Strike marker reinstated at new location

A painting in the Butler Institute commemorates an earlier strike.

ANDREW GAUG
and GUY D’ASTOLFO

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITERS

YOUNGSTOWN — A marker commemorating the Little Steel Strike of 1937 found a new location in front of the Ohio Historical Society's Youngstown Center of Industry and Labor.

People gathered Wednesday to celebrate the event as speakers from the city, Youngstown State University and the steel industry helped reintroduce the Little Steel Strike marker to the city.

“There was a lot of conversation on what would be the most historical place,” said Carmen Conglose Jr., deputy director of public works. “Collectively, we picked the right place for it.”

The marker, Conglose said, was originally part of Federal Street, but was removed a few years ago for renovations to the city.

The reintroduction of the marker comes a little more than 70 years after the Little Steel Strike.

Other markers

But this is not the only marker of an historic event. “Youngstown Strike” is on display at the Butler Institute of American Art.

The 1936-37 strike at Youngstown Sheet and Tube inspired one of the more compelling pieces of social protest art. Labor unrest was widespread in the ’30s, and the strike theme appeared frequently in the art of the era.

New York artist William Gropper, a supporter of organized labor, visited Youngstown during the violent 1936-37 strike, and commented on it in an article and a series of sketches published in The Nation.

However, Gropper’s oil-on-canvas painting “Youngstown Strike,” which he painted in 1937 after his trip to Youngstown, does not depict the 1936-37 strike. Instead, it reflects an incident that occurred during the 1916 steel strike in the city.

The painting shows the moment after company guards fired into a crowd of strikers, killing three and wounding 25. The dead workers are lying on the ground while the shocked crowd expresses its outrage.

In portraying this situation 21 years after it had occurred, Gropper was showing his sympathy for American labor, according to the Butler Institute’s Web site.