Union Timeline

By mschlehuser1

  • National Labor Union founded

    The National Labor Union, made up of skilled and unskilled workers, farmers, and reformers, called on Congress to order an eight-hour workday.

  • Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor and Colored National Labor Union formed

    The largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s.

  • 15th Amendment to the Constitution adopted; states the right to vote may not be abrogated by color

    Granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

  • Knights of Labor on the Southwest (or Gould) System: the Missouri Pacific; the Missouri, Kansas and Texas; and the Wabash

    Grand Master Workman of the Knights of Labor, the largest labor organization of the 1880s.

  • American Federation of Labor founded

    American federation of autonomous labour unions formed in 1955 by the merger of the AFL

  • Boycott of Pullman sleeping cars leads to general strike on railroads

  • Women’s Trade Union League formed at AFL convention

  • United States enters World War I

  • President Franklin Roosevelt proposes New Deal programs to Congress

  • U.S. troops enter combat in World War II National War Labor Board created with union members

  • Largest strike wave in U.S. history

  • Civil Rights Act bans institutional forms of racial discrimination

  • Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., during sanitation workers’ strike

  • Coalition of Labor Union Women founded