Thinking of all the nurses and essential hospital workers out on the frontline during this pandemic, we want to wish everyone a Happy National Nurses Day.
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This image from our @CornellTextileIndustry Collection depicts a large group of nurses marching in the God and Country Parade, held in Lawrence, MA, October 1912, following the infamous Bread and Roses strike where 14,000 textile workers, mostly immigrants and women, stayed out for ten weeks enduring the bitter winter cold until their demands were largely met.
The phrase ‘Bread and Roses’ comes from a James Oppenhein poem that 1911 that has been attributed to the strike:
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!