John Mitchell Day | FDR Labor Speech, Wilkes-Barre 1936

John Mitchell Day | FDR Labor Speech, Wilkes-Barre 1936

On October 29, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stood before an estimated 70,000 people in at Miner Park in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, delivering one of the most pointed labor speeches of his presidency. The speakers’ stand at Wilkes-Barre’s Miner Park and the presidential train The occasion was John Mitchell Day, an important date in the Coal Region, and Roosevelt made clear why this place – and this history – mattered. He spoke not just …