On June 25, 1911, three months after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 workers — mostly young immigrant women — Clara Lemlich Shavelson testified before a New York State factory investigation commission.

Lemlich was already a legend in the garment trade. In 1909, she had taken the floor at a meeting in Cooper Union where labor leaders were debating what to do about conditions in the garment factories and declared: "I am a working girl, one of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms. I move that we go on strike."

The hall erupted. The ensuing general strike — the Uprising of the 20,000 — was the largest women's labor action in U.S. history to that point.

The Triangle fire happened while many garment workers were still fighting for the conditions the strike had demanded: unlocked fire exits, sprinkler systems, shorter working hours.

Lemlich spent the next 60 years organizing: for rent control, for consumer rights, in old age at a retirement home where she organized the staff.

She was blacklisted so thoroughly in the 1940s that her grandchildren did not know what she had done until they were adults.