LAWRENCE — The city celebrated Labor Day with the 26th annual Bread & Roses Heritage Festival on the Campagnone Common yesterday.
The festival, which is run by volunteers, consisted of musical and theatrical acts spread among three stages and a theater. The famous textile strike of 1912 brought together immigrant groups, and women had a strong role in it. Music helped rally the strikers, and the festival featured a variety of acts. This year's selection ran the gamut from blues to hip-hop. There was also a petting zoo, pony rides, trolley tours and walking tours.
The Bread and Roses Heritage Committee is planning a yearlong series of events for the centennial anniversary of the strike in 2012.
The Bread and Roses Labor Day Heritage Festival Hall of Fame Award was given posthumously to Ralph Fasanella, a New York City native who became a prominent union organizer in the 1930s and 1940s.
Fasanella, who died in 1997, later became an artist and moved to Lawrence and created paintings inspired by the strike. One of his pieces hangs in the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C. The hall of fame award is given to people who made contributions to the strike, the celebration of its spirit or the preservation its place in history.
