Blood On Steel, Witness to History

This historical analysis of the 1937 Chicago Steel Strike demonstrates how it revealed systemic oppression and inspired the larger progressive movement.

On Memorial Day 1937, thousands of steelworkers and labor rights supporters gathered on the Southeast Side of Chicago to protest Republic Steel. By the end of the day, ten marchers had been mortally wounded and more than one hundred badly injured, victims of a terrifying police riot that came to be known as the Memorial Day Massacre.

In Blood on Steel, historian Michael Dennis identifies this tragic landmark in the fight for labor rights as a focal point in the larger movement for American equality during the New Deal. Dennis shows how the riot—captured on film by Paramount newsreels—validated the claims of labor activists and catalyzed public opinion in their favor. Senate hearings about the massacre revealed patterns of anti-union aggression among management, ranging from blacklists to harassment and vigilante violence. The following year, Congress would pass the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Dennis’s wide-angle perspective reveals the Memorial Day Massacre as more than another bloody incident in the long story of American labor-management tensions. It was an all-too graphic illustration of the need for a broad-based social democracy movement.