Communist Conspiracy or Wage Dispute?: The 1941 Strike at North American Aviation

Abstract

FOR SEVERAL DAYS in the summer of 1941, the 11,000 production workers at the North American Aviation plant in Inglewood, California, conducted a strike despite strong opposition from the President of the United States, the national leadership of their union, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Fifteenth Infantry Division of the United States Army. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to send federal troops into Inglewood marked the first use of the U.S. Army to break up picket lines of striking workers since the Pullman strike of 1894.