West Virginia has been rocked over the past nine days by a massive teachers’ strike that has closed all 680 public schools in the state’s fifty-five counties. And it’s been contagious: energized by the West Virginian example, Oklahoma teachers are now planning a statewide strike of their own.

The ongoing strike is neither the first time the state has been a site of mass labor militancy, nor the first time a labor battle has spilled from the state’s borders and spread across the country. West Virginia’s history is littered with pitched labor battles, from unionization efforts put down by violence to agitation for better work conditions. The following are just a few of the most significant examples.