Clara Lemlich

At a mass meeting in New York in November 1909, 23-year-old Lemlich, a shirtwaist maker who had already been beaten on picket lines, interrupted the speeches to call for a general strike. Around 20,000 garment workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian women, walked out in the "Uprising of the 20,000", and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union grew from a small local into a major union. Blacklisted afterwards, Lemlich kept organising, later among housewives in rent and food price boycotts.