Chicago, Illinois, United States 1937

Synopsis

In March 1937 the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) signed an agreement with U. S. Steel Corporation, the largest American steelmaker, that warranted an eight-hour workday and a 40-hour workweek. A group of smaller steel companies, the so-called Little Steel group, refused to sign the same agreement. This refusal led to bitter confrontation and violence. On Memorial Day 1937 strikers and their families joined with sympathizers in a demonstration in front of the Republic Steel plant in Chicago. In the violent riots that ensued, 10 strikers were killed and 40 were wounded. The police claimed that they had been attacked by demonstrators with clubs and bricks and that they had to respond with reasonable force to defend themselves and break up the mob. Accounts in newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, fostered paranoia of an imminent communist revolution, describing the strikers as a trained...