Studs Terkel: This is 1937, and the labor battles are going on.

The CIO is being organized.

And the steelworkers and the pack and that all being organized.

And Big Steel--the big steel companies-- finally agreed they'll recognize the union.

But there's one company in Chicago, Republic Steel, Tom Girdler said, "I will not recognize the union."

And so, there was a strike.

Memorial Day 1937, and there was a picnic.

Strikers and their wives and kids are on the grounds of Republic Steel in South Chicago.

Someone threw a stone and cops were there at the behest of Girdler, and they shot down ten people-- killed them--in the back.

narrator: In the days that followed, newspapers from coast to coast portrayed the incident as a riot provoked by a dangerous mob, which left police no choice but to open fire, with ten dead within days.

However, the key piece of evidence, the only film of the tragedy, remained buried.

Paramount News created, then suppressed, a newsreel airing the footage.

When the hidden footage was finally screened, the shocking images drew national attention, with vital lessons for today.

narrator: In 1936, workers in US industries, many still earning poverty-level wages, sought more pay and better working conditions, which sparked a historic surge in union organizing.

Critics called it class warfare.

This was often met by police or company violence.

A wave of labor actions at General Motors and in other industries using a new tactic known as "sit-down strikes" inside the plant led to contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers.

It seemed that steelworkers, under the new Committee of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, led by the fiery John L. Lewis might benefit when the biggest company, US Steel, agreed to a deal.

The contract included new benchmarks: the 40-hour week, an 8-hour day, and time and a half for overtime.

But smaller companies, known as "Little Steel," from Pennsylvania to Illinois rejected the same demands by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, or S.W.O.C.

These companies refused to even recognize the new union, the issue that was most at stake in this heated conflict.

No one was more anti-union than Tom Girdler, head of Republic Steel, which had one of its massive plants in Southeast Chicago.

Tom Girdler: Republic cannot and will not enter into a contract or law written with an irresponsible party, and the CIO as presently constituted is utterly irresponsible.

Tom Girdler Jr.: My father made the famous statement that before he signed the contract with John L. Lewis, he'd go back to raising apples on the farm, and he lived up to his word.

John L. Lewis, in my opinion, was a louse, and his opinion was the same thing.

narrator: Up to 80,000 steel workers got ready to walk off the job with the strike at the Republic site in Chicago set for May 26.

Their headquarters--a former tavern near the plant known as Sam's Place.

The company, which had very cozy relations with local law enforcement, let Chicago police establish a command post inside their gates.

Police also helped set up living quarters inside the plant for a thousand workers who might be tempted to join the strikers if they left the plant.

Republic also made available to police dozens of canisters of teargas and wooden axe handles, which had been stockpiled for this eventuality.

Republic was the largest buyer of teargas in the country.

Its Chicago plant also housed four submachine guns.

Two nights after the start of the strike, several hundred workers tried to march to the plant to set up a picket line.

Police met this legal protest with nightsticks, so strike leaders called for a picnic and rally on a large field near the plant on Sunday, Memorial Day.

Dr. Lewis Andreas: So Carl Lee said, "Look it, we got a very nasty situation here.

There're probably gonna be some injuries, you know.

There's not a hospital within miles around, and not even a drugstore.

Would you come out in case something happens?"

And I had gotten a little first aid station started, and I went out.

There was a tavern called "Sam's Place."

Harold Rossman: As I came to the location there, I noticed something that was very strange.

There was a very large contingent of uniformed police standing there.

They were carefully hidden, and my attention was caught particularly by one officer, and he kept pulling his gun out and putting it back in his holster.

And there was nothing happening that justified that.

Sam Evett: I watched the Paramount newsreel fellas set up their newsreel cameras on the truck, and I listened to some of the police talking to themselves, and saying, "Let those bastards come down here and we'll take care of 'em when they come down."

Mollie West: We just walked, and people were talking and holding hands, and the children were being carried by their fathers on their shoulders, and everybody was laughing, and it was a joyous thing.

And as we came closer to the mill, the walking slowed a bit.

It seemed like the entire police force in the City of Chicago was out there.

But that didn't deter, we were still going to go over to the mill and just conduct a peaceful mass picket line.

Harold Rossman: I could see a few objects through the air.

I see some things being thrown.

Not much, it wasn't a lot of stuff--maybe a couple of rocks.

It was a dry, crackling kind of a noise, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was, and I realized it was gunfire.

And by that time, the people were falling, and they were turning and trying to run, and the gunfire continued.

It was clear that a whole number of these people had been shot in the back.

They were trying to flee, and they were still being fired at.

Mollie West: And then a whole number of people were piled up on top of me, and I could barely breathe.

Also, there was teargas.

People finally began to get off, get on their feet, and when I finally stood up, and I s--total bewilderment, I looked around and I saw a battlefield.

Dr. Lewis Andreas: And I'm walking around and I'm seeing these people lying on the ground.

I'm seeing people handling them like sacks of potatoes.

There were no ambulances that I remember initially.

They were taking them into paddy wagons.

So, I ran back to Sam's Place, and about three minutes later, they began bringing in the wounded.

There were about 50 that were shot.

They were lying on the floor bleeding.

I had absolutely no preparation for that, so I just jumped up on a chair.

I said, "Get all the gunshots out of here right away.

Get 'em to the nearest hospital.

I can't handle them."

narrator: Many of the wounded who were loaded into police vans did not arrive at hospitals for well over an hour.

Among the dozens shot or beaten, four died that day, with others near death.

Only a handful of police were seriously injured.

Newspapers in Chicago and across the country supported false police accounts that the unarmed protestors fired the first shots.

They invariably called the marchers a mob who sparked a riot.

A few days later, a large rally at the Civic Opera House featured speeches by poet Carl Sandburg, labor leader A. Philip Randolph, and future US Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg.

The funeral for the first victims attracted thousands.

narrator: By mid-June, ten men had died from wounds inflicted on Memorial Day, including Anthony Taglieri and Kenneth Reed.

One was an African American named Lee Tisdale.

The youngest was Leo Francisco, age 17.

A coroner's jury ruled that all ten deaths were, quote, "justifiable homicide."

Protests continued in Chicago, but the strikers, with other workers still locked inside the Republic Steel gates by the company, began returning to work.

President Roosevelt would enrage Union supporters when he responded to the labor violence by claiming, quote, "The majority of people are saying just one thing: a plague on both your houses."

Meanwhile, in New York City, Paramount News created a three-minute newsreel to be distributed to movie theaters the following week, drawing on exclusive footage shot by cameraman Orlando Lippert.

Narration was heavily slanted in favor of police, but the graphic footage was shocking.

[gunfire] [gunfire] [gunfire] newsman: In all, 90 men and women went to hospitals for treatment.

Of these, 26 were policemen.

Of those injured, all suffered minor hurts excepting eight, but there were five who died from bullets or from head wounds.

Labor leaders declared that the action of the police was illegal.

On the other hand, the deaths and injuries, police officials declare, were the unavoidable casualties in a determined mob advance against life and property.

All expressed the hope, however, that conferences now underway will produce peace and prevent more bloodshed.

narrator: Later that week, however, Paramount decided not to distribute the newsreel.

When a major citizen's group in Chicago inquired about the missing footage, a Paramount executive in New York City wrote this reply.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: The head of the citizen's group in Chicago, economist Paul Douglas, responded by asking a Senate committee led by Robert La Follette, which was probing civil rights violations against unions and workers, to subpoena the Paramount footage.

After Paramount turned over its footage, a staffer contacted reporter Paul Anderson of the St. Louis Post dispatch and invited him to secretly view the footage.

Anderson's fame as a Pulitzer Prize winner helped the story gain headlines from coast to coast including in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The police were suddenly on the defensive.

♪♪♪ narrator: Meanwhile, reporter Paul Anderson interviewed survivors of the massacre, including Mexican American social worker Lupe Gallardo Marshall, who had appeared in a widely published news photo pleading with police on the killing field.

While this was going on, the Senate Committee created a slow-motion version of the Paramount footage, a process rarely attempted at the time.

With new details uncovered by Anderson, it was now possible for probers to track and identify individuals.

For example, a steel worker's wife, Ada Leder, who was five months pregnant, was now easy to follow because of her polka dot hatband.

She was brutally clubbed.

Then she got up and tried to flee, but was arrested and pushed into a police van with badly injured victims.

♪♪♪ narrator: Reporter Paul Anderson was moved by the plight of this man, who seemed to avoid a gauntlet of police, only to be smashed to the ground by two cops using axe handles provided by Republic Steel.

Then he was loaded into a van with 15 others.

A worker, now identified as Alfred Causey, age 43, suffering from four bullet wounds, was carried to a paddy wagon, but received no medical attention.

The camera did capture one moment of kindness as a cop placed a piece of cardboard under his head.

Causey would be pronounced dead a few hours later.

Tom Girdler, head of Republic Steel, ignored the shocking reports on the suppressed newsreel, while still refusing to recognize the Steelworkers Union.

At other sites in the Midwest, violence only escalated.

Paramount, knowing its footage would receive wide public attention during the La Follette hearings, created another newsreel three weeks after killing the first.

This version was more evenhanded, but Paramount again decided not to release it.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: The hearings finally opened in a jam-packed US Senate chamber on June 30, exactly one month after the massacre.

Among the 33 witnesses over three days was Captain James Mooney, who led the police response on Memorial Day.

James Mooney: I couldn't put a stop--stop that trouble.

They wouldn't pay any attention to me.

They intended let's--what's keeping us?

Let's get in and get them finks out.

Well, if they ever got into that plant, the loss of life would have been terrible.

I had a duty to perform there as the commanding officer, and I had--I had to do it.

I'm sorry anybody got killed, but it couldn't be helped."

narrator: Mooney went on to ask the government to deport communist agitators everywhere.

Other police witnesses blamed the bloodbath on lousy communists or on foreigners who worked in factories.

One called them foreign savages.

Other police witnesses cited Mexicans or strikers high on marijuana.

A disturbing new account of the death of one man emerged.

A photo of Earl Hanley being carried by police, seemingly for medical attention, had appeared in newspapers earlier.

Now, the full story came out.

Hanley, a 37-year-old carpenter, had been shot in the thigh, so a worker tied a tourniquet on his leg to stop the bleeding.

The Paramount footage showed him being hauled to a worker's car for a quick trip to the hospital.

After the cameras stopped rolling, however, police yanked him out of the car and carried him to their paddy wagon as his tourniquet slipped off and he bled to death.

♪♪♪ narrator: A doctor who treated some of the wounded presented autopsy reports proving that nearly all of the dead had been shot in the back or in the side.

He used a doll and an icepick to demonstrate the direction of the police gunfire.

A dozen marchers, including Harry Harper who lost an eye, offered chilling testimony that disputed claims by police and Republic Steel.

The witness who drew the most attention, however, was social worker Lupe Marshall, a mother of three, interviewed earlier by Paul Anderson.

She wore the same gray suit that was bloodied on Memorial Day.

Marshall described rushing to escape gunfire, only to be clubbed repeatedly by police.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: She said she pleaded with police to stop clubbing a man on the ground.

A police witness had earlier described this as a gentlemanly shove.

♪♪♪ narrator: Marshall, her head bleeding, was manhandled and called a communist, then shoved into a patrol wagon.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: On the final day of the hearing, Orlando Lippert, the Paramount cameraman who shot the newsreel footage, finally testified, but mainly about why he changed shooting angles and lenses.

Then, Senator La Follette announced that the footage would be screened at both regular speed and slow motion.

Pointedly, he asked the top Chicago police officials to take a seat to view the film.

This was reportedly the first time film footage had ever been introduced as evidence in Congress.

The reaction in the hearing room--gasps, some tears, but stony silence from the top police officials.

The slow motion revealed a murderous new detail.

Much of the press coverage the next day now flipped to blaming the police, although many news outlets now claim that the camera could, indeed, lie.

newsman: What happened at South Chicago, Memorial Day 1937. narrator: Also the following day, Paramount, after burying the first two newsreels, at last released a film based on its footage.

newsman: The following pictures, made before and during the trouble, are shown exactly as from the camera, without editing, as presented before the United States Senate Committee in Washington.

narrator: The newsreel claimed that the footage was not edited, but this was false.

Actually, it omitted this crucial footage, the deadly first 15 seconds.

So Paramount was still withholding evidence from the public.

Audiences viewing the film in New York City responded with boos and hisses, but some theater chains refused to distribute the film at all.

And police officials in Chicago, St. Louis, Massachusetts, and other sites prevented any screenings.

The LaFollette Committee's report would conclude with a blistering attack on police actions on Memorial Day.

By that autumn, however, the Little Steel strike had ended throughout the Midwest.

Workers who took part were fired or blacklisted from future hiring.

Media and government officials continued to blame labor violence on workers, and public opinion turned against them, which led many unions to avoid militant actions.

Less than 18 months after the massacre, reporter Paul Anderson, a heavy drinker who had lost his job at the St. Louis newspaper, would take his own life.

John L. Lewis delivered the eulogy at his funeral.

By then, the National Labor Relations Board had banned the dismissals and blacklisting of striking steelworkers, and the unionization efforts begun in 1937, now aided by the White House ordering companies to sign union contracts at the start of World War II, finally earned recognition from all of Little Steel, even from Tom Girdler.

♪♪♪ narrator: SWOC changed its name to the United Steelworkers, and union contracts and memberships soared, as they did in many industries, building a middle-class life for many workers.

Union membership declined steadily starting in the 1970s as jobs moved overseas and new measures restricted the rights and protections for workers.

But today, organizing drives are growing stronger again, and in new fields.

Victor Reuther: I've always felt that for democracy to be understood and meaningful, it has to be a participatory democracy.

But it is equally if not more important to be able to participate in determining under what circumstances you will sweat it out every day in the shop for eight or ten hours and what you'll be paid for it, and when you're too old to work and too young to die, whether you'll have a little something to take care of you.

narrator: More than 85 years after the Memorial Day Massacre, Paramount's footage is now preserved in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in Washington.

Once buried by Paramount, it now serves as a reminder of the dangers of secrecy in an open society, and the media's responsibility to investigate the official version of critical events.

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