Storm The Fort

The Knights of Labor ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. However, even as the order itself dies out, the individuals, organizations, and ideas that it inspired go on to make up a new vanguard in the labor and progressive movements in the twentieth century.

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After years of turmoil and decline, the Knights of Labor make an agrarian pivot, becoming part of the coalition which founds the People’s Party in the 1890s. However, this new strategy begins to lay the groundwork for the ultimate end of the Knights of Labor, and the expulsion of its longest-serving leader.

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All of a sudden, everything is going wrong for the Knights of Labor. Between lockouts from employers, racial violence, and rapidly intensifying internal divisions, the order faces attacks from all sides and struggles to find its footing.

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As the year of the Great Upheaval comes to a close, the Knights face their biggest tests yet: their largest ever General Assembly and a rash of elections in the 1886 midterms. Meanwhile, their enemies in the labor movement and in the business community plot to destroy them.

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With the failure of the largest strikes of the Great Upheaval, the Knights continue to grow but find themselves facing a series of internal divisions and external attacks that require them to revisit old tactics and develop new ones.

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After becoming the largest labor organization in American history, the Knights of Labor find themselves drawn into a series of titanic conflicts with some of the most powerful men and organizations of the Gilded Age. This is the first of three episodes dedicated to the great upheaval of 1886.

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In the wake of the greatest victory that American organized labor had ever seen, the Knights of Labor become the fastest growing labor organization in history. In this growth they see more diversity, more opportunity, and more division than they have had to deal with before, and begin to position themselves for an even greater showdown with the capitalist class.

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After a series of bruising defeats, many Knights begin to look at different options for how to bring about the cooperative commonwealth. As the national organization begins to rebuild, a renegade group of railroad workers in the west draw the Knights into conflict with one of the most hated robber barons of the era.

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The Knights’ move away from secrecy brings in more members from different backgrounds, but also more division and challenges as trade unionists and radicals make their voices heard. Organizers spread across the country and begin to put together what will become the largest labor movement in American history to that point, and launch the order's first national strike.

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The most violent strike in US labor history brings in new members and new leadership, forcing the Knights of Labor to become a truly national organization. Taking on the mantle of Grand Master Workman, machinist Terence Powderly begins to move the Knights away from secrecy.

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