On this day in labor history, the year was 1974.

That was the day Karen Silkwood was killed in a mysterious car crash.

Though her death was ruled a one car accident, some maintain she was forced off the road.

Silkwood was a union activist and representative for Local 5-283 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.

She worked at Kerr McGee’s Cimarron plutonium plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods.

Meryl Streep popularized her life in the 1983 film, Silkwood.

Karen’s union loyalty only grew after the company crushed a strike in 1972.

She was elected to the union bargaining committee just as the company moved to force a decertification election.

She also served as a union health and safety rep.

Silkwood found a number of apparent violations: routine contamination exposure, faulty respiratory equipment, falsified inspection records, and improper storage of radioactive material.

She met with OCAW leader, Tony Mazzocchi to highlight safety issues in a campaign to beat back decertification.

It worked.

Then Karen testified before the Atomic Energy Commission, worried about her own contamination.

It was clear her home was contaminated too.

She worked tirelessly to gather the documentation and the evidence, detailing the company’s life-threatening negligence.

And on this day, Karen Silkwood was headed to Oklahoma City to meet Mazzocchi’s assistant, Steve Wodka and a New York Times reporter to present evidence she collected.

She never made it.

Her car was found with rear end damage, near skid marks, in a ditch along Route 74.

While the company attempted to smear her as a drug addicted lesbian who deliberately contaminated herself, they would eventually settle with her family for nearly $1.4 million.

Karen Silkwood became a model and a hero for women workers and all those who fight for safe workplaces.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1954.

That was the day Ellis Island closed its doors.

More than 12 million immigrants had passed through its gates since its opening in 1892.

Those steerage and third-class passengers coming to America were processed at the island between 1892 and 1924.

They were routinely subject to medical inspections to determine they were free of disease.

Legal inspections included questions regarding birth, occupation, destination, finances and criminal record.

Its busiest year was 1907 with more than a million arriving to enter the United States.

During World War I, the Island was used as a detention center for presumed enemies and those considered foreign-born subversives.

After Congress passed the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924, arrivals entering the country slowed to a trickle.

Then Ellis Island became primarily a detention and deportation center.

During World War II, thousands of Germans, Italians and Japanese made up the majority of those detained, awaiting deportation.

It also served as a military hospital for returning servicemen and training center for the Coast Guard.

By 1950, Ellis Island served as a holding center for arriving Communists and Fascists, who were prevented entrance under the recently passed Internal Security Act.

A Norwegian seaman who had overstayed his leave was released the day the Island closed and told to catch the next ship back to Norway.

In 1965, President Johnson made Ellis Island part of the National Park Service.

A massive restoration of the Island began in 1984, organized by Lee Iacocca’s Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.

It reopened as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1990, featuring numerous exhibits, publicly accessible immigration records and the award-winning film documentary, “Island of Hope, Island of Tears.”

On this day in Labor History the year was 1887. That was a tragic day for the labor movement. Four men were hung in Chicago for their alleged role in the bombing at a labor rally at the city’s Haymarket Square a year earlier. In a sensational trial a total of eight men were convicted for Haymarket.