80TH ANNIVERSARY OF TH E FORD HUNGER MARCH The Ford Hunger March sometimes called the Ford Massacre was a demonstration of unemployed workers starting in Detroit and ending in Dearborn, Michigan, that took place on March 7, 1932. The march resulted in four workers being shot to death by the Dearborn Police Department and security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company. The march was organized by the Movement of the 99% of that era, the Unemployed Councils and the rest. Over 60 workers were injured, many by gunshot wounds. Three months later, a fifth worker died of his injuries. The Ford Hunger March was an important part of a chain of events that eventually led to the unionization of the U.S. auto industry. (plagerized from wiki)
The Ford Hunger March of 1932
www.workers.org
March 7 was the 77th anniversary of one of the bloodiest chapters in Detroit labor history: the Ford Hunger March of 1932.
By Martha Grevatt
Published Mar 25, 2009 3:45 PM
March 7 was the 77th anniversary (in 2009) of one of the bloodiest chapters in Detroit labor history: the Ford Hunger March of 1932.
The stock market crashed in October of 1929. By 1930 millions were without work. Nowhere was the pain felt more deeply than in Detroit, where the auto industry’s promise of prosperity had turned into its opposite. When the Trade Union Unity League, the Communist Party, the Young Communist League and the newly formed Unemployed Councils called a coast-to-coast demonstration on March 6, among the millions of participants were 100,000 at a rally in the Motor City. Detroit police broke up the protest, clubbing and arresting scores of participants
Two years later the crisis had deepened; one statistic showed four Detroiters dying of hunger every day. Unemployment compensation did not exist. With two-thirds of his employees laid off, Henry Ford, then the richest man in the world, said the unemployed created their own misery by not working hard enough.
Detroit’s network of Unemployed Councils had grown into one of the strongest in the country, saving untold numbers of families from a life on the streets. A citywide meeting of the councils—there were more than 80 neighborhood-based chapters in metropolitan Detroit—decided to march on the Ford Motor Co.’s River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Mich.
http://www.workers.org/2009/us/ford_hunger_march_0402/