THE KILLING FLOOR

 Praised by The New Yorker  as "a revelatory historical drama" and by The Village Voice as the most “clear-eyed account of union organizing on film,” THE KILLING FLOOR (1984/1985) is the first feature film directed by Bill Duke and explores a little-known true story of an African American migrant in his struggle to help build an interracial union in the Chicago Stockyards. The screenplay by Obie Award-winner Leslie Lee is from an original story by producer Elsa Rassbach and is based on actual characters and events, tracing ethnic and class conflicts seething in the city’s giant slaughterhouses, when management efforts to divide the workforce fuel racial tensions that erupt in the deadly Chicago Race Riot of 1919.

Damien Leake stars as Frank Custer, a young black sharecropper from Mississippi who lands a job on "the killing floor" of a meatpacking plant — one of tens of thousands of southern blacks who journeyed to the industrial north during World War One, hoping for more racial equality. Frank finally succeeds in bringing his wife Mattie (Alfre Woodard) and family up north, but when he decides to support the union cause, his best friends from the South, distrustful of the white-led union, turn against him.

The film was shot in Chicago in 1983 by a small indie production firm in the midst of the union-busting Reagan Era just as Chicago’s first African-American mayor, Harold Washington, was elected. The filmmakers were advised by a team of prominent scholars led by renowned labor historian David Brody.  The filmmakers drew on the immense talent of local Chicago union crews and guild actors and enjoyed an outpouring of community support. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, foundations, corporations and dozens of national and local unions, THE KILLING FLOOR premiered on PBS’ American Playhouse series in 1984 to rave reviews. In 1985 it was invited as a theatrical film to many festivals, including Cannes, and won the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize. THE KILLING FLOOR, is a “classic study in class hate, greed and stubborn idealism. You won’t forget it” ( Newsday ).

 

 My Thoughts

The Killing Floor is a powerful film story about when unions were first people organized. In the early nineteen hundreds, struggling families were forced to work in terrible conditions. The story centers around an African American man named Frank Custer who goes to Chicago with dreams of making something of himself. He winds up working in a meatpacking plant where he is on what known as the "killing floor". Seeing the horrors workers are subjected to, he joins forces with white workers trying to start up a  union, even though his friends from the South don't trust them.

This is a great story that delves into what life was like for blue collar workers. Frank must not only over overcome terrible working conditions, but face off with many racist immigrants. Throughout it all, he stays strong and shows everyone what it's like to overcome adversity. If you'd like to grab a copy of this awesome blue-ray for yourself,  you can find it in store nationwide or online on Amazon.