One hundred years ago Hannah Shapiro, known as “Annie” to her fellow workers, rose up and stormed off her job as a garment worker in Chicago because her meager wages had just been cut even further. To her surprise, her fellow workers followed her out the door, and what resulted was the great Hart, Schaffner, and Marx strike of 1910 that eventually involved 40,000 workers. Annie’s story has been told in a new illustrated book for children (written, as Harry is quick to point out, by his sister). Targ discusses the importance of educating our children about the progressive history that is generally left out of their textbooks, and points out that children’s books have historically succeeded in addressing these subjects — even when writers in other fields were blacklisted or censored.

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