The Strike the Machines Won
Nearly twelve thousand walked out, a twenty-one-year-old led them, and the police made seven hundred arrests.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
The pecan shellers of San Antonio won their strike in 1938, and then a raise cost them their jobs. Nearly twelve thousand walked out on 31 January over a pay cut, most of them Mexican American women. Their usual pay was two to three dollars a week. In 1926 Julius Seligmann's company had taken out its machines and gone over to hand work. One of their leaders had grown up coming to this plaza, then called Plaza del Zacate, where her grandfather brought her on Sundays to hear the soapbox speakers.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
Milam Park, 501 West Commerce Street, San Antonio, next to Market Square. Open public park. The state marker to Tenayuca stands on the north side of the Jalisco Pavilion.
Sources
- Pecan Shellers' Strike, Handbook of Texas
- Tenayuca, Emma Beatrice, Handbook of Texas
- Emma Tenayuca, National Park Service
- 103 years later, Emma Tenayuca's push for labor rights, Texas Public Radio, 2019
- Emma Tenayuca, Texas Historical Commission Atlas
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