Jo Labadie
Joseph Labadie | |
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Detroit, Michigan | |
Occupation | Labor leader |
Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie (April 18, 1850 – October 7, 1933) was an American labor organizer,
Biography
Early years
Jo Labadie was born on April 18, 1850, in Paw Paw, Michigan, to Anthony and Euphrosyne Labadie, both descendants of seventeenth century French immigrants of the Labadie family who had settled on both sides of the Detroit River. His boyhood was a frontier existence among Potawatomi tribes in southern Michigan, where his father served as interpreter between Jesuit missionaries and Native Americans. His only formal schooling was a few months in a parochial school.
Labadie began five years of "tramp" printing and then settled in
Political life
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Socialism in the United States |
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Labadie joined the newly formed
In 1878, Labadie organized Detroit's first assembly of the Knights of Labor, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor on the Greenback-Labor ticket. In 1880, he served as first president of the Detroit Trades Council, and continued issuing a succession of labor papers and columns for the national labor press, including the Detroit Times, Advance and Labor Leaf, Labor Review, The Socialist, and the Lansing Sentinel, which were admired for their forthright style. His column "Cranky Notions" was widely published.
In 1883, Labadie embraced
In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, becoming its first president, and forged a tenuous alliance with Samuel Gompers. At age fifty he began writing verse and publishing artistic hand-crafted booklets. In 1908, the city postal inspector refused to handle his mail because it bore stickers with anarchist quotations. A month later the Detroit Water Board, where Labadie worked as a clerk, dismissed him from his post for expressing anarchist sentiments. In both cases, public officials were forced to back down in the face of mass public protests in support of Labadie, well known to Detroit citizens as its "Gentle Anarchist".
Collector of ephemera
In about 1910, when he was 60 years old, Labadie began to prepare for the preservation of the vast collection of
Labadie sought instead to keep the material as near to his hometown of Detroit as possible and contacted the
In 1912 twenty crates of material were moved from Labadie's attic to Ann Arbor, forming the foundation of the renowned Labadie Collection of radical literature.[5] Labadie spent his later years soliciting donations to the collection from friends and acquaintances, donating hundreds more items himself to the library in 1926.[5] Agnes Inglis cataloged and organized the collection. The collection thus preserved is today regarded as among the finest accumulations of 19th Century radical ephemera in the United States.
Death and legacy
Joseph Labadie died on October 7, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 83. He donated the vast majority of manuscripts and ephemera acquired in his lifetime to the collection at the University of Michigan Library, a deed he viewed as his primary legacy.
See also
Footnotes
- ^ "Lee on Anderson, 'All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement' - H-Labor - H-Net". networks.h-net.org.
- ^ "Joseph A. Labadie Biographical Sketch". Anarchist Library. Retrieved July 18, 2021.
- ^ "Jo Labadie and His Gift To Michigan: A Legacy for the Masses". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2014-09-26.
- ^ a b c d e Eleanor H. Scanlan, "The Jo Labadie Collection," Labor History, vol. 6, no. 3 (Fall 1965), pg. 245.
- ^ a b c d Scanlan, "The Jo Labadie Collection," pg. 246.
Works
- "Is Tyranny a Necessity?", Liberty, vol. 10, no. 21, whole no. 307, (February 23, 1895), pg. 7.
"Cranky Notions" column
- "Cranky Notions" (Nov. 11, 1885), The Labor Leaf (Detroit), vol. 2, no. 1 (November 11, 1885), pg. 2.
- "Cranky Notions" (Jan. 14, 1888), Liberty, vol. 5, no. 12, whole no. 116. (January 14, 1888), pg. 7.
- "Cranky Notions" (Jan. 28, 1888), Liberty, vol. 5, no. 13, whole no. 117. (January 28, 1888), pg. 4.
- "Cranky Notions" (Feb. 25, 1888), Liberty, vol. 5, no. 15, whole no. 119. (February 25, 1888), pg. 7.
- "Cranky Notions" (Mar. 31, 1888), Liberty, vol. 5, no. 17, whole no. 121. (March 31, 1888), pg. 7.
- "Cranky Notions" (April 14, 1888), Liberty, vol. 5, no. 18, whole no. 122. (April 14, 1888), pg. 8.
- "Cranky Notions" (May 26, 1888), Liberty, vol. 5, no. 21, whole no. 125. (May 26, 1888), pg. 5.
- "Cranky Notions" (April 18, 1891), Liberty, vol. 7, no. 26, whole no. 182. (April 18, 1891), pg. 3.
- "Cranky Notions" (July 1921), Ego, vol. III, no. 7 (July 1921), pp. 4-5.
- "Cranky Notions" (October 1925), The Mutualist, vol. V, no. 1, whole no. 49 (October 1925), pg. 7.
Further reading
- Carlotta R. Anderson, All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998.
- James J. Martin, Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908. Colorado Springs, CO: Ralph Myles, 1970.
- William O. Reichert, Partisans of Freedom: A Study in American Anarchism. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1976.
- Riggenbach, Jeff (November 5, 2010). "Joseph Labadie: An American Original". Mises Daily. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Eleanor H. Scanlan, "The Jo Labadie Collection," Labor History, vol. 6, no. 3 (Fall 1965), pp. 244–48.
- R.C. Steward, "The Labadie Labor Collection," Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review, vol. 53 (May 1947), pp. 247–53.
- Frances L. Vivian, Jo Labadie and the Labadie Collection of Sociological Literature. Dissertation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, School of Library Science, 1938.
External links
Media related to Joseph Labadie at Wikimedia Commons