Chicago Shady Dealer

Graduate Students United Rally Disperses After Pinkerton Detectives Open Fire

By Daniel Lastres
May 5, 2018

 An artist’s rendition of the fatal rally

Hyde Park, 1892

In a bid to regain control of campus following more than a week of unrest, University administrators ordered a contingent of three hundred Pinkerton Detectives armed with jack-knives and Winchester rifles to secure Levi Hall and several other key facilities. Their attempt to break the picket line, though ultimately successful, resulted in a violent confrontation that left one agent, eight striking TAs, and two lecturers fatally injured. 

The University of Chicago Pinkerton Detectives (UCPD) have earned a fair bit of scrutiny and criticism for their aggressive policing tactics and often antagonistic relationship with the Hyde Park, Kenwood, and Woodlawn communities. However, this was the first time the administration had deployed them to handle an ongoing labor dispute. 

The strikers from Graduate Students United (GSU) were demanding that the administration bargain with them directly, rather than accepting the fact that President Benjamin Harrison’s administration would break up the union and nullify its legal standing. GSU also claims its members were forced to occupy classrooms and block the entrances to facilities after University officials hired scabs from Northwestern University to teach and lecture in their place. 

The injured strikers were eventually transported to the University of Chicago’s Trauma Center, where their wounded limbs were amputated and they all died of blood loss anyway. While many strikers anticipated a hostile response, very few expected the University’s desperate anti-union tactics to escalate into violence. 

University Security Director Marion B. Lynch has also released a series of “security alertness” pamphlets warning students to be “aware and alert of their surroundings at all times” and to “avoid trade unionists, socialists, and communist sympathizers who threaten to subvert the University community and undermine the strong relationships between graduate students and their employer.”