Memorial Day Massacre - Chicago Police Kill Ten Strikers and Wound 90 at Republic Steel Using Corporate-Supplied Weapons

On Memorial Day, May 30, 1937, Chicago police open fire on peaceful union demonstrators outside Republic Steel Corporation’s South Chicago plant, killing ten people and wounding more than ninety in what becomes known as the Memorial Day Massacre. The police use tear gas, firearms, and clubs supplied by Republic Steel to brutally attack several hundred white, Black, and Latino men, women, and children who were marching to establish a picket line. The massacre represents the most violent and deadly episode of the “Little Steel Strike,” when smaller steel companies refuse to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) despite the National Labor Relations Act guaranteeing workers’ rights to organize, and demonstrates how corporations can weaponize state police forces against workers exercising legal rights.

The violence erupts during a labor dispute between steelworkers and a group of smaller steel companies—the “Little Steel” group including Republic Steel—that refuse to sign an agreement recognizing SWOC that U.S. Steel had accepted in March 1937. The atmosphere at the Memorial Day demonstration is described as festive, with sunny warm weather, singing, speeches, and families including University of Chicago students, professionals, Hull House social workers, church groups, and many women and children. As the crowd begins marching across the prairie toward the Republic Steel mill to establish a picket line, approximately 300 Chicago policemen block their path. When protesters assert their legal right to continue, police throw tear gas canisters, fire bullets, and use clubs to brutally bash demonstrators’ heads and bodies.

Four people die immediately from gunshot wounds, with six others dying subsequently from injuries. Nine people are permanently disabled and another 28 sustain serious head injuries from police clubbing. Before the protest, Republic Steel had purchased tear gas and clubs to give to Chicago police, demonstrating premeditated corporate coordination with law enforcement to suppress legal union activity through violence. Police claim they acted as peacekeepers against dangerous rioters, and the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers foster paranoia of imminent communist revolution, describing strikers as a trained military unit. However, a Paramount newsreel reporter films the event, and the footage shows police attacking peaceful demonstrators. Paramount executives refuse to release the film, claiming the violence it contains would set off riots.

Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette Jr. eventually obtains the newsreel footage for the Senate Civil Liberties Committee, which releases a scorching report damning Republic Steel Corporation’s use of the police force and coercion of government. The LaFollette Committee states that police had no right to limit peaceful pickets, the march did not aim to invade the plant, and the force used “was far in excess of that which the occasion required.” The report leads to dramatic shifts in public opinion and sympathy for steelworkers’ unions. Not until 1942 do the “Little Steel” companies sign their first union contract. The Memorial Day Massacre brings to the forefront of American consciousness the savagery of anti-labor efforts and provides photographic evidence of extreme measures to stop organized labor, establishing how corporations can capture police forces to violently suppress workers’ legal rights to organize and strike. The event prefigures later police violence against civil rights demonstrators, anti-war protesters, and labor activists throughout subsequent decades.