(cat meows) (static hisses) - [Announcer] Colombia Broadcasting System... (static hisses) - [Announcer] And in Washington today, a Senate committee continues its look into a violent attack last summer on a peaceful picket line in Kent, Ohio.

This morning it heard from a union official who was on the scene.

- [Narrator] Senator, around 6 in the morning, two trucks drove up there and crashed through the plant gate.

Men jumped out with sawed off shotguns and tear-gas.

They started shooting.

- [Announcer] 14 pickets and strikebreakers were injured in the battle that followed.

In other news around the country, the President said today... (tense music) - [Narrator] In June 1936, Machinists Local Union 1203 had been on strike against the Black & Decker company for six weeks.

There had been sporadic acts of mild violence on both sides.

But early on the morning of June 18th, union pickets and management strikebreakers clashed violently.

Men and women were seriously injured.

Dozens were arrested.

It was a miracle no one was killed.

That bloody clash was the core-event in an aborted attempt to break a strike in a quiet Ohio town.

It thrust the event and the city into national headlines and an investigation by the United States Senate.

(tense music) (upbeat music) In 1936, the country was climbing out of the Great Depression.

The year would see President Franklin Roosevelt overwhelmingly win re-election.

Margaret Mitchell published "Gone With the Wind."

Heavyweight boxer Joe Louis suffered his first professional loss in a shocking upset to German, Max Schmeling.

Kent, Ohio in 1936 was a beautiful, growing town of 8500 people not unlike thousands of others across the country.

It was surrounded by the bustling industrial centers of Northeast Ohio, Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Youngstown.

Kent State University was rapidly growing.

No longer just a teachers college, it was establishing strong academic programs and drawing students from across the country.

The Twin Coach company manufactured buses, streetcars and trucks.

Davey Tree was internationally known.

The town was nicknamed Tree City.

Gougler Machines, the Williams Brothers Mill, Lamson & Sessions provided hundreds of jobs for area residents.

The city's economy was anchored in these small businesses.

Significantly, almost all of them were unionized.

In 1936, Black & Decker Electric was the youngest of the major employers.

It had moved to Kent in 1929, the year of the stock market crash.

It was an affiliate of the national corporation in Baltimore.

It made small motors for dozens of consumer products, vacuum sweepers, sewing machines, fans, electric drills, and washing machines.

More than 400 people worked at the plant.

Most lived in Kent or Portage County.

The Black & Decker facility was an important part of the economy in Kent and the county.

The plant was located on Lake Street on the north edge of Kent about a mile from the heart of town.

It was one of several small industries in the area.

There were two large buildings on the property.

In 1936, the company was using only the larger of the two.

Nationally, organized labor was experiencing a spurt in activity and growth in the mid-Thirties.

In 1935, as part of Roosevelt's New Deal, Congress passed the Wagner Act also known as the National Labor Relations Act.

It guaranteed most workers the right to organize and to bargain collectively.

What it didn't do was convince corporate America to willingly cooperate.

(slow piano music) As they had for decades, most companies used pretty much any means necessary to break unions or strikes.

They infiltrated spies into local unions.

They used private police forces to intimidate.

They confronted picket lines with tear gas, billy clubs and goons.

And unions were not afraid to fight back.

It was a violent, bloody time in U.S. labor history.

In 1936 alone, there were some 2200 strikes in the United States.

Ohio was one of the leading states.

There were major work stoppages and pitched battles in Cleveland, Canton, Akron, and Toledo.

Thousands of workers in Northeast Ohio and throughout the country were starting to take their labor unions very seriously.

Machinists Local Union 1203 had been organized at Black & Decker in 1934.

Initially, it had little bargaining power, little clout.

An attempted strike in 1935 fell flat and frustrated workers.

In 1936, the union was looking to change all that.

(slow piano music) (tense music) In January 1936, the union at Black & Decker asked management to renegotiate wages.

The company said no.

In late April, the union asked again.

Once more, the company refused.

Unlike the previous year, union members now flexed their muscles.

On May 2, the union voted to strike.

The local accounted for only about 40% of the Black & Decker work force but the strike shut down the entire operation.

Dozens of pickets were immediately stationed at the main gate outside the plant on Lake Street.

A court order sought by the company quickly limited the number of pickets allowed at any one time to three.

They worked in shifts.

A strike headquarters was created across the street, about 50 yards west of the plant, in a dirt lot.

It consisted of a few tents and a small parking area.

Striking workers would meet there to socialize, catch up on news, or grab a nap before going on picket duty.

The strike captain was A. F. Wassilak of Kent.

Everyone just called him Sarge because of his service in World War I.

The union had three major demands, a 10% wage increase, a 36-hour week down from 44, and sole bargaining rights at the plant.

The company offered no increase in wages, a 40-hour week, and no change in bargaining rights.

The first week of the strike was fairly normal as strikes go.

Then it settled into a routine, not much happened.

Picketing became a chore.

Negotiations produced little progress.

(Piano - "Here Comes the Bride") There was one happy event on the picket line.

On a sunny May morning, Alice Christopher and Alonzo Cole, both active union members were married.

(Piano - "Here Comes the Bride") Several hundred striking co-workers witnessed the ceremony.

After the wedding, the happy couple went off to a union strategy meeting.

(Piano - "Here Comes the Bride") (slow piano music) It was common practice in the 1930s for a company to use an outside organization to try to disrupt a strike against it.

If a dispute was resolved early at the bargaining table, that was fine.

If it wasn't, some outside help might convince the union to abandon the strike.

The National Metal Trades Association was an umbrella organization for companies as large as U.S. Steel or as small as the Black & Decker operation in Kent.

Its primary function was to provide assistance to member companies that had been struck.

It offered strike breakers, union spies, bail bondsmen, lawyers and weapons.

Pretty much one-stop shopping.

It had two main goals.

First, it wanted to intimidate unions and pickets with real or threatened violence.

Frightened workers might abandon the strike and return to work.

Second, it tried to goad union members into committing violent acts against the company or against private property.

Company management would then demand that police or National Guard troops be brought in to quell any such disturbance.

The thought was that a local judge would be more likely to halt a strike in the face of such violence or attack on private property.

As soon as Local 1203 struck, Black & Decker officials put the strike in the hands of the Metal Trades Association.

Like other companies, management turned their heads while the Metal Trades Association tried to stomp out the strike and the strikers.

The machinists union was not without outside help too, however.

Rubber workers from nearby Akron were flush with success from their recent work stoppages.

They offered enthusiastic support to the machinists sometimes without being asked.

Some 2,000 of them invaded Kent on a Sunday afternoon in May for a raucous rally.

Speaker after speaker called for solidarity with union brethren and railed against greedy corporations.

Police had to be called in to check on what was becoming an unruly crowd.

A week later, 3,000 rubber workers were back in Kent for another boisterous rally and march.

Again, police were present to keep the angry crowd from damaging the Black & Decker plant.

Many area residents were getting uneasy about such outside influence on what they saw as a local labor dispute.

The Akron rubber workers, especially, were resented for the militant edge they brought to the affair.

Also making area citizens uncomfortable was an increase in low-level violence associated with the strike.

Stones were thrown through windows where Black & Decker officials lived.

Windshields of striker's cars were smashed.

The real problems, however, were about to start.

(intense music) At 3 o'clock in the morning on May 25, four carloads of men pulled up to the main gate of the plant where several pickets were standing.

Carrying sawed-off shotguns, men jumped out of the cars and tried to force open the gates.

Pickets, who had been sleeping in tents nearby, ran out and threatened the men.

They quickly got back in their cars and sped off.

It was the first time that union members began to suspect that there might be an organized outside attempt to disrupt the strike.

It would not be the last time.

Then, two weeks later, the County Sheriff, E. L. Burr for some reason got involved.

He brought in six special deputies to guard the plant.

The only problem was, they were not deputies, but strikebreakers.

The union was not receptive.

Al Wassilak, picket line captain met with the sheriff.

- [Narrator] I told him that no harm had been done so far.

I told him that the best thing he could do was to get these men away from the picket line or there would be trouble.

Being a wise man, he moved them.

- [Narrator] Strike negotiations meanwhile were going nowhere.

A federal mediator assigned to the case left town.

Kent Mayor, William Harvey, who led a local advisory committee threw up his hands and walked out.

Tempers were fraying.

Community nerves were strained.

Neighbors were starting to argue with neighbors.

What had started out as a fairly typical small town labor dispute usually resolved halfway amicably after a short strike was turning uncomfortable and ugly.

A violent outbreak seemed to be just one foolish act away.

(intense music) Al Wassilak had just finished making sure his picket-line shift-change had gone smoothly.

It was June 18, three weeks later, about 6:30 in the morning.

It was overcast and muggy.

Suddenly, he heard tires screech.

A woman screamed.

There was the sound of racing truck motors and a metal fence being forcefully struck.

He turned, it was another attack on the picket line.

(intense music) - [Narrator] A truck had crashed through the gate.

One man jumped out, a baseball bat in one hand, and a revolver in the other.

He said, "Let the blankety-blanks have it!'

A. F. Wassilak, picket line captain.

(engine roaring) - [Narrator] A second truck followed the first through the gate.

More men jumped out of both trucks.

Some brandished sawed-off shotguns.

Some threw gas bombs.

One exploded at Wassilak's feet, knocking him to the ground.

Pickets who had just finished their shifts joined some 50 other union members who had been sleeping in nearby tents.

They picked up rocks and threw them at the strike-breakers, then charged them.

Fistfights broke out.

Men on both sides wielded billy clubs and baseball bats.

50 strikebreakers and 50 union members screamed, cursed, fought, and injured each other.

Then, all of sudden, the drivers of the two trucks apparently became frightened.

They gunned their motors and steered their vehicles down the driveway toward the plant.

They couldn't back up because of the scores of men fighting in the drive and the street behind them.

The strikebreakers began to panic then.

They followed the trucks, running toward the building too.

One or two of them would stop, turn and fire shotgun blasts and tear gas as they retreated.

A handful of pickets also had guns, however, and they fired at the fleeing men.

The strikebreakers ran into the Black & Decker building for protection.

One of them was seriously wounded in the abdomen.

They slammed the doors.

Safe, they thought.

Pickets were hesitant to follow in light of the shotgun blasts.

Instead, they slammed the gates shut and secured them with a heavy chain.

The strikebreakers were locked in.

This was not what was supposed to happen.

It was not yet 7 a.m. A number of pickets had been injured.

One was on his way to a hospital, his bloody leg riddled with buckshot.

Others had been grazed by buckshot or been seriously gassed.

One man lost three teeth when a gas canister hit him in the mouth.

43 year-old Estelle Broffman was on the picket line when the trucks crashed through.

She was gassed and would take months to recover.

Nonetheless, she remained at the scene all day, earning the title, Queen of Strikers.

Things began to move quickly now.

Scores of workers from Twin Coach, Lamson & Sessions, and other area firms left their jobs to go to the Black & Decker site.

Hundreds of rubber workers from Akron again began streaming into Kent.

Friends and relatives of the strikers quickly gathered near the plant.

Within an hour, there were a thousand people on Lake Street, all spoiling for a fight.

Many of the union members and supporters brought rifles and handguns.

Angry, they began firing at the men hiding in the building about 50 yards away.

The large, three-story building with hundreds of glass pane windows made an inviting target.

As more union members and allies arrived, the number of shooters increased.

They covered three sides of the building.

They fired from behind the fence or from behind embankments across the street.

If they thought they saw someone or something move inside the plant, they fired.

Rounds smashed into windows sending glass flying into the building and bullets ricocheting off walls and ceilings.

A mob mentality was close to setting in.

It was becoming a very dangerous situation.

And, it was barely 9 a.m. (gun blasting) (glass shattering) (calm piano music) The 49 strikebreakers inside the plant were stunned and scared.

They had been hired in Cleveland and were told they were going to spend several days protecting an insurance company in Kent.

It would be an easy job.

They would make six dollars a day.

The men wore suits and ties and hats.

They packed suitcases with extra clothing and toiletries.

They brought boxes of beef, potatoes and canned goods enough to last a week.

Some of the men, however, were veteran strikebreakers.

They knew what might be ahead of them.

They had been given weapons.

They knew this could become violent.

But now, all of them were under fire, under siege.

This was not what any of them had bargained for.

(calm piano music) At first, when the union men began firing, some of the strikebreakers shot back through the plant windows but that exposed them to more rifle fire and their best weapons were sawed-off shotguns not especially effective at 50 yards.

Soon, the strikebreakers just stayed as far away from the windows as they could.

They huddled behind tables, cabinets and heavy steel drums full of metal castings.

Quickly, the area became a chaotic battle zone.

Police had now responded.

They closed roads leading to the site.

Strikers and supporters clogged Lake and other nearby streets.

Curious neighbors strolled by to see what was happening.

The small Kent police department and sheriff's deputies struggled to maintain control.

Over the next few hours, the crowd of union members and sympathizers grew to an estimated 3,000 people.

Press coverage also grew.

Local reporters had been on the scene since early morning.

Now, reporters from the wire services were on site.

By afternoon, newsreel cameras were capturing the action.

The New York Times labor reporter was rerouted to Kent.

Newspaper front pages across the state and the country flashed the news, picket line attacked, brawl, sawed off shotguns, injuries, men under siege.

Throughout the morning, more men joined the union firing line.

Officials estimated there were some 125 to 150 rifles aimed at the building and the strike-breakers.

Volleys were thunderous.

They frightened strikebreakers and local residents.

Newspapers said the sound of the rifle fire could be heard more than a mile away.

In the plant, it was hot, muggy and dirty.

The men's clothes quickly became wrinkled and filthy.

Bullets whizzed over their heads through windows and doors smashing partitions.

Others hit tables and machinery.

And some hit terrified men hiding inside.

One strikebreaker was hit by a bullet in the shoulder, another was struck in the hip.

They were moved to the infirmary to join the man injured earlier.

Except he wasn't there.

(dramatic music) Austin Cusack ran the Cusack Detective Service in Cleveland.

For the past week, he had actually been hiring men for the Black & Decker job.

Now, those men were under siege at the plant.

Cusack had been shot in the stomach during the mad rush to get into the plant.

His wound was serious but somehow he was able to escape.

The union had not yet stationed men with rifles behind the plant.

Cusack, remarkably, just slipped out the back door and he apparently didn't bother to tell any of the other men that he was leaving.

Cusack climbed over a six-foot fence and dragged himself across a number of railroad tracks.

When he reached a road, he thumbed a ride to a hospital in nearby Ravenna.

He received emergency treatment there.

Then he quickly arranged for another ride, this one to the old Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland where he underwent surgery.

(dramatic music) Men on the firing line did not limit their targets to the building.

A 100-foot-tall water tower next to the plant was riddled with bullets.

Escaping water produced a fan-shaped spray before the tank eventually emptied.

The two large moving vans in which the strikebreakers had traveled from Cleveland were tattooed with rifle fire.

Police ordered sales of bullets stopped throughout the county.

They later estimated that as many as 5,000 rounds were fired.

Kent Mayor William Harvey and company officials pleaded with police and union officers to order the shooting stopped but no one issued that order.

It's unclear even today why they did not.

The mood in the massive crowd teetered between summer picnic and mob mentality.

(crowd shouting) Small boys scurried through the crowd with cap guns playing shoot 'em up.

Occasionally, they would fire off a make-believe bullet at the building.

A lost 4-year-old wandered through the crowd crying for his grandmother.

(child crying) (crowd chanting) A woman Goodyear worker entertained the crowd with union songs.

♪ singing and guitar♪ Tony Amaru's nearby grocery store had cold soda pop and the only public phone in the neighborhood.

He did a booming business.

He complained, however, that police wouldn't let him sell beer.

An irate union member tried to rally the crowd, "Get the rats out!

Get the rats out!"

Inside the now sweltering plant, dozens of strikebreakers lay on the floor wondering what they had gotten themselves into and how they were going to get out of it.

(dramatic piano music) (big band music played over an old radio) Louis Triscaro was 22 and a well-known boxer in Cleveland.

He was the U.S.

Amateur Flyweight Champion in 1931.

His professional career had started out promisingly.

He was 5'3", 115 pounds, and cocky.

Sports-writers nicknamed him, Babe.

Early on this morning, Triscaro had been one of 49 men stuffed into a moving van headed for trouble in Kent.

Three boxing buddies had come with him.

All were looking for some quick, easy cash.

Now, long hours later, they were about to climb into the back of another dirty truck.

This one would take them and their fellow strikebreakers to jail and they couldn't wait to get there.

(dramatic piano music) Union officials finally ordered the shooting stopped around 12:30 p.m.

The onslaught had been going on for four hours.

They agreed to stop the shooting only after police promised that the strikebreakers would be brought out of the plant and arrested.

By 2 o'clock, however, the Cleveland men still were huddled in the building, occasional gunfire continued.

(gun blasting) - [Woman's voice] "A young woman in a red dress walked behind the fence asking if she could shoot at the plant.

One man handed her his rifle, three times the rifle bellowed, (gun blasting) bullets whined, glass shattered, the young woman giggled (giggles) and moved on."

The Akron Times-Press.

- [Narrator] Around the same time officials asked the union if the wounded strikebreakers could be brought out.

It was only after they threatened to call for National Guard troops that the union relented.

Bringing in troops, of course, would have played into the hands of the National Metal Trades Association.

But Ohio Gov.

Martin Davey was from Kent.

He sent in only a handful of National Guard observers to monitor the situation.

The burden of keeping the crowd under control remained with the Kent police chief and county sheriff.

Around 3 o'clock, two ambulances drove cautiously through the large crowd to get the wounded strikebreakers.

The men had lost considerable blood and would spend time in a hospital.

Now, the growing throng demanded that the remaining 46 strikebreakers be brought out.

They reluctantly set a new deadline, 5 p.m.

But as the muggy afternoon wore on, the Cleveland men remained in the plant.

Newspapers reported that almost 5,000 strikers and sympathizers were now gathered outside the plant.

They were restless, hot and angry.

Five o'clock came and passed.

Union and city officials had to again plead with the crowd to be patient.

"Trucks were on the way to the site," they said.

The crowd, though, was close to becoming a mob.

Hot-heads were screaming that they should charge the plant and pull out the strikebreakers.

Fortunately, at 5:30, Kent Police Chief St. Clair West hurried to the site and told the crowd that warrants finally had been issued for the strikebreaker's arrests.

The crowd cheered.

But, still nothing happened.

The crowd began to think they had been tricked.

As the evening approached, one shouted, "This is war, they asked for it, and we'll give it to them."

(crowd noise) Finally, as dusk began to settle, two May Company moving vans rumbled down the road.

The crowd of thousands moved aside to let them pull into the driveway.

A National Guard observer walked into the building to get the strikebreakers.

"Hey, where the hell are you?"

He hollered.

"Where the hell are you?"

He had to yell twice more before the men were convinced it was safe to come out.

A van backed up to the building.

Babe Triscaro and the other 45 strikebreakers were frisked, and then they all clambered in.

Their suitcases were tossed unceremoniously into the back of the second truck.

Police entered the plant.

They confiscated what they called a small arsenal of weapons, shotguns, revolvers, tear gas guns, gas canisters, knives, brass knuckles.

14 hours after they boldly smashed and blasted their way through the gate, the strikebreakers were being hauled to jail.

(light piano music) (door squeaking) The first truck began to lurch toward the gate on Lake Street, thousands of angry men and women were waiting for it.

The mass of people pressed against the truck.

They banged on its sides.

They howled and screamed at the frightened men inside.

As the second van pulled onto Lake Street, some of the crowd stopped it and climbed on board.

- [Man's voice] Men leaped inside and hurled suitcases and bundles to those waiting nearby.

Men and women pounced on the bags, emptied them on the street, and gleefully ripped apart shirts, underwear and neckties.

The Akron Beacon Journal.

- [Narrator] Pieces of clothing were hung from the fence as spoils of war.

(crowd noise) Only the first truck holding the strikebreakers made it through the crowd.

(dramatic piano music) (crowd noise) It crawled through the mass of union members, sympathizers and onlookers, headed toward the police station in downtown Kent.

It was only a mile away, but it seemed farther.

Police cars bracketed the truck.

Police motorcycles, sirens blaring, led the way.

Hundreds ran along side.

Union members jumped in their cars and followed.

It was a bizarre procession.

- [Woman's voice] Horns blew; men and women shouted.

Crowds lined Lake Street to see the strange, frenzied parade.

Streets in downtown Kent were turned into bedlam.

The Akron Times Press.

(slow piano music) - [Narrator] It was after 9 o'clock and dark by the time the caravan got to the police station.

The scene was chaotic.

The truck carrying the strikebreakers hurriedly and awkwardly backed up near the police station's rear door.

Someone raised the back door of the truck half way and began pulling out the strikebreakers.

One by one, the men jumped out.

They ran and stumbled toward the jail door.

Some tripped over each other.

Thousands of people had followed the trucks to the jail.

Now they all but surrounded it.

And the sight of the strikebreakers seemed to make then even angrier.

Someone threw a blackjack, hitting one of the strikebreakers in the face.

Others began throwing rocks at the men and the building.

A man screamed, "Let me at the yellow-bellied rats!"

It was a gauntlet of stones, clubs, fists and insults.

- [Woman's voice] The strikebreakers rolled toward the jail.

They were terrified.

One man was sobbing in frantic fear of his life as he stumbled toward the garage seeking a way to safety.

The Akron Times Press.

- [Narrator] Finally, the last frightened strikebreaker was inside.

Police locked and barricaded the door, trading friendly insults with the crowd.

The mayor and chief finally could relax a bit.

46 men huddled in six small cells built for two prisoners each.

Thousands of people outside pressed forward, cursing and taunting the exhausted men.

One reporter called it, an avalanche of human hatred.

(slow dramatic music) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] It had been a long day and a short night for the 46 strikebreakers on the morning after the siege.

Their clothes were rumpled, torn and dirty from a day crouched behind tables and a night squeezed into the tiny jail.

Most had spent the night on their feet.

They had had no food, no water.

They had asked only for a couple packs of cigarettes when they were tossed into the cells.

A newspaper reporter said they made an odd sight.

There seemed to be two groups he noted, younger men looking to make some quick, easy money; and older men who were veterans of trying to break strikes.

Most of the men were in their 30s, the youngest was 19, the oldest 58, a number had criminal records.

Some were eager to tell anyone who would listen how they had been hoodwinked.

One told a union official.

- [Man's voice] We were misled into this job.

We were hired to be guards for an insurance company in Kent, ain't this a dandy?

All we want now is to get out as quickly as we can.

- [Narrator] Babe Triscaro, the boxer, told reporters the same story.

Most of the men were hired off the street during tough times to merely guard a business, he said.

It was supposed to be good money, easy money, and no trouble.

They weren't strikebreakers.

One of the jailed men even had a family member to support his plea of misguided innocence.

(slow piano music) Tony Fredericks was 29, unemployed, and had just gotten married a few weeks earlier.

His new wife had come down from Cleveland on the morning after the siege frantic to find her husband.

At strike headquarters, she told pickets her story.

She said she feared that when her husband left home the day before looking for work, he might somehow have gotten mixed up in the Black & Decker mess.

Sympathetic strikers responded to her heart-felt plea.

They discovered that Fredericks was indeed involved.

He was one of the 46 men cooling his heels in the Kent jail.

(calm music) At the police station there was a tearful reunion and embrace.

The wife pleaded, "Honey, why'd ya do it?"

Fredericks responded that he too had been tricked.

That he would never knowingly be a strikebreaker.

Police chief St. Clair West stood nearby.

A local newspaper reported that he looked on beaming in a fatherly fashion.

The young wife pleaded for the release of her husband and for the other men who might also have been misled.

Police Chief West, however, was having none of it.

He told her that no one could be let go especially with the ruckus they had caused they day before.

Now, they had to be processed through the legal system.

Indeed, earlier that morning, that process had gotten under way.

One by one, Fredericks and the other men had been fingerprinted.

It took all morning.

In the afternoon they were herded down a narrow hallway to a tiny courtroom.

They were arraigned on felony charges of shooting with intent to wound.

When the men saw that photographers were waiting for them, they covered their faces with their hats or hankies.

The court clerk entered each man's name into the criminal docket.

They all pleaded not guilty.

Bond had been set at $1500 each.

A bail bond company in Baltimore, home of the parent Black & Decker company paid the entire tab.

It came to $69000, 1.2 million dollars today.

The men were bound over to the September session of the Portage County grand jury then they were shuttled back to the jail cell.

All that was left was to get the men out of Kent safely.

That evening, they were quietly and quickly stuffed into the back of another truck.

A small motorcade of police and union cars took a slow, circuitous route north, being careful not to be followed.

When they reached the outskirts of Cleveland, the strikebreakers were told, "Okay, get outta here!"

The caravan headed home.

The 46 men were on their own and glad of it.

(dramatic music) (dramatic piano music) On the same day the Clevelanders were hauled out of Kent, union members were back on the picket line.

Life on and around the line began to return to normal.

Jacob, a tabby pussycat that had wandered off to make friends in the massive crowd, finally returned home.

Several budding young entrepreneurs gathered up shell casings and sold them as souvenirs, ten cents each.

A local newspaper columnist groused about the town's portrayal by visiting reporters.

He didn't appreciate Kent being called a sleepy, pastoral community.

More importantly, company officials began inspecting damage to the plant.

Besides the dozens of outside windows with glass punctured or blown out, ceilings, walls, cabinets, tables, machinery all had been damaged by bullets.

The huge water tank had been punctured by scores of shells and would have to be replaced.

(dramatic piano music) Officials estimated physical damage at $75000, about 1.4 million today.

Yet, the company surprised everyone by predicting the plant might actually be operational in just a few weeks.

That soon became a reality.

On June 30, 12 days after the attack and siege, the strike ended.

The Union had asked for a 10% wage increase, they got 5%.

They wanted a 36-hour week, they got 40 hours.

They wanted sole bargaining rights for all Black & Decker employees, the company agreed to that.

(dramatic piano music) In September, the criminal case against the strikebreakers came to an uneventful end.

A Portage County grand jury, following the requests of police and prosecutors, refused to indict the 49 strikebreakers.

For as much anger, pain and destruction as the attack had caused, everyone had pretty much had their fill.

(dramatic piano music) (crowd noise) (wooden mallet hitting table) - [Sen. Robert LaFollette Jr.] We will now convene this hearing.

On June 18th, 1936, there was a violent attack on a peaceful picket line in Kent, Ohio.

Mr. Charles Gadd is with the union involved.

Mr. Gadd, please describe what happened that morning.

- [Gadd] Around 6 in the morning, two trucks drove up there and crashed through the plant gate.

Men jumped out with sawed off shotguns and tear-gas.

They started shooting.

(intense piano music) - [Narrator] During the siege that summer, lots of rumors had made the rounds, five killed, company officials held captive.

Only one of them turned out to be true, that a U.S. senator planned to investigate the Black & Decker confrontation.

In January 1937, that investigation got under way in Washington, D.C.

Senator Robert LaFollette Jr., a Progressive Republican from Wisconsin headed the inquiry.

His committee on Civil Liberties would spend three years investigating and defending the rights of workers to organize unions and to bargain collectively.

Over two days of hearings in 1937, his committee produced a number of important findings about the Black & Decker affair.

First, LaFollette found that the company and the National Metal Trades Association had slipped management spies into the local machinists union.

One of them had tried to coax union members into committing violent acts.

The hope was to have police or a judge shut down the strike.

Second, the committee discovered that many of the men who served as strikebreakers in Kent were dangerous criminals.

At least 16 of the 49 men had been charged with such crimes as assault, robbery, larceny, concealed weapons, possession of explosives, and rape.

La Follette also uncovered a network of veteran strike-breakers throughout the country who were on call at short notice by the Metal Trades Association.

They had interesting names Sam Chowderhead Cohen, Stink Foot McKay, Benny the Fink Gross, and Snake Eyes Stein.

La Follette just labeled them all gangsters.

(intense piano music) Finally, and probably most importantly, the Black and Decker hearings helped uncover a pernicious web of anti-union companies and organizations and a modus operandi for trying to break strikes.

It was an intricate network of companies providing organization, manpower, legal help, and weapons.

In its final report on the Black and Decker clash, the committee wrote a stinging summary.

- [man reading senate report] The National Metal Trades Association has stubbornly clung to its time-worn formula of spies, munitions and armed guards.

Its determination to achieve its objectives at any cost appears clearly in its use of criminals during a strike at Kent, Ohio.

It did not hesitate to inflict upon an innocent community a band of hardened convicts armed with dangerous weapons.

(calm piano music) (calm piano music) - [Narrator] The Black & Decker attack and siege was serious and drew national attention.

It also had at least one ironic twist to it and a handful of unanswered questions.

Hired strikebreakers did violently attack peaceful pickets.

There was an ensuing gun battle.

Pickets were seriously injured.

In addition, a union rifle line did wound three strike-breakers and cause thousands of dollars of damage to private property.

Yet no one was punished.

The strikebreakers were arrested, but charges were dropped when the grand jury refused to indict them.

The union members and sympathizers on the firing line never were charged with a crime.

They were not even told to stop shooting until later in the day.

The Metal Trades Association and Black & Decker management suffered only the minor indignity of a public government scolding.

To this day, it is unclear why no one was held accountable for their actions.

For four hours, more than 100 men armed with what were described as high-powered hunting rifles fired into the plant.

Property damage was extensive to a local company that hired local people.

It was so bad that most Kent residents assumed that the company would move out of the city.

From 6:30 in the morning when the trucks crashed through the gates to 9:30 that night when the strikebreakers were safely stuffed into the jail anyone of a dozen bad decisions could have been made.

Had not cooler heads won out, a worse mob mentality could have developed.

(calm piano music) Most certainly, the Black and Decker confrontation was nowhere near the largest or the bloodiest labor protest in the country.

Strikes in Detroit, Akron, Canton and other U.S. cities resulted in hundreds of injuries and deaths and scores of arrests.

But the Kent strike was still important, it generated national headlines, it found its way into a handful of labor history books and it received national attention from a committee of the U.S. Senate.

It provided a microscopic view, almost a textbook case of the way many companies tried to deal with their labor problems in the 1920s and 30s.

And, the episode gives insight into the effects of a traumatic labor dispute on a small community.

One history of the city declares.

- [man reads from history book] There were mixed emotions for many years afterward because some people sided with the union, and some people sided with management.

The hard feelings lingered for many years.

- [Narrator] As time passed, though, memories of the bold attack and siege did begin to fade.

Other issues arose.

A second world war was on the horizon.

And in 1970, the city experienced one of the most traumatic events of the twentieth century, the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others during a largely peaceful protest of the Vietnam War at Kent State University.

(calm piano music) It's little wonder that today few residents are even aware of the raw excitement, anger and resentment spawned in their community more than 80 years ago by that attempt to break a strike in a quiet Ohio town.

(calm piano music) (mellow guitar music)