At midday on Nov. 25, 1931, a crowd set off from West Park on the North Side with a list of demands.
Groups had streamed in from surrounding regions; one truck from New Kensington bore a hammer-and-sickle sign, according to a Pittsburgh Press photo. The group — about 1,000 marchers, according to press accounts — headed across the Manchester Bridge and then on to the county commissioners’ office.
It was a “hunger march,” one of many carried out across the country during the worst days of the Great Depression. Organized by the Communist Party and its affiliated Unemployed Councils, the marches called for immediate relief and welfare programs for the unemployed. Pittsburgh was one of at least a dozen cities with Unemployed Councils in late 1931, according to a party newspaper. “Manifestly we must fight. It is either fight or starve,” the paper said.