Red Pittsburgh

At the end of a 100-yard gravel road in West View sits a quiet cemetery, long used by Pittsburgh’s Lithuanian community. One large headstone reads: “In memory of our members — Lithuanian Workers Association — Branch No. 142.”

The marker is a rare surviving indication of a once-thriving left wing among the city’s Lithuanians, one of many early-20th-century immigrant groups that included significant socialist and communist factions. Today, we can trace the leftist Lithuanians by the remnants of their fraternal halls and the work of historical researchers.

For the June 2 anniversary of the 1919 anarchist bombings, I’m posting an excerpt from my book on the 1919 steel strike and that year’s political upheaval.

It was a late Monday evening on June 2, 1919, and much of Pittsburgh was already asleep. A group of young men walked down Aylesboro Avenue in Squirrel Hill on the way home from a wedding in the upper-class neighborhood.

An explosion roared, blasting shrapnel into several homes. At 5437 Aylesboro Avenue, home of high-ranking Pittsburgh Plate Glass official B.J. Cassady, the front porch was blown to pieces, the house’s entire front face was destroyed and the interior was wrecked. Next door, U.S. District Judge W.H.S. Thompson’s home sustained several hundred dollars’ worth of damage. Shrapnel and debris rocketed into nearby houses. The blast reportedly threw a baby into a pile of broken glass, where it somehow remained unharmed. Passersby rushed in to help, but no one was badly injured.