The Memorial Day massacre that Americans weren't supposed to remember
On May 30, 1937, the temperature in Chicago reached a balmy 88 degrees: a “perfect day for a picnic,” as some would later describe it. But 1,500 steel workers hadn’t gathered with their wives and children inside a dilapidated dance hall called Sam’s Place to enjoy a relaxing Memorial Day celebration. Sam’s was the headquarters of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, an arm of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the workers were organizing a peaceful strike.
They were striking because Republic Steel, the plant where they worked, had declared it would not recognize their new union. Unlike his counterparts at U.S. Steel, Republic’s president, Tom Girdler, felt no obligation to mollify the outrageous and insulting demands of his workers. A 40-hour work week? An eight-hour day? Time-and-a-half wages for overtime? That was preposterous. It was communism, and there was no way he’d stand for it. The country was still in the midst of an economic catastrophe, after all. Those people were lucky to have jobs in the first place.
Instead, he called on his friends in the Chicago police force, arming them with submachine guns, wooden ax handles, and tear gas, and let them set up a command post inside the gates of his massive steel plant on Chicago’s southeast side. If the workers tried to picket his plant, they’d be stopped before they even started. The beatings his cops had inflicted on a smaller group of strikers only a few nights prior should have given them a little taste of what to expect.
What happened next is now regarded as one of the ugliest episodes of anti-worker violence in American history. One lone cameraman, an employee of Paramount News, filmed what actually occurred that day, and the footage he took is the only reason that any national memory of the actual event still survives.