Police action at the Memorial Day Massacre, 1937
To sites 13 and 14
Return to Avenue O and proceed south to Memorial Hall (11731 Avenue O) After viewing the Plaque, drive south on Avenue O to the entrance to Wolf Lake State Park (126th and Avenue O)
13) Memorial Day Massacre Site
On Memorial Day, 1937, an incident took place in an open stretch of prairie near the South Chicago plant of the Republic Steel Corporation that ranks as one of the bloodiest confrontations in American labor history. In 1937 steel union organizers declared war on Little Steel, including Republic, Bethlehem, Inland, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube. Republic spent $79,000 for tear gas alone to prepare for the strikers. On the morning of May 30, Republic strikers held a pep rally in a hall near the plant. Later 300 of them went to harass the guards at the gate. As the strikers approached a line of police at the gate, they were greeted by gunshots. Ten of their colleagues fell dead, shot in the back or side. 125 other men, women, and children sustained some sort of injury. The dead were all participants in or sympathizers with the Little Steel strike, called against four steel companies by the steel workers organizing committee (SWOC), a group affiliated with the Congress for Industrial Organization (CIO). 35 of the injured were members of the Chicago Police Department, who were acting as security for the property of the Republic Steel. Observers of the incident included steelworkers who had chosen to remain in the plant during the strike in order to maintain production for the corporation. The dead were from a crowd of approximately 1500 persons who had gathered to protest the interference of the police in the strikers attempts to establish a mass picket line at the main plant gate.Link to Memorial Day Massacre Page #1 Link to Memorial Day Massacre Page #2
14) Wolf Lake State Park and the Veterans Memorials
Nike Missile Monument Dedicated 1999 |
Wolf Lake Sunrise |
The Veterans Memorial consists of 104 commemorative markers and trees planted as living memorials in 1946. The memorials are made of composite stone and measure 9"x 18" on the surface side. Each is about 10 inches thick. Each stone and tree represent a specfic veterans organization. The markers and trees, in double rows, are lined on both sides of the entrance road from about midpoint to the lake and then continues north and south in the same pattern, but now parallel the shoreline. Members from some 60 veterans groups marched in "full regalia" in a parade on September 15,1946, to Wolf Lake to dedicate Veterans Drive, the new access road to Wolf Lake. The monuments were donated by State Senator Walker Butler. He sponsored the legislation that established in the park in 1945, but work on the $250,000 project did not begin until mid-1946 when all of the land had been purchased, much of it from the Shedd family. Named on the memorial stones are groups which represented communities as far away as Ford City, the Chicago Stock Yard, and Homewood, IL. Groups included American Legion posts, Veterans of Foreign Wars groups, as well as Polish Legion of American Veterans, Catholic War Veterans, Jewish War Veterans, Spanish American War Veterans, and American Veterans of WWII. Several rededications of the living memorials have been conducted since 1946. On September 18, 1999 a rededication of the memorial stones took place and a new Nike Missile monument was dedicated.