Thank you to the Chicago Alumni Association for hosting and promoting great opportunties like these!

Join Dr. Chris Stacey for a presentation on Chicago’s meat packing industry and efforts at unionization on the “killing floor” from 1904-1945. We’ll examine the disastrous stockyard strike conducted by the American Federation of Labor's Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America in 1921-22. Main questions of our discussion include: How did racial tensions among Chicago’s working-class undermine unionization in the stockyards? In the aftermath of the 1921 strike how did workers attempt to confront the welfare capitalism programs of meatpacking corporations that intended to address union demands about wages, working conditions, and culture? Why were workers able to bridge racial and ethnic antagonisms to create the CIO's Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee in 1937? We’ll trace why workers at Chicago’s packinghouses ran against the grain of racial animosity in the city’s unions and successfully created an interracial alliance.

Please register for this event through the Chicago Alumni Association Website (Click Here)