{"id":47867,"date":"2024-05-27T13:31:27","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T21:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=47867"},"modified":"2024-05-27T13:31:27","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T21:31:27","slug":"massacres-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/27\/massacres-then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Massacres, Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

On this holiday Monday: First, if you missed yesterday\u2019s post, here are 15 varied songs<\/a> marking the day. Next: My \u201cMemorial Day Massacre<\/em>,\u201d which came out over PBS one year ago, airs today over WTTW in Chicago at 5:30 pm and 10:00 pm, and in many others cities today and the rest of this week. But it has also been streaming over PBS.org and PBS apps for free for quite some time \u2013 but that ends this coming Friday. So if you have not watched, here\u2019s your \u201cfinal\u201d chance for maybe quite awhile<\/a>. It\u2019s 27 minutes long, and narrated by Josh Charles, with an assist from my old pal Studs Terkel.<\/p>\n

As I have written in the past: It explores the murder of ten steel strikers and labor activists (most shot in the back) during a Memorial Day march in Chicago in 1937. And then, how the only film footage of the tragedy was suppressed until a muckraking reporter and crusading U.S. Senator brought it to light. Still, some movie theaters and distributors refused to air the newsreel. And no cops were punished. But it had significant influence, to this day, on labor movements in America.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Read much more here at the film site<\/a>, plus responses from dozens of notables.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget the only oral history, my companion book<\/a> published last year and available as a paperback and e-book (just $3.99).<\/p>\n

Down below, a piece drawn from the book on Studs Terkel\u2019s intimate connection to the 1937 tragedy: He was on the scene the following day.<\/p>\n

But first, you have probably already read about Israel\u2019s missile attack on another Gaza refugee camp last night <\/a>with dozens of women and children killed or wounded, sparking international outrage. The images are too horrific to post but here is an illustration or two.<\/p>\n

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Studs on the Day After: Like the Aftermath of Gettysburg<\/strong><\/p>\n

Studs Terkel, the legendary Chicago radio host, raconteur and author of dozens of books, will probably now become best known to some because one of those books, Working<\/em>, inspired the new Netflix series of that name from Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama.\u00a0\u00a0 But I met Studs back in the early 1980s after he wrote a blurb for my first book and then invited me on his radio show in Chicago.\u00a0 We then conversed over the following decades, before his passing in 2008.<\/p>\n

Still, I did not know of his intimate connection to one of the most shocking historical incidents in his Chicago until I began research for my new PBS film and companion book, both titled, Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 They explore the 1937 tragedy in South Chicago near the old Republic Steel plant when police shot forty strikers and their supporters (hitting most of them in the back or side) and killed ten.\u00a0 The only footage of the incident was suppressed until a famed investigative reporter and a crusading U.S. Senator brought it to light.<\/p>\n

Now, nearly 86 years later, Studs provides one of the most significant voices in my film and book, the first oral history on the subject<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to think that Studs \u2013 the master of the oral history \u2013 would love that.<\/p>\n

In 1937, however, he was still a struggling part-time actor.\u00a0 Of course, he was already a political activist.\u00a0 He would reflect on that period: \u201cThere were labor battles, historic ones, where the fight for the eight-hour day had begun.\u00a0 It brought the song: \u2018Eight hours we\u2019d have for working, eight hours we\u2019d have for play, eight hours for sleeping, in free Ameri-kay.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For whatever reason, Studs did not attend the Memorial Day picnic, called by strikers to build support, on the wide Southeast Chicago prairie that led to the massive Republic plant.\u00a0\u00a0 Organizers suggested that the crowd of 1500 (including many women and children) march toward the distant plant and attempt a mass, legal, picket outside.\u00a0 The ones who tried were stopped halfway there by a contingent of a couple of hundred police.\u00a0 Within minutes, some of the police opened fire with pistols at point blank range and then shot at retreating protesters.<\/p>\n

Accounts differ on what set it off.\u00a0 Some of the marchers may have thrown stones and other objects at the police, though hardly at the level that warranted the shootings (and then police waded through the crowd, clubbing many at will).\u00a0 A Paramount News cameraman captured most of this on film.<\/p>\n

Studs did make it to the site the following day, to meet strikers and the wounded still being treated at the union\u2019s headquarters nearby, as he recalled: \u201cThe day after the massacre, I took a streetcar to the workingman\u2019s bar, Sam\u2019s Place. On this spring afternoon the place is crowded. The men are on strike. Some of them have their arms in slings. Others have bandaged heads. A couple are on crutches.\u00a0 This was a scene out of Matthew Brady\u2019s photos right after Gettysburg.\u00a0 All are in shock. They are among the survivors of a Memorial Day picnic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree of us, members of the Chicago Repertory Group, were called upon\u2026 Could we perform at Sam\u2019s Place?\u00a0 Songs, sketches.\u00a0 It would help the morale of the strikers.\u00a0 A guy read a poem. I was an actor in one of the sketches, from Waiting for Lefty<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media coverage, both local and nationally (right up to The New York Times<\/em>), overwhelmingly accepted police accounts of the confrontation \u2013 they had<\/em> to shoot to halt the \u201cmob\u201d who were about to \u201criot\u201d and invade the plant.\u00a0 Studs would observe: \u201cThe Chicago<\/em> Tribune<\/em> in those days was headed by sui generis<\/em> publisher Colonel McCormick, sort of a Colonel Bull Moose figure. He was flailing away at the New Deal daily.\u00a0 One of his former employees called him \u2018the finest mind of the 12th<\/sup> century.\u2019 And Colonel McCormick was anti-union, of course. Next to a picture in his paper from Memorial Day of a cop with a club over a fallen worker, was the heading: Worker Attacks Police<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paramount, meanwhile, created but then failed to release a newsreel with the footage, claiming they feared it would set off riots in theaters.<\/p>\n

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A few days after the incident, protesters gathered at the Opera House for a rally.\u00a0 One of the organizers was economist (and later U.S. Senator from Illinois) Paul Douglas.\u00a0 Another was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.\u00a0 Among the speakers were poet Carl Sandburg and union leader A. Philip Randolph.\u00a0 The police captain who led his forces on the prairie on the day of the massacre, Capt. James Mooney, came in for particular criticism.\u00a0\u00a0 Studs attended, and recalls in my book:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the most highly-charged event I\u2019d ever attended. I was sitting in the back of the balcony, next to a steel worker. You couldn\u2019t squeeze anyone else in.\u00a0 You could taste the wrath of the audience.\u00a0 Carl Sandburg, who was a great ham, was up there swaying, taking a year-and-a-half to get a sentence out.\u00a0 The steel worker next to me says, Come on<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u200b<\/p>\n

\u201cThe emcee was a gentle old professor named Robert Morss Lovett, who taught literature at the University of Chicago, and he was beloved.\u00a0\u2018Mooney is a killer, Mooney is a killer,\u2019 he said, \u2018and we\u2019ve got to stop these killers!\u2019 \u00a0It was taken up by the whole audience.\u00a0 It had become a roar for justice.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t the foggiest notion what happened to Capt. Mooney.\u00a0 Was he punished?\u00a0 Rewarded?\u00a0 Instantaneously retired?\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, no patrolman or police officials was punished for what happened that day, even after a U.S. Senate \u200bprobe found them responsible for the massacre. A coroner\u2019s jury judged all of the murders \u201cjustifiable homicide.\u201d But Senate staffers had finally brought the Paramount footage to light (you can watch it here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Studs, of course, went on to great fame as radio host, author and man about town.\u00a0 One of those featured in his bestselling oral history on the Great Depression, Hard Times<\/em>, would be the doctor who treated the wounded at the site of the 1937 massacre \u2013 and provided the crucial testimony to the Senate about the majority having been shot in the back.<\/p>\n

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including \u201cHiroshima in America,\u201d and the recent award-winning <\/i>The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood \u2013 and America \u2013 Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb<\/a>, and has directed three documentary films since 2021, including two for PBS (plus award-winning \u201cAtomic Cover-up<\/a>\u201d). He has written widely about the atomic bomb and atomic bombings, and their aftermath, for over forty years. He writes often at\u00a0Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place. On this holiday Monday: First, if you missed yesterday\u2019s post, here are 15 varied songs marking the day. Next: My \u201cMemorial Day Massacre,\u201d which came out over PBS one year ago, airs today over WTTW in Chicago at 5:30 pm and 10:00 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-47867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Final chance to watch \"Memorial Day Massacre\" film. Plus: Outrage over latest Israeli attack on Gaza refugee sanctuary."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47867"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47872,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47867\/revisions\/47872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47867"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=47867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}