Mouse over for marker text
Name:
Homestead Strike Victims
Region:
Pittsburgh Region
County:
Allegheny
Marker Location:
22nd Ave. and Main St., Munhall
Dedication Date:
July 11, 1993
Behind the Marker
Emmett Patrick Cush, a second-generation union man, knew where the bodies were buried. It was Sunday, July 5, 1936, and the 
Steel Workers Organizing Committee had just kicked off its campaign to unionize the country's steel mills.
Union organizers in the Monongahela Valley hatched a plan to connect their campaign to the historicalHomestead strike of 1892. They assembled 4,000 supporters at the Seventeenth Avenue Playground, and pledged themselves to a steelworkers' declaration of independence: "We say to the world: We are Americans. We shall exercise our inalienable right to organize into a great industrial union, banded together with all our fellow steelworkers."
In the distance fumed John Cavanaugh, the town burgess who, three years earlier, had tried to intimidate Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. That day, however, the state lined up firmly behind the workers. Pennsylvania lieutenant governor Thomas Kennedy, assured the crowd that there would be no state Coal and Iron Police harassing this organizing drive. Kennedy happened also to be secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, which generously funded the SWOC campaign.
After the speeches, the crowd climbed some five blocks uphill to the cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony. Cush directed them to the graves, poorly marked and half forgotten, belonging to the six Homestead strike victims buried there.
His father, Dennis M. Cush, a member of the organizing committee back in 1892, had made sure that his son knew where the bodies were buried. Placing wreaths on the graves, the crowd listened to Patrick Fagan, son of another 1892 strike leader, give a thoughtful, somber address.
The wreath-laying ceremony, and the larger SWOC campaign, marked the ascendancy of true unionism in the steel industry. As the English visitor Arthur Shadwell, who visited Homestead a dozen years after the infamous 1892 strike, had observed: "Trade unionism has been put down with an iron hand dipped in blood, and it is kept down. It has not been recognized since 1892, but it is a plant which does not die when it has anything to feed on, and here it has much." At Homestead the "plant" of unionism eventually grew to full flower. Today, with the mill itself shut down and sold for scrap, the memories are all that remain.
A tense meeting of the "Big Four" of the American coal industry, April 19, 1933.
Steel Workers Organizing Committee had just kicked off its campaign to unionize the country's steel mills.Union organizers in the Monongahela Valley hatched a plan to connect their campaign to the historical
Homestead strike of 1892. They assembled 4,000 supporters at the Seventeenth Avenue Playground, and pledged themselves to a steelworkers' declaration of independence: "We say to the world: We are Americans. We shall exercise our inalienable right to organize into a great industrial union, banded together with all our fellow steelworkers."
Unveiling of monument, on September 2, 1941, commemorating the Homestead steelworkers...
Frances Perkins. That day, however, the state lined up firmly behind the workers. Pennsylvania lieutenant governor Thomas Kennedy, assured the crowd that there would be no state Coal and Iron Police harassing this organizing drive. Kennedy happened also to be secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, which generously funded the SWOC campaign.
Pat Fagan, UMW District 5 leader, addressing gathering of miners in the mid-1930s.
After the speeches, the crowd climbed some five blocks uphill to the cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony. Cush directed them to the graves, poorly marked and half forgotten, belonging to the six Homestead strike victims buried there.
His father, Dennis M. Cush, a member of the organizing committee back in 1892, had made sure that his son knew where the bodies were buried. Placing wreaths on the graves, the crowd listened to Patrick Fagan, son of another 1892 strike leader, give a thoughtful, somber address.
The wreath-laying ceremony, and the larger SWOC campaign, marked the ascendancy of true unionism in the steel industry. As the English visitor Arthur Shadwell, who visited Homestead a dozen years after the infamous 1892 strike, had observed: "Trade unionism has been put down with an iron hand dipped in blood, and it is kept down. It has not been recognized since 1892, but it is a plant which does not die when it has anything to feed on, and here it has much." At Homestead the "plant" of unionism eventually grew to full flower. Today, with the mill itself shut down and sold for scrap, the memories are all that remain.
