Nashville Locals Remember 80th Anniversary of Steel Massacre

USW Locals 1155 and 1055 in Tennessee teamed with Nashville-area Jobs with Justice to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Steelworkers Organizing Committee-defining Republic Steel Massacre of 1937 in Chicago over Memorial Day. 

Massacre commemoration

Labor history enthusiasts read aloud the names of the 10 steelworkers murdered in South Chicago, citing each’s fatal wounds, and a bell was rung for each SWOC martyr.

A slide show and the 1937 newsreel of the actual mayhem that engulfed plant gates brought sharp focus that it was this early labor battle – caught on film – that won early Steelworkers a victory at so-called “Little Steel,” thus closing the ranks of Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, unionism for all US steelworkers. The May 28 event in Nashville was interspaced with live music from the Joe Hill songbook plus the original works of  Ross Falzone.

In 1937, the CIO was a voice for industrial workers in the workplace. After years of bitter struggle, U.S. Steel -- "Big Steel" -- signed a contract with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, precursor of the Steelworkers, on March 2.

But its competitors, including Republic, Bethlehem and Inland Steel -- "Little Steel" -- resisted and on May 26, the Little Steel strike began. On May 30, hundreds of strikers, their families and supporters gathered for a Memorial Day picnic in a field outside the plant before heading over to join the picket line. They never got there.

Brought in by Republic, Chicago police shot into the crowd, massacring 10 activists and wounding scores of others. It would take four more years to get the companies that made up Little Steel to agree to a contract.

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