The Pullman Strike and Labor Day

I somewhat remember this (the Pullman Strike resulting in Labor Day)  from one of my high school American history classes taught by one Mr. Meeth who had the brains of -  well he had them and they kept him alive but as far as anything "firing" in that noggin of his??  He was also the basketball coach. My freshman and sophomore years interest in basketball was so high because we had back to back great classes, to the point where we put two teams of freshman each 20-0 and two junior varsity teams each 16-0. Expectations were high so Meeth cut the team back to 8 players - not enough even to have a scrimmage and in 3 of the first 5 games we finished with only 4 players in the last quarter...that incredible mind was characteristic of our American History.

I digressed to my high school days as at the time, after the 5th game, the players kinda 'went on strike'...did I mention that our school had just set the class A record for consecutive basketball losses at 40 and during my 3 years on varsity, we won 5 games and lost 43 with another 23 in a row to close out my career?  Anyway, that gave us reason to call a halt to things.  His response was, as he had cut 4 black players - the only 4 to trim the squad down to 8 short slow white guys, was to try and bring them back and suspend us from school for insubordination. The black players refused although with them we would have had half a chance - and I'm not being racist here, they were just simply better than we were.

Three of us, Larry, Bill and I were in the top 5 in our class and I protested along now with half the student body.  I came to school and went to American History, 2nd period, and Meeth informed me he was going to fail me regardless and had me removed from the classroom by the dean of students (aka "the enforcer").  One of the other kid's parents took the school and Meeth to court and the matter was "resolved" before it went to trial (I think by last period of the day in fact).
Now that I think about it, the lesson may have been about teaching why there are labor unions and laws and the necessity of certain institutions. Some of the stuff unions do is off the charts and I can't support but in general without some degree of organization "management" tends to think more god-like than man-like... take the last few years for example....