On Sunday, May 30, 1937, then the traditional date of Memorial Day, Chicago police shot dead 10 unarmed strikers in front of the main gate of Republic Steel on the city’s Southeast Side. An American tragedy.
The strikers had been among several hundred protesting the lack of a union contract for the steelworkers at Republic. As they marched from a nearby rallying point, they held picket signs and chanted union slogans. But they were not violent.
A newsreel crew from Paramount was there to film the strikers as they made their way across a field of prairie grasses and wildflowers to the main gate. The images are in black and white, but they are stained in red.
The police, without provocation, opened fire with their pistols and tear gas. As the strikers attempted to flee, the police moved in with their billy clubs, beating the wounded and the dying. Later, the police claimed that the strikers had been on dope, and that one had thrown a stick at them. A stick?
A year earlier, the U.S. Senate had authorized Sen. Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin to form a committee to investigate violations of the constitutional rights of workers. To investigate the massacre at Republic Steel, he had to subpoena the footage, as it had been suppressed by the Chicago police. As for Paramount, it withheld the footage from public viewing, believing it to be incendiary. Did they fear a workers’ revolt?
Twenty-some years ago, I acquired a copy of that newsreel footage from the Illinois Labor History Society. The footage itself, on VHS tape, is eerily silent, but is narrated by the history society’s Les Orear and Sam Evett of the United Steelworkers of America. As of this writing, it may be found on YouTube, presented in two parts. The history society will soon offer it on a DVD at illinoislaborhistory.org.
‘American Tragedy’ brings events to life
What came to be known as the Memorial Day Massacre was also depicted in a then-contemporary painting by Philip Evergood, who, as a social realist, portrayed in his art the societal problems of those times. The painting is appropriately titled “American Tragedy (1937).”
The figures and the colors of the painting are unnerving. Both police and strikers appear nightmarishly cartoonish, and the dead and dying are like marionettes whose strings have been severed. In the center of the painting, a white man in short sleeves has his protective right arm around a young Hispanic woman who is in obvious distress. He defiantly holds out his left arm in a futile attempt to stop the police.
The bright blue of the police uniforms dominates the center of the painting, surging from right to left, overpowering the viewer as the police are overpowering the strikers. As for the fleeing and the fallen, their colors are drained of life.
Bright red is vividly present. Above the human figures, the squat and lifeless buildings of the steel mill have black smokestacks, but are blood red overall, while at the bottom of the painting, blood pools beneath the bodies of the strikers. All told, Evergood captured a sense of violent energy and tragic chaos.
Bring ‘Tragedy’ to Chicago
Although Evergood was born in New York City and educated in England and Paris, his painting is definitively “Chicago.” Thus, in early spring, I queried the Art Institute about locating and acquiring it for public display here.
While waiting for its reply, I conducted an internet search that indicated that Evergood’s painting had been on display in 2020 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. I then contacted the Whitney and learned that it does not own “American Tragedy,” but that it had been on loan from a private collection.
Unlike the Whitney, the Art Institute never responded to my query. Undaunted, I’m responding to their silence with an extended shout: Consult the Whitney, contact the private collection, and get it done!
You see, I was born, raised, and lived for close to six decades a few blocks from where the real-life tragedy occurred, as well as from both the union hall and its memorial built to honor the murdered strikers. I passed by all on a near-daily basis.
Further, my father worked at Republic Steel, where he also served the union as a grievance committeeman. During my grammar school years, he taught me about the importance of that day in 1937, lessons about workers’ rights, true, but also about the abusive nature of power.
The Memorial Day Massacre at Republic Steel should not be forgotten or reduced to a disturbing historical event buried in a college course. Peaceful protesters, heavily armed police, a deadly confrontation? Philip Evergood’s “American Tragedy” is, sadly, the painting for our time.
John Vukmirovich is a Chicago-area writer and book reviewer.