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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JAN 14–20, 2026  
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_ Sit-Down Strikes Were Powerful; Now They’re Illegal (1937),
Sixty-Two People Own the Same Wealth as 3.6 Billion (2016), Red Dye
No. 2 Was Banned 50 Years Ago; Why Did It Take So Long? (1976), New
York Gets the News About Racist Terror in Dixie (1868) _

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_SIT-DOWN STRIKES ARE POWERFUL, COULD IT BE THAT’S WHY THEY’RE
AGAINST THE LAW?_

JANUARY 14 IS THE 89TH ANNIVERSARY of the break-through in
negotiations that eventually resulted in the victory of the United
Auto Workers’ 1937 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. It was a
crucial moment in the development of U.S. labor unions.

Some two thousand striking workers had been occupying the auto parts
plant for two weeks, during which they beat back several attempts by
the police to force them out.  General Motors management had
completely refused to negotiate as long as the occupation continued.
But the workers knew that if they could maintain control of the
factory, management would eventually agree to negotiate, which is
exactly what happened on the 14th. 

With the strikers’ in complete control of the factory, negotiations
continued for almost a month, 

By occupying the plant, which produced essential parts for other GM
factories, the strike caused a national shut-down of GM production.
The strike continued until management agreed to recognize the union at
all its factories. 

Over the next year, the UAW grew from 30,000 to 500,000 members. The
success of the strike inspired a wave of successful plant occupations
in other industries. Less than two years later, the Supreme Court
ruled that all sit-down strikes were illegal, eliminating one of
organized labor's most effective
tactics. [link removed]
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_SIXTY-TWO PEOPLE OWN THE SAME WEALTH AS HALF THE WORLD. HERE'S WHY
THAT'S BAD_

JANUARY 17 IS THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY of the publication, by Oxfam
America, of a study showing that the world’s 62 richest people had
the same amount of wealth as half the world’s population, or 3.6
billion poor people. 

“Power and privilege are being used to rig the system to increase
the gap between the richest and the rest of us to levels we have not
seen before,” said Oxfam American president Raymond Offenheiser.
“Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being pulled
upwards at an alarming rate.” 

And now, 10 years later, the maldistribution of wealth and income is
substantially
worse. [link removed]

 

_RED DYE NO. 2 WAS BANNED 50 YEARS AGO, BUT WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG?_

JANUARY 19 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration’s decision to ban any use of Red Dye No. 2 in food or
cosmetics because it was known to be carcinogenic. 

Public health activists, in particular Public Citizen’s Health
Research Group, had first called for such a ban more than five years
previously, when scientists first discovered that the dye could cause
cancer.

Public Citizen had loudly protested the FDA’s footdragging, because
Red No.2 was not only dangerous, it was the most widely used food dye
in the U.S. More than a million pounds of the dye were being added
to  food and cosmetics every
year. [link removed]

 

_NEW YORK CITY GETS THE BAD NEWS ABOUT RACIST TERRORISM IN THE
SOUTH _

JANUARY 20 IS THE 158TH ANNIVERSARY of the first detailed description
of the Ku Klux Klan published by the New York Times. The Klan had been
founded in 1865 in Tennessee by six former Confederate Army officers,
but it was little known outside the deep South until 1868, when the
Times reprinted an article that had first appeared in the Nashville
Press & Times.

In early 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, the
population of the former Confederate states was deeply divided between
those who were glad the Union had won and slavery had been abolished
and those who had supported the Confederacy and wanted to prevent the
formerly enslaved from exercising their rights as U.S. citizens.

The article reported that on January 11, 1868, in Tennessee, about 25
members of the “Kuklux Klan” ganged up on three men who were
well-known to be active in the attempt to eliminate the vestiges of
slavery, tied them up, and beat them mercilessly with wooden rods.
“Four of the [Klansmen] were engaged at one time in beating one of
the colored men, who received not less than one hundred lashes. . .
.  After having beaten [the three men] to their heart’s content,
the gang withdrew.”

The article was not the first news of the revanchist terror campaign
to appear in the North, but it was one of the first to name the Ku
Klux Klan as one of the organizations behind
it. [link removed]

For more People's History,
visithttps://www.facebook.com/jonathan.bennett.7771/

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