The story of a black slaughterhouse worker who was part of the pioneering attempt to unionize the often fractious Chicago meatpackers at the end of World War I. But the post-war recession only increased the racial tensions already simmering within the slaughterhouses and stockyards and culminated in the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.


Don't pass up The Killing Floor on the mistaken notion that the film is a western shoot-em-up or cop drama. The title refers to that special area in the Chicago stockyards where the cattle are slaughtered (yes, we know: yeccch. But it happens). The story relates the true-life attempts to set up an interracial union at the stockyards during World War II. Nothing happens in the film that is not logical or understandable, so don't expect a last minute mano-y-mano duel fought with meat cleavers or some such. Well (and sometimes graphically) produced for PBS' American Playhouse, The Killing Floor stars Damien Leake as a southern black sharecropper seeking a better life in Chicago.