NFR Project: Republic Steel strike riot newsreel footage

 

NFR Project: Republic Steel strike riot newsreel footage

Paramount newsreel crew

Filmed May 30, 1937

This is footage those in power never wanted you to see. When it finally was shared with the public, it was edited to make the victims look like the aggressors. It took a Congressional investigation for the film to be shown as it was taken. It documents a shameful moment in American history.

In 1937, union labor signed a contract with U.S. Steel. However, smaller steelmakers balked. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee and the Congress of Industrial Organizations called a strike.

On Memorial Day, May 30, a couple thousand union members, friends, and family celebrated the holiday with a Chicago picnic – and then set off to picket a nearby mill. Waiting for them in front of the site were 300 Chicago policemen, armed with gear provided by Republic Steel.

The cops blocked the strikers’ path. The crowd argued that it should be allowed to pass. The police drew their guns and fired. Ten people were killed, and more than 60 were injured. The police waded in, firing tear gas and clubbing strikers in the head (nine people were disabled and 28 were serious injured from the blows).

It is fairly obvious from the footage that police were to blame. The strikers approach, are halted, argue heatedly. Then the police lurch forward, and the crowd falls back, swirling like a retreating wave. The police pursue the victims, striking at them randomly. Several bodies litter the scene. It’s still a shocking documentation.

The “Memorial Day massacre” footage shot by the news crew was originally suppressed, as the Chicago police feared “mass hysteria” would result. Then, when it became known that the footage existed, it was cut together to make the strikers appear to to be the aggressors in the attack. Finally, a 1938 Congressional investigation into the incident finally brought the footage to light, proving the police’s culpability.

The police were right to be afraid. People were outraged. The demonstration of the raw power of the state to destroy people, at the bidding of corporate masters, was not new. The 1914 Ludlow massacre is the most prominent of the many instances of labor organizers being vilified and exterminated by the powers that be. The Republic massacre was the last of its kind.

The massacre footage remains a testament to an unpleasant historical fact, but one that needs to be seen and comprehended, if only to understand what crimes we are capable of.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.