In 1619, skilled craftsmen in Jamestown—many from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, alongside German and Slovak workers—downed tools with a simple demand: no vote, no work. What followed is widely considered the first recorded labor strike on the continent—and it won.
This episode of Strike: A Brief History of the Workers’ War explains how disenfranchised workers forced the Virginia Company to extend voting rights on July 21, 1619, and why that victory still echoes through fights for representation today. We also acknowledge another defining event in Jamestown that same year—the arrival of enslaved Africans—and recommend The 1619 Project podcast for deeper context.
If you have credible sources on the 1538 Cobblers’ Strike, drop them in the comments—we’d love to feature your findings.
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Sources
Wikipedia – “1619 Jamestown craftsmen strike”
Wikipedia – “Jamestown, Virginia”
Encyclopedia Virginia – “Polish Settlers at Early Jamestown”
NALC Director of Education PDF – “The first labor strike in America
Global Nonviolent Action Database – “Polish artisans strike for the right to vote, Jamestown, Virginia, 1619”
Polish Weekly – “Poles Strike in 1619 for the Right to Vote in the Jamestown Colony”
The New York Times - The 1619 Project
Music and Audio
All sounds heard in this episode were sourced through Story Blocks, Freesound.Org, Sonnis, Accusonus, Sound Crate, Infinite, Ghosthack, and Ambient-Mixer.com.
The backing track to this episode is "The Britons" by kmacleod
The show’s theme song was remixed by Timmy II Step.
The original track for the theme song is "Twisted" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
“Strike! A Brief History Of The Workers War” was created by Tim Phillippe and is a production of Shway Media.
