On this day in labor history, the year was 1919. That was the day four leaders of the Carpenters union were shot dead in Bogalusa, Louisiana.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and the International Union of Timber Workers had embarked on an organizing drive of white and black workers at Great Southern Lumber Company. Bogalusa functioned as a company town. Lumber bosses controlled company housing, local politicians and ruled the town with an iron fist.

By 1919, the two unions began organizing among loggers and sawmill workers in the region. The UBC initially organized among white skilled workers, while the IUTW organized among unskilled, mostly black workers. They soon stepped up efforts to organize jointly.

Historian Stephen Norwood notes that when Great Southern threatened to forcibly break up a union meeting among black workers, armed white union men arrived to defend the meeting. By September, 95% of the workforce was organized when the company instituted a lockout.

On November 21, a posse of local businessmen fired on the home of leading black organizer, Sol Dacus, who narrowly escaped. The following day, armed white union carpenter leaders, Stanley O’Rourke and J.P. Bouchillon escorted Dacus to the Central Trades and Labor Council offices. 150 special policemen were immediately dispatched. They began firing upon union headquarters, killing O’Rourke, Bouchillon and two other union leaders, Thomas Gaines and Lem Williams. Dacus was nearly lynched and escaped with his life to New Orleans.

Norwood concludes the gun battle “represents probably the most dramatic display of interracial labor solidarity in the Deep South during the first half of the twentieth century.” For historian William P. Jones, the anti-union violence and racial terror would culminate in 1923 with a massacre of the Florida lumber town of Rosewood.

On this day in labor history, the year was 1942.

That was the day the completion of the Alaskan Highway or Alcan, was celebrated at Soldier’s Summit.

There had been proposals for a highway connecting the United States to Alaska since the early 1920s.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt moved quickly to organize its approval and construction.

By March 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground on the $138 million project.

More than 10,000 troops were assigned to highway construction.

Over a third were comprised of newly formed black regiments.

Thousands of pieces of construction equipment were moved through the railroads, including steam shovels, blade graders, tractors, trucks, bulldozers, snowplows, cranes and generators.

In a matter of eight months, workers carved out 1700 miles of road between Dawson Creek, British Columbia, through the Yukon to Delta Junction in Alaska, under the most treacherous environmental conditions.

Workers arrived in wintery Dawson Creek, pitching their sleeping quarters in snowdrifts.

By spring , workers battled flooding rivers, equipment sinking into thick mud and fears of Japanese bombers.

By summer, mosquitoes, dubbed “bush bombers,” were so bad workers had to eat under netting.

Black workers also battled relentless racism.

The Army was still segregated.

Black troops faced racist presumptions about their capacity to carry out hard labor.

They were determined to break down stereotypes.

By fall, white and black bulldozer drivers coordinating the work together were celebrated in the pages of the Army’s Yank magazine, Time and the New York Times.

Some historians consider the integrated work crews a factor in President Truman’s later move to desegregate the armed forces.

According to The New York Times, the Federal Highway Administration calls the Alcan “the road to civil rights.”