Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers’ Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americansdon’t realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as “American” as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public’s memory by establishing “Law and Order Day” on May 1.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, which become the American Federation of Labor, during a Chicago convention in 1884 proclaimed that a legal work day would be eight hours starting on May 1, 1886.

On that day, 40,000 workers in Chicago and more than 300,000 laborers from 13,000 businesses across the U.S. staged walkouts, with the proclamation backed by the country’s biggest labor organization at the time, the Knights of Labor.

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 Newsweek Article