obstruct the mail as well as disobeying an order directed to him by the Supreme Court to stop the obstruction of railways and to dissolve the boycott. He was defended by Clarence Darrow, a prominent attorney, as well as Lyman Trumbull. At the conspiracy trial Darrow argued that it was the railways, not Debs and his union, that met in secret and conspired against their opponents. Sensing that Debs would be acquitted, the prosecution dropped the charge when a juror took ill. Although Darrow also represented Debs at the United States Supreme Court for violating the federal injunction, Debs was sentenced to six months in prison.

Early in 1895, General Graham erected a memorial obelisk in the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio in honor of four soldiers of the 5th Artillery killed in a Sacramento train crash of July 11, 1894, during the strike. The train wrecked crossing a trestle bridge purportedly dynamited by union members. Graham's monument included the inscription, "Murdered by Strikers", a description he hotly defended. The obelisk remains in place.

In the aftermath of the Pullman Strike, the state ordered the company to sell off its residential holdings. In the decades after Pullman died (1897), Pullman became just another South Side neighborhood. It remained the area's largest employer before closing in the 1950s. The area is both a National Historic Landmark as well as a Chicago Landmark District. Because of the significance of the strike, many state agencies and non-profit groups are hoping for many revivals of the Pullman neighborhoods starting with Pullman Park, one of the largest projects. It was to be a $350 million mixed used development on the site of an old steel plant. The plan was for 670,000 square feet of new retail space, 125,000 square foot neighborhood recreation center and 1,100 housing units.

Harper's Weekly labeled Eugene Debs and the strike organizers as "The Vanguard of Anarchy", July 21, 1894.

Following his release from prison in 1895, ARU President Debs became a committed advocate of socialism, helping in 1897 to launch the Social Democracy of America, a forerunner of the Socialist Party of America. He ran for president in 1900 for the first of five times as head of the Socialist Party ticket.

Civil as well as criminal charges were brought against the organizers of the strike and Debs in particular, and the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision, that rejected Debs' actions. The Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld was incensed at Cleveland for putting the federal government at the service of the employers, and for rejecting Altgeld's plan to use his state militia rather than federal troops to keep order.

Cleveland's administration appointed a national commission to study the causes of the 1894 strike; it found George Pullman's paternalism partly to blame and described the operations of his company town to be "un-American". The report condemned Pullman for refusing to negotiate and for the economic hardships he created for workers in the town of Pullman. "The aesthetic features are admired by visitors, but have little money value to employees, especially when they lack bread." The State of Illinois filed suit, and in 1898 the Illinois Supreme Court forced the Pullman Company to divest ownership in the town, as its company charter did not authorize such operations. The town was annexed to Chicago. Much of it is now designated as an historic district, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1894, in an effort to conciliate organized labor after the strike, President Grover Cleveland and Congress designated Labor Day as a federal holiday in contrast with the more radical May 1st. Legislation for the holiday was pushed through Congress six days after the strike ended. Samuel Gompers, who had sided with the federal government in its effort to end the strike by the American Railway Union, spoke out in favor of the holiday.

Bassett, Johnathan "The Pullman Strike of 1894," OAH Magazine of History, Volume 11, Issue 2, Winter 1997, Pages 34-41, doi:10.1093/maghis/11.2.34 a lesson plan for high schools

Cooper, Jerry M. "The army as strikebreaker-the railroad strikes of 1877 and 1894." Labor History 18.2 (1977): 179-196.

DeForest, Walter S. The Periodical Press and the Pullman Strike: An Analysis of the Coverage and Interpretation of the Railroad Strike of 1894 by Eight Journals of Opinion and Reportage MA thesis. University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1973.

Eggert, Gerald G. Railroad labor disputes: the beginnings of federal strike policy (U of Michigan Press, 1967).

Ginger, Ray. The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs. (1949). online

Hirsch, Susan Eleanor. After the Strike: A Century of Labor Struggle at Pullman. (U of Illinois Press, 2003).

Laughlin, Rosemary. The Pullman strike of 1894 (2006) online, for high schools

Lindsey, Almont. The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943. online, a standard history

Lindsey, Almont. "Paternalism and the Pullman Strike," American Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Jan., 1939), pp. 272-89 JSTOR 1839019

Nevins, Allan Nevins. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage. (1933) pp. 611-28

Novak, Matt. "Blood on the Tracks in Pullman: Chicagoland's Failed Capitalist Utopia" (2014) Gizmodo.com online

Papke, David Ray. The Pullman Case: The Clash of Labor and Capital in Industrial America. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

Reiff, Janice L. "Rethinking Pullman: Urban Space and Working-Class Activism" Social Science History (2000) 24#1 pp. 7-32 online

Rondinone, Troy. "Guarding the Switch: Cultivating Nationalism During the Pullman Strike," Journal of the Gilded Age & Progressive Era (2009) 8(1): 83-109.

Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984. online

Schneirov, Richard, et al. (eds.) The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor and Politics. (U of Illinois Press, 1999). online

Smith, Carl. Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

White, Richard. Railroaded: the transcontinentals and the making of modern America (WW Norton, 2011), pp 429-450.

Winston, A.P. "The Significance of the Pullman Strike," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 9, no. 4 (Sept. 1901), pp. 540-61. JSTOR 1819352

Wish, Harvey. "The Pullman Strike: A Study in Industrial Warfare," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1939) 32#3 pp. 288-312 JSTOR 40187904

Primary sources

Cleveland, Grover. The Government and the Chicago Strike of 1894 [1904]. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1913.

Manning, Thomas G. and David M. Potter, eds. Government and the American Economy, 1870 to the Present (1950) pp 117-160.

United States Strike Commission, Report on the Chicago Strike of June-July, 1894. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895. 54pp of history and 680pp of documents, testimony and recommendations

Warne, Colston E. ed. The Pullman Boycott 1894: The problem of Federal Intervention (1955) 113pp.

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The Pullman Strike was two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression. First came a strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman factory in Chicago in spring 1894.

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U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting the legality of Jim Crow laws that permitted or required separate but equal facilities for blacks and whites

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Plessy v. Ferguson

Full case name
Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson

Citations

163 U.S. 537 (more)

Decision
Opinion

Prior
Ex parte Plessy, 11 So. 948 (La. 1892)

Subsequent

None

The "separate but equal" provision of private services mandated by state law is constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.

Chief Justice

Melville Fuller

Associate Justices

Stephen J. Field · John M. Harlan
Horace Gray · David J. Brewer
Henry B. Brown · George Shiras Jr.
Edward D. White · Rufus W. Peckham

Majority

Brown, joined by Fuller, Field, Gray, Shiras, White, Peckham

Dissent

Harlan

Brewer took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

U.S. Const. amends. XIII, XIV; 1890 La. Acts No. 111, p. 152, § 1

( de facto) Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and subsequent rulings
Bob Jones University v. United States (1983)[a][2][3]

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as " separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South (" Jim Crow laws") after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Such legally enforced segregation in the south lasted into the 1960s.

The underlying case began in 1892 when Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, deliberately boarded a whites-only train car in New Orleans. By boarding the whites-only car, Plessy violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, which required "equal, but separate" railroad accommodations for white and non-white passengers. Plessy was charged under the Act, and at his trial his lawyers argued that judge John Howard Ferguson should dismiss the charges on the grounds that the Act was unconstitutional. Ferguson denied the request, and the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Ferguson's ruling on appeal. Plessy then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In May 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7-1 decision against Plessy, ruling that the Louisiana law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and stating that although the Fourteenth Amendment established the legal equality of whites and blacks it did not and could not require the elimination of all "distinctions based upon color". The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and morals-the " police power"-and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision, writing that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens", and so the law's distinguishing of passengers' races should have been found unconstitutional.

Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history. Despite its infamy, the decision has never been explicitly overruled. But a series of the Court's later decisions, beginning with the 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education, which held that the "separate but equal" doctrine is unconstitutional in the context of public schools, have severely weakened Plessy to the point that it is considered to have been de facto overruled. The Library of Congress regards Plessy as not having been expressly overruled until Bob Jones University v. United States.

In 1890, the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law called the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on Louisiana railroads. The law required passenger train officers to "assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs". It also made it a misdemeanor for any passenger to "insist on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong," punishable by either a $25 fine or up to 20 days in prison.

A group of prominent black, creole of color, and white creole New Orleans residents formed a civil rights group called the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens). The group was dedicated to repealing the Separate Car Act and fighting its implementation. The Comité eventually persuaded Homer Plessy, a man of mixed race who was an " octoroon" (person of seven-eighths white and one-eighth black ancestry), to participate in an orchestrated test case to challenge the Act. Plessy had been born a free man and was fair-skinned. However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car.

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot and boarded a "Whites Only" car of the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans, Louisiana, bound for Covington, Louisiana. The railroad company, which had opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been previously informed of Plessy's racial lineage, and the intent to challenge the law. Additionally, the Comité des Citoyens hired a private detective with arrest powers to detain Plessy, to ensure that he would be charged for violating the Separate Car Act, as opposed to vagrancy or some other offense. After Plessy took a seat in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to vacate it, and sit instead in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately by the detective. As planned, the train was stopped, and Plessy was taken off the train at Press and Royal streets. Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish.

Plessy petitioned the state district criminal court to throw out the case, State v. Homer Adolph Plessy, on the grounds that the state law requiring East Louisiana Railroad to segregate trains had denied him his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, which provided for equal treatment under the law. However, the judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies while they operated within state boundaries. Four days later, Plessy petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition to stop his criminal trial.

The Louisiana Supreme Court issued a temporary writ of prohibition while it reviewed Plessy's case. In December 1892, the court upheld Judge Ferguson's ruling, and denied Plessy's attorneys' subsequent request for a rehearing. In speaking for the court's decision that Ferguson's judgment did not violate the 14th Amendment, Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Charles Erasmus Fenner cited a number of precedents, including two key cases from Northern states. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled in 1849-before the 14th amendment-that segregated schools were constitutional. In answering the charge that segregation perpetuated race prejudice, the Massachusetts court famously stated: "This prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law, and probably cannot be changed by law." The law itself was repealed five years later, but the precedent stood.

In a Pennsylvania law mandating separate railcars for different races the Pennsylvania Supreme Court stated: "To assert separateness is not to declare inferiority ... It is simply to say that following the order of Divine Providence, human authority ought not to compel these widely separated races to intermix."

Undaunted, the Committee appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Two legal briefs were submitted on Plessy's behalf. One was signed by Albion W. Tourgée and James C. Walker and the other by Samuel F. Phillips and his legal partner F. D. McKenney. Oral arguments were held before the Supreme Court on April 13, 1896. Tourgée and Phillips appeared in the courtroom to speak on behalf of Plessy. Tourgée built his case upon violation of Plessy's rights under the 13th Amendment, prohibiting slavery, and the 14th Amendment, which states "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Tourgée argued that the reputation of being a black man was "property", which, by the law, implied the inferiority of African Americans as compared to whites. The state legal brief was prepared by Attorney General Milton Joseph Cunningham of Natchitoches and New Orleans. Cunningham was a staunch supporter of white supremacy, who according to a laudatory 1916 obituary "worked so effectively [during Reconstruction] in restoring white supremacy in politics that he finally was arrested, with fifty-one other men of that community, and tried by federal officials."

On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7-1 decision against Plessy that upheld the constitutionality of Louisiana's train car segregation laws.

Justice Henry Billings Brown, author of the majority opinion in Plessy

Seven justices formed the Court's majority and joined an opinion written by justice Henry Billings Brown. The Court first dismissed any claim that the Louisiana law violated the Thirteenth Amendment, which, in the majority's opinion, did no more than ensure that black Americans had the basic level of legal equality needed to abolish slavery.

Next, the Court considered whether the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which reads: "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Court said that although the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to guarantee the legal equality of all races in the United States, it was not intended to prevent social or other types of discrimination.

The Court reasoned that laws requiring racial separation were within Louisiana's police power: the core sovereign authority of U.S. states to pass laws on matters of "health, safety, and morals". It held that as long as a law that classified and separated people by their race was a reasonable and good faith exercise of a state's police power and was not designed to oppress a particular class, the law did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. According to the Court, the question in any case that involved a racial segregation law was whether the law was reasonable, and the Court gave State legislatures broad discretion to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed.

Plessy's lawyers had argued that segregation laws inherently implied that black people were inferior, and therefore stigmatized them with a second-class status that violated the Equal Protection Clause. But the Court rejected this argument.

The Court rejected the notion that the law marked black Americans with "a badge of inferiority", and said that racial prejudice could not be overcome by legislation.

Harlan's dissent

John Marshall Harlan became known as the "Great Dissenter" for his fiery dissent in Plessy and other early civil rights cases.

Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the decision. Harlan strongly disagreed with the Court's conclusion that the Louisiana law did not imply that black people were inferior, and he accused the majority of being willfully ignorant on the subject.

To support his argument, Harlan pointed out that the Louisiana law contained an exception for "nurses attending children of the other race". This exception allowed black women who were nannies to white children to be in the white-only train cars. Harlan said that this showed that the Louisiana law only allowed black people to be in white-only cars if it was obvious that they were "social subordinates" or "domestics".

In a now-famous passage, Harlan argued that even though many white Americans of the late 19th century considered themselves superior to Americans of other races, the U.S. Constitution was "color-blind" in matters of law and civil rights.

Harlan predicted that the Plessy decision would eventually become as infamous as the Court's 1857 decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which the Court ruled that black Americans could not be citizens under the U.S. Constitution, and that its legal protections and privileges could never apply to them.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Plessy's criminal trial went ahead in Ferguson's court in Louisiana on February 11, 1897. Plessy changed his plea to "guilty" of violating the Separate Car Act, which carried a $25 fine or 20 days in jail. He opted to pay the fine. The Comité des Citoyens disbanded shortly after the trial's end.

An Oklahoma City streetcar terminal's "colored" drinking fountain, 1939[37]

Plessy legitimized state laws establishing "racial" segregation in the South and provided an impetus for further segregation laws. It also legitimized laws in the North requiring "racial" segregation, such as in the Boston school segregation case noted by Justice Brown in his majority opinion. Legislative achievements won during the Reconstruction Era were erased through means of the "separate but equal" doctrine. The doctrine had been strengthened also by an 1875 Supreme Court decision that limited the federal government's ability to intervene in state affairs, guaranteeing to Congress only the power "to restrain states from acts of racial discrimination and segregation". The ruling basically granted states legislative immunity when dealing with questions of "race", guaranteeing the states' right to implement racially separate institutions, requiring them only to be equal.

1904 caricature of "White" and "Jim Crow" rail cars by John T. McCutcheon

Despite the pretense of "separate but equal", non-whites essentially always received inferior facilities and treatment, if they received them at all.[page needed ]

The prospect of greater state influence in matters of race worried numerous advocates of civil equality, including Supreme Court Justice John Harlan, who wrote in his Plessy dissent, "we shall enter upon an era of constitutional law, when the rights of freedom and American citizenship cannot receive from the nation that efficient protection which heretofore was unhesitatingly accorded to slavery and the rights of the master." Harlan's concerns about the encroachment on the 14th Amendment would prove well-founded; states proceeded to institute segregation-based laws that became known as the Jim Crow system. In addition, from 1890 to 1908, Southern states passed new or amended constitutions including provisions that effectively disenfranchised blacks and thousands of poor whites.

Some commentators, such as Gabriel J. Chin and Eric Maltz, have viewed Harlan's Plessy dissent in a more critical light, and suggested it be viewed in context with his other decisions. Maltz has argued that "modern commentators have often overstated Harlan's distaste for race-based classifications", pointing to other aspects of decisions in which Harlan was involved. Both point to a passage of Harlan's Plessy dissent as particularly troubling:

There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union... and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race.

New Orleans historian Keith Weldon Medley, author of We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson, The Fight Against Legal Segregation, said the words in Justice Harlan's "Great Dissent" were taken from papers filed with the court by "The Citizen's Committee".

The effect of the Plessy ruling was immediate; there were already significant differences in funding for the segregated school system, which continued into the 20th century; states consistently underfunded black schools, providing them with substandard buildings, textbooks, and supplies. States which had successfully integrated elements of their society abruptly adopted oppressive legislation that erased reconstruction era efforts. The principles of Plessy v. Ferguson were affirmed in (1927), which upheld the right of a Mississippi public school for white children to exclude a Chinese American girl. Despite the laws enforcing compulsory education, and the lack of public schools for Chinese children in Lum's area, the Supreme Court ruled that she had the choice to attend a private school. Jim Crow laws and practices spread northward in response to a second wave of African-American migration from the South to northern and midwestern cities. Some established de jure segregated educational facilities, separate public institutions such as hotels and restaurants, separate beaches among other public facilities, and restrictions on interracial marriage, but in other cases segregation in the North was related to unstated practices and operated on a de facto basis, although not by law, among numerous other facets of daily life.

The separate facilities and institutions accorded to the African-American community were consistently inferior to those provided to the White community. This contradicted the vague declaration of "separate but equal" issued after the Plessy decision. Since no state wrote the "separate but equal" doctrine into a statute, there was no remedy, other than going back to the U.S. Supreme Court, if the separate facilities were not equal, and states faced no consequences if they underfunded services and facilities for non-whites.[citation needed ]

From 1890 to 1908, state legislatures in the South disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through rejecting them for voter registration and voting: making voter registration more difficult by providing more detailed records, such as proof of land ownership or literacy tests administered by white staff at poll stations. African-American community leaders, who had achieved brief political success during the Reconstruction era and even into the 1880s, lost gains made when their voters were excluded from the political system. Historian Rogers Smith noted on the subject that "lawmakers frequently admitted, indeed boasted, that such measures as complex registration rules, literacy and property tests, poll taxes, white primaries, and grandfather clauses were designed to produce an electorate confined to a white race that declared itself supreme", notably rejecting the 14th and 15th Amendments to the American Constitution.

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. While Plessy v. Ferguson was never explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court, it is effectively dead as a precedent; the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that segregation on interstate transport violated the Interstate Commerce Act in the 1955 case Keys v. Carolina Coach Co. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited legal segregation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided for federal oversight and enforcement of voter registration and voting.[citation needed ]

In 2009, Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of participants on both sides of the 1896 Supreme Court case, announced establishing the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation for Education and Reconciliation. The foundation will work to create new ways to teach the history of civil rights through film, art, and public programs designed to create understanding of this historic case and its effect on the American conscience.

In 2009, a marker was placed at the corner of Press and Royal Streets, near where Plessy had boarded his train.

In 2021, the Louisiana Board of Pardons unanimously approved a posthumous pardon of Plessy, sending it to Governor John Bel Edwards for final approval. Edwards granted the pardon on January 5, 2022.

Aleinikoff, T. Alexander (1992). "Re-Reading Justice Harlan's Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson: Freedom, Antiracism, and Citizenship". University of Illinois Law Review (4): 961-78.

Amar, Akhil Reed (2011). "Plessy v. Ferguson and the Anti-Canon". Pepperdine Law Review. 39 (1): 75-90.

Chemerinsky, Erwin (2014). The Case Against the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-312800-7.

Chin, Gabriel J. (1996). "The Plessy Myth: Justice Harlan and the Chinese Cases". Iowa Law Review. 82: 151-182. doi:10.17077/0021-065X.4551. SSRN 1121505.

Elliott, Mark (2006). Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-518139-5.

Epstein, Richard A. (1995). Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-6743-0809-3.

Larson, Edward J. (2011). "Anti-Canonical Considerations". Pepperdine Law Review. 39 (1): 1-12.

Medley, Keith Weldon (2003). We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson. Gretna LA: Pelican. ISBN 1-58980-120-2. Review

Nowak, John E.; Rotunda, Ronald D. (2012). Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure (5th ed.). Eagan, Minnesota: West Thomson/Reuters. OCLC 798148265.

Schauer, Frederick (1997). "Generality and Equality". Law and Philosophy. 16 (3): 279-97. doi:10.2307/3504874. JSTOR 3504874.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plessy v. Ferguson Full case name Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson Citations 163 U.S. 537 (more ) Decision Opinion Prior Ex parte Plessy, 11 So. 948 (La. 1892) Subsequent None The "separate but equal" provision of private services mandated by state law is constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.

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A novel by Upton Sinclair that revealed gruesome details about the meat packing industry in Chicago

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The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. The stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seonee" ( Seoni), in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. The theme is echoed in the triumph of protagonists including Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal over their enemies, as well as Mowgli's. Another important theme is of law and freedom; the stories are not about animal behaviour, still less about the Darwinian struggle for survival, but about human archetypes in animal form. They teach respect for authority, obedience, and knowing one's place in society with "the law of the jungle", but the stories also illustrate the freedom to move between different worlds, such as when Mowgli moves between the jungle and the village. Critics have also noted the essential wildness and lawless energies in the stories, reflecting the irresponsible side of human nature.

The Jungle Book has remained popular, partly through its many adaptations for film and other media. Critics such as Swati Singh have noted that even critics wary of Kipling for his supposed imperialism have admired the power of his storytelling. The book has been influential in the scout movement, whose founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was a friend of Kipling's. Percy Grainger composed his Jungle Book Cycle around quotations from the book.

The stories were first published in magazines in 1893-94. The original publications contain illustrations, some by the author's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Rudyard Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six and a half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Naulakha, the home he built in Dummerston, Vermont, in the United States. There is evidence that Kipling wrote the collection of stories for his daughter Josephine, who died from pneumonia in 1899, aged 6; a first edition of the book with a handwritten note by the author to his young daughter was discovered at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, England, in 2010.

Description

The tales in the book (as well as those in The Second Jungle Book, which followed in 1895 and includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to teach moral lessons. The verses of "The Law of the Jungle", for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families, and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle". Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.

The stories in The Jungle Book were inspired in part by the ancient Indian fable texts such as the Panchatantra and the Jataka tales. For example, an older moral-filled mongoose and snake version of the " Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" story by Kipling is found in Book 5 of Panchatantra. In a letter to the American author Edward Everett Hale, Kipling wrote,

The idea of beast-tales seems to me new in that it is a most ancient and long forgotten idea. The really fascinating tales are those that the Bodhisat tells of his previous incarnations ending always with the beautiful moral. Most of the native hunters in India today think pretty much along the lines of an animal's brain and I have "cribbed" freely from their tales.

In a letter written and signed by Kipling in or around 1895, states Alison Flood in The Guardian, Kipling confesses to borrowing ideas and stories in the Jungle Book: "I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet 'the necessities of the case': though a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils," Kipling wrote in the letter. "In fact, it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen."

Kipling lived in India as a child, and most of the stories are evidently set there, though it is not entirely clear where. The Kipling Society notes that "Seonee" ( Seoni, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh) is mentioned several times; that the "cold lairs" must be in the jungled hills of Chittorgarh; and that the first Mowgli story, "In the Rukh", is set in a forest reserve somewhere in North India, south of Simla. "Mowgli's Brothers" was positioned in the Aravalli hills of Rajasthan (northwestern India) in an early manuscript, later changed to Seonee, and Bagheera treks from "Oodeypore" ( Udaipur), a journey of reasonable length to Aravalli but a long way from Seoni. Seoni has a tropical savanna climate, with a dry and a rainy season. This is drier than a monsoon climate and does not support tropical rainforest. Forested parks and reserves that claim to be associated with the stories include Kanha Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, and Pench National Park, near Seoni. However, Kipling never visited the area.

The book is arranged with a story in each chapter. Each story is followed by a poem that serves as an epigram.

Story title

Summary

Epigrammatic poem

Notes

Image

Mowgli's Brothers
A boy is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle with the help of Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther, who teach him the "Law of the Jungle". Some years later, the wolfpack and Mowgli are threatened by the tiger Shere Khan. Mowgli brings fire, driving off Shere Khan but showing that he is a man and must leave the jungle.

"Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack"

The story has been published as a short book: Night-Song in the Jungle.

Kaa's Hunting
During the time Mowgli was with the wolf pack, he is abducted by the Bandar-log monkeys to the ruined city. Baloo and Bagheera set out to rescue him with Kaa the python. Kaa defeats the Bandar-log, frees Mowgli, and hypnotises the monkeys and the other animals with his dance. Mowgli rescues Baloo and Bagheera from the spell.

"Road Song of the Bandar-Log"

Tiger! Tiger!
Mowgli returns to the human village and is adopted by Messua and her husband, who believe him to be their long-lost son. Mowgli leads the village boys who herd the village's buffaloes. Shere Khan comes to hunt Mowgli, but he is warned by Gray Brother wolf, and with Akela they find Shere Khan asleep, and stampede the buffaloes to trample Shere Khan to death. Mowgli leaves the village, and goes back to hunt with the wolves until he becomes a man.

"Mowgli's Song"

The story's title is taken from William Blake's 1794 poem " The Tyger".

The White Seal

Kotick, a rare white-furred fur seal, sees seals being killed by islanders in the Bering Sea. He decides to find a safe home for his people, and after several years of searching as he comes of age, eventually finds a suitable place. He returns home and persuades the other seals to follow him.

"Lukannon"

Many names in the story are Russian,[b] as the Pribilof Islands had been bought (with Alaska) by the United States in 1867, and Kipling had access to books about the islands.[16]

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
An English family have just moved to a house in India. They find Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the mongoose flooded out of his burrow. A pair of large cobras, Nag and Nagaina, attempt unsuccessfully to kill him. He hears the cobras plotting to kill the father in the house, and attacks Nag in the bathroom. The sound of the fight attracts the father, who shoots Nag. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi destroys Nagaina's eggs and chases her into her "rat-hole" where he kills her too.

"Darzee's Chaunt"

This story has been published as a short book.

Toomai of the Elephants
Big Toomai rides Kala Nag the elephant to catch wild elephants in the hills. His son Little Toomai comes to help and risks his life throwing a rope up to one of the drivers. His father forbids him to enter the elephant enclosure again "until he has seen the elephants dance" (which no man ever did). One night he follows the elephants walking without drivers out of the camp, and is picked up by Kala Nag; he rides into the elephants' meeting place in the jungle, where they dance. On his return he says "I've seen the elephants dance" and falls asleep from tiredness. The drivers follow the elephants' tracks into the forest and find a newly cleared glade, showing that Little Toomai has told the truth. When they come back, he is hailed by both hunters and elephants, and the oldest and wisest hunter says that when Little Toomai grows up, he'll be called Toomai of the Elephants like his grandfather.

"Shiv and the Grasshopper"

This story has been published as a short book, and was the basis of the 1937 film Elephant Boy.[17]

Her Majesty's Servants[c]

On the night before a British military parade for the Amir of Afghanistan, the army's working animals -mule, camel, horse, bullock, elephant-discuss what they do in battle and how they feel about their work. It is explained to the Afghans that men and animals obey the orders carried down from the Queen.

"Parade-Song of the Camp Animals" is set to the tunes of several well-known songs.[d]

Characters

Many of the characters (marked *) are named simply for the Hindustani names of their species: for example, Baloo is a transliteration of Hindustani भालू/بھالو Bhālū, "bear". The characters (marked ^) from "The White Seal" are transliterations from the Russian of the Pribilof Islands.

Illustrations

The early editions were illustrated with drawings in the text by John Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard's father), and the American artists W. H. Drake and Paul Frenzeny.

Editions and translations

The book has appeared in over 500 print editions, and over 100 audiobooks. It has been translated into at least 36 languages.

Abandonment and fostering

Critics such as Harry Ricketts have observed that Kipling returns repeatedly to the theme of the abandoned and fostered child, recalling his own childhood feelings of abandonment. In his view, the enemy, Shere Khan, represents the "malevolent would-be foster-parent" who Mowgli in the end outwits and destroys, just as Kipling as a boy had to face Mrs Holloway in place of his parents. Ricketts writes that in "Mowgli's Brothers", the hero loses his human parents at the outset, and his wolf fosterers at the conclusion; and Mowgli is again rejected at the end of "Tiger! Tiger!", but each time is compensated by "a queue of would-be foster-parents" including the wolves, Baloo, Bagheera and Kaa. In Ricketts's view, the power that Mowgli has over all these characters who compete for his affection is part of the book's appeal to children. The historian of India Philip Mason similarly emphasises the Mowgli myth, where the fostered hero, "the odd man out among wolves and men alike", eventually triumphs over his enemies. Mason notes that both Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal do much the same.

Law and freedom

The novelist Marghanita Laski argued that the purpose of the stories was not to teach about animals but to create human archetypes through the animal characters, with lessons of respect for authority. She noted that Kipling was a friend of the founder of the Scout Movement, Robert Baden-Powell, who based the junior scout "Wolf Cubs" on the stories, and that Kipling admired the movement. Ricketts wrote that Kipling was obsessed by rules, a theme running throughout the stories and named explicitly as "the law of the jungle". Part of this, Ricketts supposed, was Mrs Holloway's evangelicalism, suitably transformed. The rules required obedience and "knowing your place", but also provided social relationships and "freedom to move between different worlds". Sandra Kemp observed that the law may be highly codified, but that the energies are also lawless, embodying the part of human nature which is "floating, irresponsible and self-absorbed". There is a duality between the two worlds of the village and the jungle, but Mowgli, like Mang the bat, can travel between the two.

The novelist and critic Angus Wilson noted that Kipling's law of the jungle was "far from Darwinian", since no attacks were allowed at the water-hole, even in drought. In Wilson's view, the popularity of the Mowgli stories is thus not literary but moral: the animals can follow the law easily, but Mowgli has human joys and sorrows, and the burden of making decisions. Kipling's biographer, Charles Carrington, argued that the "fables" about Mowgli illustrate truths directly, as successful fables do, through the character of Mowgli himself; through his "kindly mentors", Bagheera and Baloo; through the repeated failure of the "bully" Shere Khan; through the endless but useless talk of the Bandar-log; and through the law, which makes the jungle "an integrated whole" while enabling Mowgli's brothers to live as the "Free People".

The academic Jan Montefiore commented on the book's balance of law and freedom that "You don't need to invoke Jacqueline Rose on the adult's dream of the child's innocence or Perry Nodelman's theory of children's literature colonising its readers' minds with a double fantasy of the child as both noble savage and embryo good citizen, to see that the Jungle Books .. give their readers a vicarious experience of adventure both as freedom and as service to a just State".

Sayan Mukherjee, writing for the Book Review Circle, calls The Jungle Book "One of the most enjoyable books of my childhood and even in adulthood, highly informative as to the outlook of the British on their 'native population'."

The academic Jopi Nyman argued in 2001 that the book formed part of the construction of " colonial English national identity" within Kipling's " imperial project". In Nyman's view, nation, race and class are mapped out in the stories, contributing to "an imagining of Englishness as a site of power and racial superiority." Nyman suggested that The Jungle Book's monkeys and snakes represent "colonial animals" and "racialized Others" within the Indian jungle, whereas the White Seal promotes "'truly English' identities in the nationalist allegory" of that story.

Swati Singh, in his Secret History of the Jungle Book, notes that the tone is like that of Indian folklore, fable-like, and that critics have speculated that the Kipling may have heard similar stories from his Hindu bearer and his Portuguese ayah (nanny) during his childhood in India. Singh observes, too, that Kipling wove "magic and fantasy" into the stories for his daughter Josephine, and that even critics reading Kipling for signs of imperialism could not help admiring the power of his storytelling.

The Jungle Book came to be used as a motivational book by the Cub Scouts, a junior element of the Scouting movement. This use of the book's universe was approved by Kipling at the request of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, who had originally asked for the author's permission for the use of the Memory Game from in his scheme to develop the morale and fitness of working-class youths in cities. Akela, the head wolf in The Jungle Book, has become a senior figure in the movement; the name is traditionally adopted by the leader of each Cub Scout pack.

Adaptations

The Jungle Book has been adapted many times in a wide variety of media. In literature, Robert Heinlein wrote the Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), when his wife, Virginia, suggested a new version of The Jungle Book, but with a child raised by Martians instead of wolves. Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (2008) is inspired by The Jungle Book. It follows a baby boy who is found and brought up by the dead in a cemetery. It has many scenes that can be traced to Kipling, but with Gaiman's dark twist.

In music, the Jungle Book cycle (1958) was written by the Australian composer Percy Grainger, an avid Kipling reader. It consists of quotations from the book, set as choral pieces and solos for soprano, tenor or baritone. The French composer Charles Koechlin wrote several symphonic works inspired by the book. BBC Radio broadcast an adaptation on 14 February 1994 and released it as a BBC audiobook in 2008. It was directed by Chris Wallis with Nisha K. Nayar as Mowgli, Eartha Kitt as Kaa, Freddie Jones as Baloo, and Jonathan Hyde as Bagheera. The music was by John Mayer.

The book's text has been adapted for younger readers with comic book adaptations such as DC Comics Elseworlds' story, " Superman: The Feral Man of Steel", in which an infant Superman is raised by wolves, while Bagheera, Akela, and Shere Khan make appearances. Marvel Comics published several adaptations by Mary Jo Duffy and Gil Kane in the pages of Marvel Fanfare (vol. 1). These were collected in the one-shot Marvel Illustrated: The Jungle Book (2007). Bill Willingham's comic book series, , features The Jungle Book's Mowgli, Bagheera, and Shere Khan.

Manga Classics: The Jungle Book was published by UDON Entertainment's Manga Classics imprint in June 2017.

Many films have been based on one or another of Kipling's stories, including Elephant Boy (1937), Chuck Jones's made for-TV cartoons Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975), The White Seal (1975), and Mowgli's Brothers (1976). Many films, too, have been made of the book as a whole, such as Zoltán Korda's 1942 film, Disney's 1967 animated film and its 2016 remake, the Russian: Маугли (Mowgli) published as Adventures of Mowgli in the US, an animation released between 1967 and 1971, and combined into a single 96-minute feature film in 1973, and the 1989 Italian-Japanese anime The Jungle Book: Adventures of Mogwli.

Stuart Paterson wrote a stage adaptation in 2004, first produced by the Birmingham Old Rep in 2004 and published in 2007 by Nick Hern Books.

2021 BBC Radio adaptation The Jungle Book. Ayeesha Menon takes Rudyard Kipling's family classic and gives it a darker twist, re-imagining it in the concrete jungle of present-day India. A gangland coming-of-age fable. Lead as Mo - Namit Das and main support as Tiger Khan - Rajit Kapur.

References

External links

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The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves.

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a 14-year-old African American, was brutally murdered in 1955 in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman, an event that played a significant role in the civil rights movement in the United States.

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a series of nonviolent protests initiated by African American college students in 1960 at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, challenging racial segregation and inspiring similar actions across the Southern United States during the civil rights movement.

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over 200,000 participants, including Martin Luther King Jr., gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., advocating for equal rights and economic opportunities for African Americans.

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assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, when he was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade, sparking a wave of investigations and conspiracy theories.

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assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, an event that had a profound impact on the civil rights movement in the United States.

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enacted to address housing discrimination by prohibiting the refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person based on race, color, religion, or national origin, aiming to ensure equal housing opportunities for all.

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involving the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex, leading to revelations of widespread abuses of power and subsequent resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

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marked the end of direct American involvement in the Vietnam War, following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. South Vietnam would later lose the war and Vietnam is communist to the day.