A report on a defining movement of the Great Depression, the Hunger March Massacre on Henry Ford’s Deaborn, Michigan factories demanding relief for the unemployed and destitute. The March 7, 1932 demonstration on a cold Michigan day ended in a massacre of five workers.. That day Joe York, George Bussell, Coleman Leny and Joe Blasio were murdered by the Dearborn Police Department and Henry Ford’s gun thugs led by Harry Bennett as workers marched on Ford’s Rouge factory complex. Five months later, Curtis Williams would also die of his injuries.

‘Ford Thugs Massacre Starving Workers – Police Give Workers Lead Instead of Bread’ from The Militant. Vol. 4 No. 11. March 12, 1932.

On Monday, March 7, Ford’s cossacks fired on a crowd of jobless workers demonstrating before bis plant at Dearborn, Michigan. Four workers were shot and killed because they had come to demand from the apostle of “class peace”-work, a chance to earn their living. Among those killed was Joe York, the district organizer of the Young Communist League. Communist workers were in the first ranks of the struggle, were the first to be wounded.

The demonstrators, upon the call of the Unemployment Council of Detroit, were marching in orderly fashion and had Intended sending up a committee to the management of the Ford plant to present their demands. Ford, the idol of the post war social democracy and all the other preachers of class collaboration, the symbol of “Americanization,” immediately ordered his gunmen to pour lead into the masses calling for work and bread.

The whole horrid shape of “humane” American capitalism stands exposed before the workers of the world. The “pacemaker” of modern industry and of “industrial democracy,” whose hands are dripping with the blood of militant workers, will become identical with the darkest and most reactionary forms of Czarist despotism.

The heroic manifestation of the Detroit workers, coming in the midst of a general depression, will be a light-house of courage to the millions of unemployed workers all over the country in their fight against starvation. Their fearless march, in the face of tear-gas bombs, in the face of icy-cold fire hoses and machinegun fire will be an inspiration and a standard of battle for all those who share their miserable fate under the abominations of the capitalist system. The most powerfully developed industry in the world and in history can give the masses of the population only what the blackest regimes of the past have given them: hunger and lead. The workers are waking up to the fact that as long as the profit system, as long as private ownership controls the means of production, all technical progress can merely serve to enslave them. That is what the Communists are out to teach the workers, that is the condition against which the Communists are the vanguard lighters.

Action Teaches Lessons

The workers can only learn from practical experience, from action. And it is in action that Communism shows the workers most clearly what they are up against and how they can overcome it. To carry out this historic task, the forefront fighters of Communism have once more proved their fearlessness, their daring, their absolute devotion to the cause of the working class, their utter defiance of the class enemy. Joe York, a valiant young Communist warrior, has fallen at the hands of the boss class. The answer of the working class of America to the murder of York and his three comrades must be a more determined, a more tenacious struggle against the master class than ever. The best class vengeance for the murder of our fighters is organization. The fight for which York and his comrades died, must be carried into every factory, into every trade union. The whole proletariat must be rallied for a militant protest, the banner of the Detroit martyrs must be held high.

Every worker in the United States knows what hunger means, every worker knows what wage-cuts mean. The heroic example of the Communists does not pass them by unnoticed. But they are still apprehensive, they are not as yet convinced of the correctness of Communist policy. The Communists must take into account the degree of consciousness of the masses. In order to lead them into decisive struggles against the class foe, they must be prepared to go with the masses as far as the masses will go at the moment. In common struggle with the working masses they have the best opportunity for winning them over to a Communist line of action.

Relief Struggle Growing

The masses are at present conscious of the necessity of resisting further unemployment, further wage cuts, and of wrenching from the capitalist class a measure of relief for their misery. The workers are still bound to their reformist leaders by innumerable prejudices, traditions and organizational ties. If they are to be brought into action, their leaders must be pressed against the wall. The united front of working class struggle against boss misery must be organized. That ls the way to carry the banner of the fallen Detroit fighters up higher. That ls the way for a successful advance of the forces of Communism. That ls the way of winning a majority of the workers for the proletarian revolution.

The Communist party has once more, as often before, been the only party to show the oppressed and exploited workers the way out, the road to a lighting solution. It has once more shown that it is the only party of the working class. It has proved that the workers are not going to remain passive before the onslaught of the bosses.

Government Persecution Coming

Already, the boss government is initiating a ferocious campaign of persecution against the Communist organizers. The whole frame-up system of capitalist class justice, with its “criminal syndicalism” laws and other vicious devices is being set into motion. The entire working class of the country must come to the defense of those attacked like a solid stone wall. Every worker’s late, every worker’s elementary right to existence, is at stake.

The Communist party is calling protest and memorial meetings all over the country. It is the duty of every class conscious worker to stand behind the party of his class, and to demonstrate his solidarity with it. Against the bosses’ offensive, against government persecution, for the workers’ right to demonstrate, for unemployment relief, and unemployed insurance. Against wage cuts and for the six hour day, five day week. Against the imperialist war preparations and for Long Term Credits to Workers’ Russia.

All New York workers will show their solidarity with the Communist party on Friday evening, March 11, at the Central Opera House, 67th Street and Third Avenue.

Workers! Make your protests against the Dearborn massacre a powerful demonstration of solidarity that will strike fear into the hearts of the bosses!

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1932/mar-12-1932.pdf