Paterson_pageant

Paterson pageant

Paterson pageant

1913 reenactment of the ongoing Paterson silk strike

The Paterson pageant was a dramatic depiction of the 1913 Paterson silk strike acted by the strikers themselves in New York City's Madison Square Garden while the strike was ongoing. Staged by John Reed and other bohemians of Greenwich Village, the pageant played before a full audience and received positive reviews, though its public support and sympathy did not translate into success for the six-month strike, which crumbled following the pageant. One of the Wobbly leaders behind the strike, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, credited the pageant with hastening strike's end, having split the strikers' attention from their primary cause.[1]

Poster for the pageant
Photo of the pageant's second act

The pageant attracted early career artists including Robert Edmond Jones, who designed the poster, and John Sloan, who painted the 90-foot mills backdrop.[2]

References

  1. [1]
    Dubofsky, Melvyn (2013). "Paterson Strike and Pageant". The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History. Oxford University Press. pp. 64–65. ISBN 978-0-19-973881-6.
  2. [2]
    Glassberg, David (1990). American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century. UNC Press Books. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-8078-4286-7.

Further reading

Media related to Paterson pageant at Wikimedia Commons
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