"The River Ran Red": Homestead 1892

Demarest, David P., Jr., and Weingartner, Fannia, eds

ISBN 10: 0822954788 / ISBN 13: 9780822954781

Published by Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1992

About this Item

232, wraps, illus., sources and suggested readings, highlighting and ink underlining, ink notation on front cover. Afterword by David Montgomery. Pittsburgh Series in Social and Labor History.

Seller Inventory # 51403

Bibliographic Details

• Title: "The River Ran Red": Homestead 1892
• Publisher: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822954788
• ISBN 13: 9780822954781
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

On July 6, 1892, violence erupted at the Carnegie Steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, when striking employees and Pinkerton detectives hired to break the strike exchanged gunfire along the shore of the Monongahela River. The skirmish left some dozen dead, led to a congressional investigation, sparked a nearly successful assassination attempt on Carnegie Steel executive Henry Clay Frick, and altered the course of the American labor movement. The River Ran Red recreates the events of that summer using firsthand accounts and archival material, including excerpts from newspapers and magazines, reproductions of pen-and-ink sketches and photographs made on the scene, passages from the congressional investigation, and poems, songs, and sermons from across the country. Contributions by outstanding scholars provide the background for understanding the social and cultural aspects of the strike, as well as its violence and repercussions. Written to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the strike, The River Ran Red records and contextualizes public and personal reactions to one of the most important events in labor history, the reverberations of which are still felt today.

About the Author

David P. Demarest (1931–2011) was professor emeritus of English at Carnegie Mellon University and a pioneering scholar of labor history and working-class literature of western Pennsylvania. His research led to the republication of Thomas Bell’s seminal novel of the American steel industry, Out of This Furnace. He was a founding member of the Battle of Homestead Foundation and a staunch advocate for the preservation of important local historical and cultural landmarks such as the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and the Maxo Vanka murals in Saint Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, Pennsylvania.