In Greg Mitchell’s new documentary, we learn the history of the Memorial Day Massacre — the day in 1937 when Chicago Police shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators, and wounded some forty others, during a strike organized by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Initial media accounts of the May 30 event portrayed it as a riot action, excusing police action as provoked by a dangerous mob. Newspapers across the country supported false accounts that the unarmed protesters fired the first shots.

Documentation of the incident — filmed by a camera crew from Paramount Pictures, a producer of newsreels at the time — was buried for some time. Paramount refused to release the newsreel for several weeks, leaving the dominant media narrative unchallenged.

That changed when a US Senate committee, co-chaired by Wisconsin’s Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr,  uncovered the film evidence of what actually happened — and changed the course of the pro-police narrative of the massacre.

The massacre, and the aftermath, are the subject of a new documentary that debuted on PBS earlier this year.  It’s not just a story of a largely forgotten or unknown past, but a story of corporate power that conveys various lessons for the present.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is in conversation with award-winning documentarian Greg Mitchell. He’s producer of the Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried. His 2021 documentary film Atomic Cover-up screened at over fifteen film festivals, and his 2022 film The First Attack Ads: Hollywood vs. Upton Sinclair aired on hundreds of PBS stations. He’s author of over a dozen books on topics ranging from whistleblowers to capital punishment. Follow him on Twitter @GregMitch.

Public domain image of the Chicago Day Massacre, sourced from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Series: Committee Papers of the Senate Subcommittee Investigating Free Speech and Labor from the 78th Congress, ca. 1/1943 – ca. 12/1944 (National Archives Identifier: 306196).

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