As a follow up to Joseph Hill’s August 22 presentation on “The Red Summer,” ESFL will screen the brilliant—but rarely seen—dramatic film, “The Killing Floor,” which tells a true story of how a group of black and white slaughterhouse workers attempted to break race barriers to build an interracial union during World War I in the brutal Chicago Stockyards, only to see their efforts engulfed in the late July 1919 race riot. “The Killing Floor” brings its audience into the heated discussions among Eastern European workers, on the one hand, Black workers from the South, on the other, and between both communities, as they debated what to do.

At a time when we are being challenged to explore the intersections between race and class in our society, “The Killing Floor” enables us to engage the complex experiences of our past. 

Made for public television in 1984, this was the first feature film directed by Bill Duke. In 1985 “The Killing Floor” was invited to numerous festivals, including Cannes, and won the Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival. The film had already premiered to acclaim in 1984 in the PBS American Playhouse series. “The Killing Floor” was planned as the pilot production for a PBS series of ten historical dramas exploring the little-known history of American workers  developed with a team of leading historians, but corporate funders withdrew their support for the series when they saw this first film. It remains the only film of its kind.

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