At Long Last, Maryland Marks 1877 B&O Railroad Strike

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Baltimore finally gets credit for the city’s key role in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877: a history marker will be unveiled on March 23 at 10:30am in front of the Camden Yards Warehouse on South Howard Street. The strike by local railroad workers against wage cuts by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) quickly spread into a nationwide strike -- the first general strike in the United States -- by thousands of workers in several industries for the eight-hour day and a ban on child labor. President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered federal troops to Maryland to break the strike. Despite the killing of 11 citizens near Baltimore's City Hall by state militia, the strike "energized the labor movement and was precursor to labor unrest in the 1880s and 1890s," according to the text on the historical marker. Retired Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) labor studies professor Bill Barry, who wrote the text for the marker, Nancy Kurtz from the Maryland Historical Trust and Jim Hardesty of the Stadium Authority shepherded the process of getting the state of Maryland to pay for and fabricate the memorial plaque, just the second labor history marker in Maryland, which will be on permanent display in front of Camden Yards. A reception at The Irish Railroad Workers Museum on Lemon Street, across from the B & O Museum will follow the unveiling ceremony. - report by Mariya Strauss