Michigan State students hurl union men into the Red Cedar River in the forgotten Battle of East Lansing
In 1937, a UAW labor holiday in Lansing spilled into East Lansing, where Michigan State College students—armed with concrete reinforcing rods—confronted union men. The students flipped cars, tossed eight strikers into the cold Red Cedar River, and forced the union back three blocks. Governor Frank Murphy watched from a hill but refused to let ROTC cavalry charge, calling it 'too Cossack-like.'
The scholars dragged eight strikers to the Red Cedar River and promptly tossed them into the cold and dirty stream for what one student called 'a much needed cooling off.'
- xhevahir
> “But many Michigan State College students, overhearing the arguments between the unionists and the businessmen, quickly perceived the situation as a challenge to their sovereignty and to their eating places,” they wrote.
I'm skeptical of the idea that this was all the result of a big misunderstanding. Students were often recruited to act as strikebreakers in the early 20th century.
There's a book that deals with this subject, Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America. Football players were especially valued.
- mettamage
Fun to see something about East Lansing here. While I am Dutch, I have been there in the neighborhood (e.g. Lansing itself) on and off for 6 months in total when I had a long distance marriage (we live in the Netherlands nowadays). I’m a fan of Blue Owl coffee there.
REO town was cheap to rent and quite walkable to the city center (or “downtown” as they call it). I liked it more than I thought I would. Many places there aren’t walkable but from REO town to the city center it was possible. One thing I noticed was that walkability wasn’t priced in the rents at all since after a 1 mile walk from the city center, studio apartments were about 800$ (2024) whereas in the city center itself it was more like 1100$ IIRC. In my view going 300$ while just having a 1 mile walk seems like a steal.
MSU is massive nowadays. It’s crazy how big it is. It feels like an actual town. I wonder how big it was then.
As for the article itself. I find it interesting to read how certain groups were just taking action and there was no discernible leadership that could talk to each other. I wonder if this would have happened if that was the case.
The car manufacturing culture in Michigan in general is a low-key tourist worthy thing to check out (e.g. in the Detroit Institute of Art). But I have my father in law for that, haha. Asking Claude what a CNC programmer does because he’s not that great at explaining it to a total noob like me :’) once I understood that he had a macro language inside what he call […]