During World War I, Frank Custer, a black sharecropper from Mississippi, lands a job in a meatpacking plant in Chicago. Frank succeeds in bring his 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 Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education and the Socialist Project presents The Killing Floor as the next movie shown in our ongoing FilmSocial series.

Based on actual events compiled by journalist Elsa Rassbach The Killing Floor tells the story of the struggle to build an interracial union in one of Chicago’s large meatpacking plants as many black workers from the South migrate there looking for jobs during the WW1 era. The directorial debut of actor/director Bill Duke and written by playwright Leslie Lee the film explores the intersection between the US labor movement and race.

The Killing Floor was chosen as a companion piece to LPSSE’s fall lecture from Professor Adolph Reed Jr., professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in African-American studies and U.S. politics. This special guest lecture will be taking place on October 20 in Toronto. Please sign up for email updates on our website to receive further details once they become available.

Following the film, there will be an open discussion on the broader context of the film and some of the key questions raised by it.