On this day, 26 March 1915, police in Sioux City, Iowa, arrested 14 members of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union for holding street meetings in an attempt to drive the union out of town.
The IWW had begun a free speech fight to defend its right to organise. Members responded to a call and flocked to the town, holding street meetings to get arrested and flood the jails.
When these 14 defendants were arrested, they refused to cooperate in court and jail, and when set to work on a rock pile they went on strike and set fires in their cells, and more militants kept arriving.
By late April the police caved and agreed to free speech for the IWW.
Learn more about the union in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/rebel-voices-an-iww-anthology
Pictured: IWW free speech fight at that time in San Diego, with Laura Emerson speaking https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1950661061785701/?type=3
On Mar. 25, 1931, the Scottsboro nine, nine young African Americans, were falsely charged with rape and collectively served more than 100 years in prison.
The right of African Americans to serve on juries was established by their case. For more info including timeline, primary sources, see the website for the film Scottsboro: An American Tragedy from PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/index.html
Top: 1933 protest at the White House. The protest was led by Mother Patterson, the mother of accused Heywood Patterson.
