Historian Peter Linebaugh gives a lecture in honor of May Day

Our May Day began in America. From the May pole dance with indigenous folk at Merry Mount, Massachusetts, in 1627, to Chicago’s police riots in 1886 at Haymarket Square against advocates of the eight-hour day, May Day has given us both green and red themes to celebrate. Suppose we paused to think of each of these stories as history’s seeds that have yet to reach their maturity? Conquest and settlement were accomplished through mechanization. On May Day, whether as a story of Puritanical expropriation from earthly subsistence or as a story of gilded age exploitation of immigrant wage-slaves, we may easily find contemporary themes related to the extractions and extinctions of our own time. May Day celebrates the green and red struggle of workers across the planet who cry for health and wealth, common wealth.

This Cooper Union Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences event is part of the Philip F. Brueck Lecture series.

Registration on Eventbrite is required. However, an Eventbrite ticket does not guarantee entry as this is a first-come, first-served free event.

Peter Linebaugh was born in Washington, D.C. in 1942, the year the Nazis launched the V-2 rocket. He became an anti-fascist and grew up in London, Cattaraugus, Muskogee, Karachi, and New York. He became a historian under the eloquent peacenik and labor historian, E.P. Thompson. He has written books such as The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, and The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All.

Time: 6:30 pm EST

Free!

Registration