MEMORIAL DAY MASSACRE

In the midst of the Great Depression many industrial workers clung to their vision of the American dream while continuing their daily struggles for survival. To achieve both goals they turned to strikes, unionization, and labor politics. However, these initiatives provoked violent reactions by some big businessmen and their allies. The Little Steel Strike of 1937, which included the Memorial Day massacre, exemplified this trend.

Although violence characterized many labor struggles during the 1930s, the Memorial Day massacre become a major and enduring symbol, particularly to partisans of the Committee for Industrial Organizations (CIO), of a system that condoned the use of firearms by company guards and police in subduing heroic and peaceful working-class demonstrators. Most workers at Republic Steel's South Chicago mill struck as a protest against their terrible working conditions and the autocratic demeanor of company president Tom Girdler. Girdler not only refused to sign a written contract with the Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC), but he used nonstriking workers to continue production. In addition, company officials and the Chicago police collaborated on a policy to protect the new labor force, to stifle mass picketing, and to defeat the strikers.

Lacking sufficient resources to cope with management's wealth and power, the strikers and SWOC sought external allies. They contacted President Franklin Roosevelt, but he rejected their request for a federal investigation. Chicago mayor Edward Kelly's support of the city's police added to the strikers' woes.

Nevertheless, on Memorial Day over fifteen hundred strikers, family members, and supporters demonstrated for the right of strikers to picket peacefully. Well-armed guards and a large contingent of Chicago police confronted them. Soon a few rock throwers targeted a cluster of police, who responded with tear gas and gunfire. Some marchers evaded the police, but ten demonstrators died and sixty more suffered severe wounds. All the police escaped death and serious injury.

The incident climaxed a series of clashes between workers and the police, and heightened their mutual antagonism. Both parties sought to gain public approval; in this contest, the police had decisive advantages, including the support of Mayor Kelly, the approval of the state's attorney, and the concurrence of the coroner's jury. These sources legitimated the self-image of the police as innocent victims of a violent mob unleashed by the inflammatory rhetoric of communists and other "outside agitators." Newspapers, especially the Chicago Tribune, disseminated this official version of the incident, which won widespread acceptance from the mainstream press, the public, and members of Congress.

The strikers and the SWOC gained support from John L. Lewis and other top CIO leaders, from the magazines the Nation and the New Republic, and from Chicago liberals and progressive clergy. Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr.'s Subcommittee on the Violation of Free Speech and the Rights of Labor, which was investigating the denial of civil liberties to dissidents, provided confirmation of the strikers' criticism. Many committee witnesses, workers, and journalists, rejected the police version of the incident. However, the most dramatic evidence supporting the strikers' perspective was a Paramount newsreel that graphically displayed police violence and showed that many of the dead and wounded had injuries on their backs. Nevertheless, this evidence failed to persuade the public and the majority of politicians because of the late release of the newsreel footage and the continuing adherence of the mainstream press to the official version.

The Memorial Day massacre and its aftermath seriously undermined the South Chicago strike, contributed to strike losses in other venues, and damaged the reputation of the CIO. The massacre joined the Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Haymarket affair of 1886 as prime examples of the probusiness sympathies and propensity for violence of the Chicago police. Finally, the partnership of Lewis and Roosevelt, best exemplified by the 1936 presidential election, began to unravel as Lewis supported the strikers, while Roosevelt condemned both sides. In response, Lewis castigated Roosevelt for his failure to see that the election and the strike were interconnected elements of their mutual fight against "economic royalists," Roosevelt's term for authoritarian and greedy big businessmen.

MEMORIAL DAY MASSACRE

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