12/7/2023 0 Comments Steel strike definition![]() “What started as a lark became one of the most damnable experiences in my life.”Ĭurtis thought the first shots were meant to scare people. Steel signed a contract with SWOC.”īut ever one to seek adventure, Curtis decided to go, “I thought-what the hell, why not?” he said when reached at his home in Gary. ![]() “I thought, why should I go? Shortly after General Motors capitulated to the Auto Workers union, U.S. Steel and was an active SWOC member of what is now Local 1014 of the Steelworkers union. “But they did-just like in M*A*S*H.”Ĭurtis hadn’t planned on doing anything that day. “They never imagined that they would need to turn it into a field hospital,” Mollie said. Several doctors had responded to the call for public support. Several people came to her rescue and carried her to the first aid station at Sam’s Place, the watering hole that SWOC had rented as headquarters during the strike against the nation’s second-tier steelmakers. ‘Get off the field,’ he ordered, ‘or I’ll shoot you.’” From left, Mollie West, Curtis Strong, and Aaron Cohen, as pictured in the original 1997 article from People’s Weekly World. “The place looked like a battlefield.” And she saw-or felt-something else: “I looked around to see a policeman holding his gun against my back. “It was unbelievable what I saw,” she said. And it certainly kept me from being beaten with those riot sticks the cops were using.”īy the time Mollie came up for air, the worst was over. It wasn’t very comfortable,” Mollie said in a telephone interview from Chicago. Mollie was walking near the front of the group when Chicago’s finest opened fire with tear gas and pistols. Ten men would be dead or mortally wounded, countless others severely beaten and many more temporarily blinded by tear gas. ![]() Before day’s end, they would be attacked by an army of gun-toting, stick-wielding Chicago cops. Hundreds of steelworkers, on strike against the “Little Steel” companies and backed by hundreds of supporters, some dressed in their Sunday best, had come to assert the right of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) to establish a picket line at the gate of the Republic Steel plant. “There” was the field fronting the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago, site of the Memorial Day Massacre of May 30, 1937. Aaron Cohen was there because of the responsibilities assigned to him by the Communist Party. Curtis Strong was there for the hell of it. South Chicago, Memorial Day 1937: Mollie West was there with a group of high school seniors. | Carl Linde / APĪn earlier version of this article appeared in People’s Weekly World on May 31, 1997. See our bookstore link.Police using guns, clubs, and tear gas attack marching strikers outside Chicago's Republic Steel plant, May 30, 1937. ILHS sells a video program containing the entire newsreel footage. They can also be Representative of the slain ten demonstrators.Ī single frame from the Paramount newsreel of the Memorial Day Massacre. The sculpture, with its ten steel pipes, represent the smoke stakes of the ten steel mills within the area, now closed. It was originally sited on the property of Republic Steel near Burley.Ave. The sculpture was created by Ed Blazak, a former employee of the Republic Steel company. Mollie West, a Typographical Union Local 16 member and a youthful demonstrator at the time, still recalls the command addressed to her: "Get off the field, or I'll put a bullet in your back." While demonstrators in front were arguing for their right to proceed, police fired into the crowd and pursued the people as they fled. ![]() They were stopped midway by a formation of Chicago police. After a round of speeches, the crowd began a march across the prairie and toward the Republic Steel mill. Steel (Big Steel) by signing a union contract, a strike was called by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).Īs a show of support, hundreds of SWOC sympathizers from all around Chicago gathered on Memorial Day at Sam's Place, where the SWOC had its strike headquarters. When several smaller steelmakers, including Republic Steel, refused to follow the lead of U.S. Ten demonstrators were killed by police bullets during the "Little Steel Strike" of 1937.
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