Storm The Fort

Episode 12: Labor Was Noble and Holy

Thu, 15 May 2025 10:01:00 GMT

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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Episode 11: The Fall of the House of Powderly

Thu, 15 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT

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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Episode 10: Knights Unhorsed

Thu, 08 May 2025 10:01:00 GMT

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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Episode 9: A Study In Democracy

Thu, 08 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT

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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Episode 8: The Long, Hot Summer

Thu, 01 May 2025 10:01:00 GMT

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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Episode 7: The Great Upheaval

Thu, 01 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT

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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Episode 6: A Rather Unwieldy Body

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 11:53:45 GMT

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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Episode 5: War on the Western Rails

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 10:00:00 GMT

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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Episode 4: Workingmen's Democracy

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:01:00 GMT

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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Episode 3: Labor's Independence Day

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:00:00 GMT

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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Episode 1: One Nation, Under Capital

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:00:00 GMT

America emerges from the Civil War a newly industrialized nation. As the dust settles and industry expands rapidly, the labor movement seeks to keep up with a newly concentrated capitalism and offer its own interpretation of what true freedom means.

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Episode 2: Behind Labor's Veil

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:00:00 GMT

After its founding in 1869, the Knights of Labor remains a relatively secretive and covert operation in its early years. All around it, the country is transformed by a major depression, third-party political action, and new forms of labor organizing that will lead to a newly powerful and coherent organization.

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Trailer

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 22:58:21 GMT

On Storm The Fort, we'll dive into the history of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, the first national labor organization to organize all workers regardless of class, race, or gender, to learn what made them special and what we can learn from them today.

First episode arriving on April 10, 2025

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