NYC Police Brutalize Box Workers – ACLU Protests
The ACLU on this day protested brutal actions by New York City police officers against striking workers at a box manufacturing plant.
Affidavits reported that police officers beat men and women, used both clubs and their fists, and that one officer wielding a pistol chased children from their play activities. A delegation led by the ACLU scheduled a meeting with New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker to discuss their complaints.
A rash of violent incidents involving the police and unemployed workers in 1929 and 1930 because of the depression. On February 26, 1930 the police and communist-led protesters engaged in a violent clash on Wall Street in New York City. In Cleveland on October 2, 1930 the police clubbed and tear gassed 2,500 demonstrators protesting the policies of President Herbert Hoover.
American workers won their right to organize and to strike, first with the 1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act, and then more broadly with the 1935 Wagner Act.
Learn about the history of violence in labor relations in America.
Learn about the passage of the 1935 Wagner Act.
Read about the history of the ACLU: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990)