The East Side Freedom Library invites you our monthly screening & discussion of a Labor History film

The River Ran Red

Friday, October 9, 2020, 7pm

This event will premiere on ESFL’s Facebook page & YouTube channel

The violence that erupted at Carnegie Steel’s giant Homestead mill near Pittsburgh on July 6. 1892, caused a congressional investigation and trials for treason, motivated a nearly successful assassination attempt on Frick, contributed to the defeat of President Benjamin Harrison for a second term, and changed the course of the American labor movement. It was a defining movement that revealed the respective – and unequal – powers of corporate management and organized labor in the 1890s. The strike also revealed the weakness of the 19th century strategy of the unions of the American Federation of Labor – to organize the skilled workers of northern and western European heritage. Innovations in technology changed management’s dependence on skilled labor, while massive immigration from southern and eastern Europe transformed the composition of the American working class. The Homestead strike of 1892 was not only a violent and dramatic battle, but it also marked the transformation of American labor relations.

The River Ran Red (1993) is a one hour documentary which provides a gripping account of a community’s struggle to preserve its way of life. In the summer of 1892, a bitter conflict erupted at the Carnegie Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The nation’s largest steelmaker took on its most militant labor union, with devastating consequences for American workers. Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick head a fascinating cast of characters which includes 300 armed Pinkerton guards, and the would-be assassin, anarchist Alexander Berkman. To evoke the strike and its century old legacy, the film employs documentary techniques, primary sources, dramatically staged scenes shot on location in the Pittsburgh area, and lyrical commentary found in poetry, song and fiction.

Join us before the film for a conversation with labor historian John Hinshaw (Lebanon Valley College), author of Steel and Steel Workers: Race and Class Struggle in 20th Century Pittsburgh. As U.S. Steel was closing the plant in the 1990s, John was involved in community efforts to create a museum which would tell workers’ stories.

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