1929: Gastonia, N.C. textile mill striker and songwriter Ella Mae Wiggins is killed when local vigilantes, thugs and a sheriff's deputy force the pickup truck in which she is riding off the road and begin shooting.
1933: A striker is shot by a bog owner (and town elected official) during a walkout by some 1,500 cranberry pickers, members of the newly-formed Cape Cod Cranberry Pickers Union Local 1.
1959: Congress passes the Landrum-Griffin Act, which expands many of the anti-labor provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act such as increasing union reporting requirements and restricting secondary boycotting and picketing.