McKees Rocks Bloody Sunday
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The row houses you see around Presston Park were built in eighteen ninety-nine by the Pressed Steel Car Company to house its workers. But there was a catch: rent came straight out of wages, and the debt was nearly impossible to escape. By nineteen oh nine, immigrant laborers had had enough.
They walked off the job in a strike that shocked the steel industry. When the company evicted striking families from their homes, tensions exploded. On August twenty-second, nineteen oh nine, a confrontation known as Bloody Sunday left at least eleven people dead.
The strike drew national attention and ended in a partial victory for the workers. The company eventually closed in nineteen forty-nine, but this neighborhood, its streets and brick facades little changed from the strike year, still carries the memory of that uprising.
