Happy International Workers' Day! In the Bay Area, the first May Day in [...]

Happy International Workers’ Day! In the Bay Area, the first May Day in 1890 was celebrated with a picnic in Emeryville’s Shellmound Park, organized by the carpenters’ and joiners’ unions. These unions, who were already powerful locally, demanded (and promptly won) an 8-hour day

In the following decades, May Day celebrations faced increasing police repression. While large, conflictual May Day parades unfolded in cities like Seattle & New York, the Bay remained relatively quiet, as a heavy police presence (and preemptive arrests) stifled activity

Things began to change in 1930, when communists defied a police order not to march in Oakland. As the marchers attempted to form lines, they were attacked by “a special detail of 30 policemen.” In the ensuing brawl, marchers were brutally beaten and their banners destroyed

Undeterred by the 1930 beatings, the Communist Party continued to hold May Day parades throughout the 1930s; attendance soon stretched into the thousands. By the 1940s, however, the large public events faded away as Party policy changed to reflect fears over growing repression

May Day was revived by the New Left of the 1960s, who fought to end local bans on the parades. May Day celebrations, marches, and occasional riots of widely varying size and intensity have occurred semi-regularly in the Bay Area ever since