Gilded Again: How the Labor Movement’s Bloodstained Legacy Is Being Erased

Before you light the grill, remember the blood in the rail yard.

The Day Labor Day Was Born in Blood

Chicago. July 6, 1894.

The sun was just beginning to rise when federal troops surrounded the Pullman Company’s rail yards. The strikers had been out for days, blacklisted, evicted from their company-owned homes, punished for protesting starvation wages and inescapable rents. They were unarmed. Many were hungry. All were…