Workable Peace: The Rise of Organized Labor in the United States: The Pullman Strike

Workable Peace is an innovative high school humanities curriculum and professional development project for secondary school classrooms.  Using new teaching materials and strategies, Workable Peace integrates the study of intergroup conflict and the development of critical thinking, problem-solving, and perspective-taking skills into social studies and humanities content.  It gives teachers academically rigorous tools for teaching the major themes and key events of history in ways that enliven the imagination, awaken moral reasoning, and impart social and civic skills that students can use throughout their lives.

The Rise of Organized Labor in the United States teaches about the birth of the labor movement in the United States.  Students explore the perspectives and aftermath of the Homestead Strike of 1892 and its impacts on the labor movement.  The Pullman Strike Role Play is set in 1894, at the beginning of the strike by Pullman workers and the American Railway Union over the issues of wages and rents, just as the nation was sinking into an economic depression.