Greg Mitchell

Studs Terkel, the legendary Chicago radio host, raconteur and author of dozens of books, will probably now become best known to some because one of those books, Working, inspired the new Netflix series of that name from Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama.

But I met Studs back in the early 1980s after he wrote a blurb for my first book and then invited me on his radio show in Chicago. We then conversed over the following decades, before his passing in 2008.

Still, I did not know of his intimate connection to one of the most shocking historical incidents in his Chicago until I began research for my new PBS film and companion book, both titled Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried. They explore the 1937 tragedy in South Chicago near the old Republic Steel plant when police shot forty strikers and their supporters (hitting most of them in the back or side) and killed ten. The only footage of the incident was suppressed until a famed investigative reporter and a crusading U.S. Senator brought it to light. ...

After decades of decline, union organizing is surging again today, mainly in new industries, from coffee empires to online megastores. At the same time, teachers’ and nurses’ unions remain strong and the venerable guild for movie and TV writers went on strike earlier this week. Stephen Colbert, knowing his late-night show would soon go dark, said on Monday, “This nation owes so much to unions.”

Labor protests and strikes, decades ago, often led to violent confrontations between unionists and local or company police. It almost never happens today. This is partly due to lessons learned by both sides 86 years ago this month in Chicago, after police shot (mainly in the back) and killed 10 unionists and wounded 30 others in what has become known as The Memorial Day Massacre.

No labor conflict has come close to this toll since....

Adapted from Greg Mitchell's latest book,   The Beginning or the End:  How Hollywood--and America--Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

As this troubled summer rolls along, and the world begins to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the creation, and use, of the first atomic bombs, many special, or especially tragic, days will draw special attention.  They will include July 16 (first test of the weapon in New Mexico), August 6 (bomb dropped over Hiroshima) and August 9 (over Nagasaki).   Surely far fewer in the media and elsewhere will mark another key date:  July 3.

For most people, Daniel Ellsberg is known mainly for — or only for — the Pentagon Papers he leaked in 1971. And that’s plenty. It set in motion a landmark First Amendment case and led to shifts in public opinion that helped quicken the US withdrawal from Vietnam and the end to that war. Ellsberg was back in the public eye recently in relation to the epic 10-part PBS series on Vietnam, which included a lengthy segment on the Pentagon Papers — but his absence from the series as an interview subject drew criticism. Coming up: a movie drama on the Papers directed by Steven Spielberg.