How are you celebrating Labor Day in Winston-Salem? Perhaps you’re enjoying a day off at home, hanging with friends and family, or out of town on vacation.

But, if you were a worker in Winston-Salem in 1919, chances are you were at the city’s first-ever Labor Day celebration on Monday, Sept. 1 — 25 years after it was declared a federal holiday.

An estimated 12,000 people were in attendance, according to reports in The Winston-Salem Journal, with representatives and workers from chapters of local unions including Tobacco Workers of America, Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, Textile Workers of America, and the Typographical Union.

Festivities included a parade, picnics, and performances by Crouse’s Concert Band. Speakers included James A. Gray, Jr., then-VP and treasurer of Wachovia Bank, Rowland H. Latham, superintendent of public schools, and the brother of J.F. Barrett, editor of the Asheville Advocate.

In his closing address, Gray — the son of Wachovia’s co-founder and brother of R.J. Reynolds president Bowman Gray — said he believed that workers have a right to unionize in the same way that he has a right to belong to a bankers’ association, as they “promote the welfare, not only of their own members, but of mankind generally.” He also urged workers to be thrifty and own their homes.

Tobacco wagons make their way down Trade Street in Winston-Salem during a tobacco leaf sale. | Photo from Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards, UNC Libraries Commons

However, not all people were off from work that Labor Day. The Journal reported that tobacco was being delivered that afternoon to prepare for sales to open on Tuesday morning. More than a quarter of a million pounds of tobacco were expected to be sold that day.

It also wasn’t until the 1940s that Black and female workers in Winston-Salem achieved better working conditions. At the time, many of these workers were employed at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which was then led by James A. Gray, Jr.

Women who prepared tobacco leaves for production staged a sit-down strike. Other Reynolds employees joined in, and strikes sprouted up at other local companies.

Local 22 — Winston-Salem’s chapter of the Food, Tobacco, Agriculture, and Allied Workers union founded in 1943 — was one of the largest multiracial unions in the country and featured women prominently in its leadership. Its negotiations with R.J. Reynolds led to the recognition of legal holidays, seniority-based promotions, bathroom breaks, and a better process to address workplace grievances.

Before it was dissolved in 1950, Local 22 also played a key role in the city’s civil rights movement and strengthened the political action of the working class.