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| Category: History | |
| About the Book | |
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Free Excerpt From The Book (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader) Unfriendly Fire is an original play based on the "1937 Memorial Day Massacre" at Republic Steel Company's South Chicago plant.It was a time of struggle, when a society staggered back from the depths of economic disaster. After eight years of widespread hardship, people in the United States were beginning to see promising light at the end of an arduous tunnel. Workers were returning to work in increasing -- but still too small -- numbers, the banked engines of industry were beginning to steam once more and, for the first time in United States history, there was a President sympathetic to the rights of workers. After a barren four decades in which union membership had been automatically equated with anarchism and communism by the vast majority of agriculturally-oriented Americans, people were beginning to realize that the wheels of industry were lubricated by the sweat and blood of a miserably maltreated work force. American workers began joining unions in larger numbers than ever before, in a movement that crested, and broke, on Chicago's southeast side, the cauldron of American steel manufacture. On May 30, 1937, after two stinging skirmishes earlier in the week, a major encounter took place between the forces of industrial management on one side, and labor on the other. An uneven contest, it ended in death for ten marchers, and injuries -- some severe -- for more than 100 others. The two-act drama, Unfriendly Fire, presents that moment in labor history from the perspective of the front-line participants.
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| About the Author | |
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Kevin P. Murphy is a freelance writer living and working in Chicago. His more than 1000 articles have been published in newspaper, magazine and Internet venues. His full-length play, "Something Bright and Alien," was an award winner in the 1998 Ridgewriters (Branch of the California Writers Club) Screenplay competition. |
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