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May 3rd, 2020. This past Friday, May 1st was International Workers Day, which is known as Labor Day, 

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in a lot of countries and May Day and others, many countries celebrate as a public holiday. It's all but ignored in the United States. And we 

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have our own Labor Day, but it's really not much more than just a Monday off an excuse to cook out in the end of summer. We rarely actually celebrate labor or make it 

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to fight for workers rights. But as someone to whom unions are very important, I wanted to make this observation today special. So I invited Dr. 

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Troy Smith to speak to us about the history of the labor movement. I'll tell you more about him when we get close to the sermon. But in this time of crisis, 

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labor issues are getting ever more relevant, not less. People are fighting for their livelihood and hundreds of thousands are now unemployed. Others 

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, considered essential, are putting their lives on the line every day to keep things working smoothly. And some of them are striking to make sure they're provided with protective equipment and getting 

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paid sick leave if they get infected. It's for these essential workers that I wanted to share our opening reading this morning. It's called a blessing for 

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Safety by Rosemarie Morrison Barrett of and Life. These are trying times and sometimes we are at wit's end trying to figure out what 

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to do. We all have extra time. And we're busier than we've ever been. We think we need to accomplish so much during this time of physical distancing. 

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and we find ourselves exhausted beyond words. We are grateful we can work from home. And we are scared beyond belief. We don't know where our next paycheck is coming from. 

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We are grateful for those who grow transport and stock the food on shelves for us. May they we say may they be? Well, we are grateful for all the health 

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care workers walking into this storm to keep us safe. We acknowledge the fear they must feel as one who cannot stay out of harm's way. Be safe 

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may be well. We are grateful for all those who are helping to make masks at your shop. For those who aren't able or those contributing food to 

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those in need. For those who are distributing food and offering to help, those in need may be safe, may be well. We ask a special blessing 

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and all those deemed essential workers. We are grateful for their service. May Day be safe. May they do well. We are grateful for this community of love and connection. 

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May this time remind us of how much we mean to one another. Thank you for this means to stay connected, for being able to see each other's face and hear each other's voices. 

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May we be safe? They really love. May we be comforted and buoyed up with a love that permeates this community. May we all be safe? May 

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we all do well? Does he like to join us for our mission statement? We're not going to turn on the mike because this is 

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lag kind of makes it a messy thing. But if you want to say with me, our mission statement is on the on the sharing there, we 

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gather as an inclusive community to inspire spiritual growth and passionate living and joyful service 

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and 

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we'll have our challenge. This challenge literally looks shiny. I can't tell you the challenge. Lighting is by Alan LNG deal. 

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The light of this chalice is a fragile free 

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. It can be snuffed out by the winds of cynicism and apathy. May its little flame be a reminder of the power of the spirit. Let us rededicate ourselves to providing light 

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that lifts our hearts and increases the world's joy. 

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So we're going to have our first hymn, which is I Wish I Knew How. And this one is done by our own Janie and 

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Gates. And I think you'll really appreciate the hands today. 

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All right, guys. I linked to the wrong video. I linked to the instrumental version of that. So you missed out on Gates, but I think we've done 

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one before. Hopefully. OK, I hope I got the other one correct anyway. 

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We are going to go to our virtual joys and sorrows. Normally we drop a 

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pebble for joys and sorrows, but I think Tracy's doing candles today. So what we'll do is you can speak up if you want to share a joyous 

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sorrow from your week or if you want to type it in the chat. I'll read it aloud. You can do either one. And if you prefer to just ask for a candle to 

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be lit. Then silence. You don't have to say anything. You don't know joy or sorrow is too much to just speak 

Part 2

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. Anybody wants to go ahead. Please feel free 

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. OK. So instead of doing, I looked for a reading, but instead of doing 

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reading today, I thought I would introduce our second hand with a little story, I'm sure. Well, I'm not sure. But Troy might want you may well mentioned the Wobblies, which is 

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the international workers of the world. It's a union for all workers that was formed in the early part of the 20th century. We're going to leave the history to him. But I want to mention 

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the little red songbook that they first published in 1989, when the unions would strike, the companies would hire Salvation Army bands to drown out the 

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strikers with loudly played hymns. Rather than competing, the union workers started writing pro-union songs to the tunes of the popular hymns. They were first published 

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A Little Red Songbook by I.W.W., and it's since been used by many other unions and there've been several editions of the songbook. Pete Seeger 

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, Woody Guthrie and others popularized some of the songs and recorded them 

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. They were instrumental so and I did there. And helping organize the movement for the following song, Solidarity Forever set to the bout the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And it 

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was the and an anthem of the labor movement for many years. 

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And go ahead and play that journey for 

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inspiration through the workers blood show run. There can be a 

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thing where even the sun yet what force either is weaker than feeble strength of one young man made source 

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for 

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a young man is so strong. It is we who plowed the prairie 

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, built the cities where the trade, took the mines, and built the workshops. Endless miles of railroad lane now always stand up. garstin starving 

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the wonders we have made love to you young makes us strong 

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. God gave us 

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. They have taken on untold millions that they never toiled were in. But with all our brain and muscle. Not a single real contain 

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. We can break their voting power, gain our freedom when we learn that you 

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made us 

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stop 

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. Hey, 

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hey. 

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in our hands has placed a power greater than our heart goal. Greater than the might of atoms. Magnified a thousand 

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we can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old or the union makes us strong 

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starts 

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sound. It's time for our sermon. We're really excited to have our first virtual guest speaker today, Dr. Troy Smith. 

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is a professor of history at Tennessee Tech and an award winning writer of historical fiction westerns and more. He has a podcast called Mountain True about the history and the Upper Cumberland region 

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. And I think you'd really enjoy if you check that out. He's also an activist and has been a speaker about several protests and impact this past year. And he's here this morning to speak 

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to us on one of many subjects about which he is quite knowledgeable. So thank you for joining us this morning. Troy, 

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did you hear me? 

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Yes, we can hear you. Good. I wasn't sure. I am. I am new to the blue jeans. 

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but I was relatively new to zoom until this stuff. This whole thing happened anyway. Hello. It's good to see you all. Virtually 

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be here. And I thank you for having me. I know that I know several of you. And I may be saying things that I of 

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you already know a lot about Dylan. I know knows a lot about a lot of this stuff. 

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What I what I thought I would do for these 20 minutes or so is talk a little bit about international workers 

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, how the labor movement got started, and then talk a little bit about more locally. The some early labor activities 

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in the upper Cumberland, though, how the labor movement got started, whether there had been craft unions for a long time. And there were sort of some 

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antecedents due to labor unions in the pre-Civil War, United States sort of coming along 

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with the industrial revolution. But after the after the civil war, there was a second industrial route in the United States. There 

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was really a continuation of the first one, but they took about 10 years off to argue about slavery and then a few more years to shoot each other up before they got back. You 

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to the industrial part of it, other than, you know, mass killing. Anyway, a big part of it was the 

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transcontinental railroad 

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, not only open things up for transportation right from the East Coast to the West Coast, but maybe more importantly, it open things up for shipping 

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, shipping goods quickly around the country. And that led to the growth of a lot of industry. And it coincided with the 

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growth of more factories in the cities. And one side effect of that was that people who 

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owned the businesses started making a whole lot of money, a whole lot more money. People typically would have died before the civil war. 

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There was a big divide in income as you started having multi-millionaires really for the first time, while at the same time the 

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average workers, their situations not only were not improving, they were often worsening. And beginning of the 18 

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seventies, more and more average people started getting really fed up with that and started agitating for 

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for improvement. Another thing that's kind of an unexpected side effect of this situation 

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is the popularity and romanticization of bank robbers in the 1870s. That's when, you know, the James Younger 

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gang were being celebrated by not only newspapers, but a lot of just average people in the Midwest because 

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they were. What did they rob? They robbed banks and trains. And if you think about it, there was a second wave of that in the 1930s during 

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the Depression. All of a sudden, you had bank robberies being really glamorized because average people like to see somebody sticking it to the man. Basically 

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so... Well, actually, I have a I have a scripture that I wanted to share real 

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quickly because it really it really ties in well. And I had never thought about this within this context. But second, Timothy 2 6. Yeah, 

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i.v version says the hard working farmer could be the first to receive a share of 

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First Corinthians 9 10 when the ploughman plows or the thresher threshers. They should also expect to share in the harvest 

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. Well, you know, those those were written in context of, you know, comparison to Christians during their Christian work. But the way the way that it's laid out 

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there, it's like a DA 

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. You know, of course you're going to share in the rewards. Why a farmer who works hard is the first one to get us a share right 

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? Accepts that may seem like a de moment, but it wasn't anymore in the 1870s and 1880s and 

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it was actually farmers who greatly contributed to the organizing. You saw the development of the Farmers Alliance 

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, which had chapters in states all around the country that had farmers coming together. And then you had the Knights of Labor, which was 

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a huge industrial union that brought workers from different industries together. And then those two started started working 

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. That eventually led to the populist movement in the 1890s, which then also led into the progressive 

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era when a lot of changes were made. But those changes came slowly and they came at a cost 

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now. The the idea of May 1st as the international workers it was was introduced 18 

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, 18 in Paris. But it was it was really in reference to things that had happened in the United States 

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three years earlier in 1886. There had been kind of a general organizing of a general 

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strike protesting to try to get an eight hour working day, a 40 hour week, which, you know, the work days 

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essentially were as long as the boss said they were going to be from sun up to past sundown in many cases. So in Chicago, 

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at one of the demonstrations on May the 1st, 1886, there was a there was an altercation, by which I mean, 

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the police started shooting people and they shot several of the protesters. Well, another protest was immediately organized 

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to protest what the police had done at the first protest. And in the next one was set for May. The force three days later 

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at Haymarket Square in Chicago. And one of the organizer 

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, a guy named Albert Parsons, by the way, I apologize that I don't have visuals. Ordinarily, maybe I even 

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would have. But I've been doing nothing from you know, I've had more than 40 hour work weeks last few weeks just putting together a slide shows and stuff to transition 

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online. I just wanted to talk today. Anyway, Albert Parsons done one that some of you may have heard of 

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that sadly is probably better known outside the United States than in the United States. Albert Parsons was from Alabama 

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. He had fought in the Confederacy as a teenager and became a a a newspaper man. And he got married 

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to this this lady he met in Texas when he was working on a newspaper out there named Lucy Gonzalez. He was 

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she as a May launch of of different backgrounds. He was she had a Caucasian heritage and 

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Mexican heritage and African and Native American 

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that didn't go over so well when he first going back to Alabama or even being in Texas, this interracial marriage. So they want to move moving to Chicago, that's out 

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there. And he became very active and so did she in organizing labor protests. He, in fact, had gotten fired from his newspaper 

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for speaking out publicly about some of the issues. Well, on May the 4th at Haymarket Square, 

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it seemed to be going OK. There was a large police presence, but there didn't seem like there was gonna be a 

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repeat of what had happened a few days before. And then it started raining and several of the people went home, including Albert and Lucy Parsons and 

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their children. But some people stayed and the police were still there. And at some point, someone from among the protesters tossed a bomb 

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into the middle of the the police there. And some policemen were killed. And they still don't we still don't know who did 

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. But, you know, they they they wanted to to arrest somebody, even though they couldn't find the individual responsible. 

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So they charged the people who organized the protest with conspiracy. And that was seven men, including Albert Parsons and 

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they were they were convicted and sentenced to death. Couple of those were commuted to life in prison. 

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But the rest of them and one of them died mysteriously in jail. But the other four, including Albert Parsons, were in 

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fact, executed. And Parsons didn't really get to even have any last words. He tried to speak to 

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convey a message about the injustice of the situation, but he'd barely started talking when they pulled the lever and and down he went. So that was 

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that was the end of Albert Parsons. It wasn't the end of Lucy Parsons. She really even stepped up her efforts. And she became a powerful 

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force in the labor movement and a powerful force in the international workers of the world. The Wobblies. In fact, I think she was one of the one of the founders 

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. But this was the sort of thing that got a lot of negative attention for the city of Chicago, not just around the country, but around the world. 

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because it really seemed like these guys had been railroaded, no pun intended. And there was a big outcry against the injustice of just a few 

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years later, a new mayor was elected who had some pro-labor sentiment, and he actually had a monument built in the park 

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to commemorate the martyrs of Haymarket. But it was because of this this all stemming from that May 1st demonstration that here 

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, too, after that execution, when the Global Organization of Workers was trying to settle on a day to 

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make workers day, that's the day that they settled on. And so all around the world, the first is a day to commemorate 

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labor and workers, except in the United States, there were several several states in 

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the early 90s that had set up labor days, but there was a move to make a national Labor Day. The president, Grover Cleveland, didn't 

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want it to be made first because people might associate that with what happened that Haymarket. You know, again, Doug, that was the whole point. But that was a 

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potentially divisive. And so instead, the US government went with a September Labor Day in 

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which, as you said, hardly anyone makes any association with actual labor or workers. But 

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that's sort of the genesis of what became the broader labor movement. And the Farmers Alliance, the Knights of Labor 

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, in the 1890s, they were calling for things like not only an eight hour work day, but an end to convict labor 

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in which counties and states would rent out their prisoners to farmers and industries like coal miners. Much more 

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cheaply than they could pay somebody. So therefore they weren't paid wages. And that became an issue 

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more locally here in Tennessee. It was largely the coal mining in 

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that grabbed all the headlines where labor was in this time period. Now, 

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there was a lot of coal around here and people associate our region with coal production. But the fact is, there was no real 

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coal mining until not only after the civil war, really the end of reconstruction in the south. Most of the coal mining was done 

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in northern Appalachia. You know, Pennsylvania, Ohio. And part of the reason for that was there were no no really good railroads 

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in the south before the civil war north. They had huge numbers of railroads with a lot of track that sort of was all interconnected. 

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like lattice work, you know. And in the south, they just had some spurs going off here and there and they didn't even have the same sized tracks. So you couldn't even connect the Spurs 

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. There was mainly used to transport cotton to the coast and it was only in the late 1870s, early 1880s 

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that we started to get railroads. One of the people responsible for that in the upper Cumberland was a guy named George Gibb's 

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liberal who was a former Confederate general. And after the Civil War and served in Congress for 10 years, 

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as well as working on some private businesses, he worked with some investors and brought railroads upfrom from Nashville 

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, up from McMinnville into the upper Cumberland. You know, 

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White County, Putnam County, Fentress County. And then that made coal mining potentially lucrative. Right. What's 

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the point of digging it out? What do you do with it if you can't ship it right, carry it a piece at a time or whatever. So a lot of coal mines opened up in the 1880s 

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. Ideas and conditions for workers were as bad in Tennessee coal mines as they were anywhere else. You know, you're probably familiar with 

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the situation. I don't know if any of you've seen the movie, but what I would recommend. It's about the West Virginia coal mining wars of 1920. 

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A very dramatic topic. Well, not too far east of here in Anderson County. There was a small scale war 

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in the 1890s over convict labor in which large numbers of coal miners were actually going to the coal mines. The owners had 

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let all the miners go. And now they're using convicts from the prisons. And they built stockades to keep the prisoners in and then make them work. And they only had to pay 

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pennies on the dollar, probably compared to what they were paying laborers. And so the small army of miners came and they actually tore down the stockades and set free 

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a lot of the prisoners and told them, you know, go somewhere else and behave yourselves. And so that led to led to a lot of violence. Several 

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people were killed later on in the early nineteen hundreds in 19-teens. There were a lot of coal mining strikes 

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in this region. Then the situation happened in West Virginia, where a United Mine Workers of America was making a concerted effort to 

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organize southern coal miners. And that was that was incredibly violent. A lot of people died in that 

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one point. The coal mine operators, owners were using private planes to drop bombs 

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on the protesting miners, bombs that they had gotten that were left over from World War One that they actually got from the state government who had gotten from the federal 

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here in the upper Cumberland. Something happened that wasn't that dramatic. Was still pretty dramatic in the early 1930s. And 

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Fentress County, little mining town of Wilder, 

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in which UMW came in, or they had their wages cut for like the second or third year in a row. And it was at the height 

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of the depression. So you MWI came in and organize and the same thing happened that had happened in West Virginia 

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. Private security was from companies like the Pinkertons and the Baldwin selous agency in Chicago. 

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The guy who was the head of the local UAW, a local there in centrist county named Barney Graham, was 

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was killed by some of these security people. It was rural self-defense. He had been shot in the back with a machine gun. Tenzer 

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, his head was crushed in self-defense. And that actually that led to some far reaching 

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. That's because if you've ever heard of Myles Horton, who was an early organizer, he was there for that. He was good friends. 

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Barney. And he had recently opened a school called Highlander Folk School that he shifted to become a school to train 

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nonviolent, organize 

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. 20 years later, he was still operating that school. Martin Luther King Junior and Rosa Parks went there and took some classes before they started 

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the Montgomery bus boycott. So that's a big national connection. 

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But again, a lot of people suffered and died. 

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Same time in the nineteen thirties in white county, miners were striking at the 

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the mines were just shut down. They'd been mining them for about 40 years. They pretty well played out, but they shut them down and everyone wound up out of work. And that 

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put a bad taste in some local people's mouths. But unions. But I've been doing some research and I hope to write this up at some point about 

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the shirt factory strike in Sparta in nineteen forty eight. Turns out that some of those you NWA organized this would come down 

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, organized. The coal miners were then sent to try to organize other businesses, especially the late 1940s. There was this 

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the AFL was doing called Operation Dixie where they were trying to do as much organizing and the staff 

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and some of these former mine mine workers came in and organized the ladies at the Spada Shirt factory one point 

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. Fascinating story. Not two hundred angry mobs. There's Mya. I've got a couple minutes 

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left, I guess I'm about 200 angry ladies that worked at the shirt factory and sparred on what's still call shirt factory hill 

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marched down the hill to the town square. It's like, you know, a block away and went into several local businesses and just 

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beat the fire out of several business owners that were in the Chamber of Commerce that was backing the factory owner. So 

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that's a that's quite a sight to to envision. And I noticed as I was doing research on that that there were a lot of other strikes 

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in all the little towns around post-World War Two during that time period. 

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There was even a wildcat strike of schoolteachers demanding higher pay 

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that actually wound up with them getting the raises. So essentially, this really, really quick overview from the 

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macro national down to the micro local is just a reminder that Tom May first, as well as Labor Day in September 

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. It's not just a day on the calendar. It's a day that represents a lot of struggle over a lot of years. And 

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a lot of sacrifice. And a lot of people made that most of us take for granted. Most of us are oblivious. And we shouldn't be a 

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maybe, you know, maybe we have to make a little extra effort to educate ourselves because public school systems don't talk 

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this kind of stuff, because just like with Grover Cleveland, it might be divisive, but it is extremely, extremely important. And I think 

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I think that Labor Day here in the upper Cumberland, we should all call it. Barney Graham, because he in 

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particular needs to be remembered. 

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All right. I think that's all I have 

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. Thank you very much. 

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Thank you. Try. That was fantastic. I really appreciate that. And we're going to we're going to give you an opportunity during our reflections 

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after service to ask Troy some questions about some of the stuff he was talking about. So please join us for that. 

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This is that part of our service where normally we would have our offertory, our little congregation is entirely self-governing and self-supporting. So we rely on 

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contributions from our members and friends to keep us going even when we're not meeting at a physical location. The rent still has to be paid and we had some challenges, but I'm really happy to say 

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that our pay pal is finally up and running. And so you can go to our Web site. You you look at all dot org to contribute there, or if you'd rather you can 

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mail a check to thirty one West First Street folks, Energy Re8 Bible one. And while we're not attending church, we've started having our mail forwarded to our treasurer. And 

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I think that we've had some glitches with the forwarding and a few envelopes may have been returned. So if you fall into that court category, I think we've got it. Straighten out 

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. The mail is getting forwarded now, so please respond. We have a couple of things in our gratitude box. 

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Gates says, Thank you, Jamie, for your artistry. The text painting you create with your accompanying accompaniments does not go unnoticed. 

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And this is for me in this time when congregations have special challenges. I'm sure many congregations are using YouTube videos or not having hymns at all. But thanks 

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to the labor of Janie and Gates, we have these beautiful hymn recordings of our own hands with our words and familiar playing and voices. And it's a huge concert in a time when I'm struggling 

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connection and it makes our online services much better. In fact, this next to him, when I saw what Gates had put together 

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, Janie played and that first line in it kind of made me cheer up a little bit. So I hope that you enjoy it as much as 

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I did. I'm not suggesting that you cry, too. We're going to go ahead and do our next jam, which you seen. The day will arrive. So I hope you can sing along with us 

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. All right. Thank you guys so much for putting those together. Gates, you just did such a beautiful job putting all of it 

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, organizing it. So 

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so we'll extinguish our challenge now. And it seems like we're always extinguishing one 

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. So go ahead and stay there with me. We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth. The warmth of community or the fire of commitment. 

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These we carry in our hearts until we're together again. 

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some announcements. As I mentioned, we'll have reflections after service if you'd like to stay. 

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Stay and participate in the discussion there. We're doing meditation and challenge circle weekly meditations x.x. And Challen Circle at 7 

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. I did not prepare with the link in the chair. Apologize for that. If you're on Facebook, you can. You can 

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find it there. And if you're not, then you can just email me at UUCookevilleDL at G-mail dot dot com and I'll send 

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the link for meditation and show circles. 

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If I'm not mistaken, Obama right is not a board meeting next week. What will be on Sunday after reflections? And we're gonna do T with D is basically just getting 

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together via Google Hangouts and hanging out to talk. So we have a little bit of companionship and then I'll be Friday on Friday at 10am 

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, Ului has officially cancelled General Assembly in person, General Assembly, Providence, Rhode Island. What they're doing? One hundred percent virtual 

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general assembly. So if you're interested in attending virtually, then send me a message and I'll give you the details on that. Is anybody out here? Have any 

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other announcements 

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like 

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so some closing words? I thought I would share another the songs out, a little Red Songbook. I can't remember 

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the two wars that this one comes from, but it's called Workers in the World. Awaken workers of the world. Awaken and break your chains, demand your 

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rights. All the wealth you might you make is taken by exploiting parasites. Well, you kneel in deep submission from your cradles to your 

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graves is the height of your ambition to be good and willing. Slaves arise. You prisoners of starvation, fight for your own emancipation rises. Slaves 

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. Every nation in one union grant our little ones for bread are crying, and millions from hunger are dying to end the end. The means 

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justifying. Tis the final stand. If the workers take a notion they can stop all speeding trains, every ship upon the ocean, they can 

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tie with mighty chains. Every will in the creation, every mind and every meal. Fleets and armies of the nation will, at their command stand still. Join the union fellow 

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workers, men and women side by side. We will crush the greedy shirkers like a sweeping, surging tide for United. We are standing but divided. We will fall 

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. Let this be our understanding, all for one and one for all workers of the world awakened the rise in all your splendid might 

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take the wealth that you are making. It belongs to you by right. No one will forget bread. Be crying. We have freedom, love and health. When the grand red fly 

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flag is flying and the workers commonwealth 

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. That is it for our service today. We will take a five minute break for 

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bathroom break or grab yourself some tea or whatever, and then we will reconvene here for reflections. So, Patrick, if you will dismiss us